My math story

I was born in 1987. I did a lot of things when I was little.
I played Super Mario bros when I was 2 years old!
As a matter of fact it was my only NES game.
My brother and sister had it,but they did other stuff(I don't know what).
When I wasn't playing SMB I was playing with this fish thing!
It had these fish that open and close there mouths!
I got good at catching them. This went on until the divorce.
My bro and sis went with dean. I was alone with Mom. It wasn't much different
anyway. I never knew much about them. I still had my friend Tasha. We played games
all the time. We played with the barbie dolls too.

I eventually went to preschool. It was kinda fun except nap time! I never slept.
So I learned the alphabet and how to count. I counted and counted forever!
I counted past 300 and then somebody would interrupt me and I'd have to start all over!
I counted everything I saw. I went to grade school eventually and they told me all sorts of weird
things. They didn't use phonics. They told me to memorize words. I told my mom about this.
She then taught me to read. I still counted though. When we did math in school,I was confused.
They weren't making any sense! I then wanted my mom to teach me math stuff.
She never learned math in school herself. She got flash cards and drilled me on things.
She got tired of it so I'd just take the cards and test myself for hours!
Within no time I was counting by 2,3,4,5,etc. We ran out of tools eventually.
The things only did the times tables up to the 12s. I was never satisfied.
I wanted to do the 13s but my mom didn't even know anything about it.
I just did it myself and started writing multiplication charts.
I just kept going to the multiples of 13,14,15,16,17,etc.
When I was at school,I did better at math than any subject.
I would use my fingers to keep my place,but I was sad that I only can 10 fingers.
They got into division and stuff. I could figure it out but it was time consuming.
I got bored with it after do loads of problems. I got faster though and finished before others.
As a matter of fact,I sometimes got accused of cheating by the teachers if I remember correctly.
It seemed unnatural. They really didn't think I was smart either. I failed all my other subjects
badly. I got Fs and didn't know why. I didn't care nor did my mom seem to.

When I was 9 we moved to Lee's Summit Missouri. My mom homeschooled me then.
She wanted to sooner,but the laws in Kansas had caused problems. She taught me English,the Bible,
and other stuff I don't remember. Well,for the math there was just the books. She just checked my
answers with the answer book. I had a division problem that never ended. I think it was some
kind of irrational number. I gave up and she looked to find that there was no answer.
When we hit algebra I had a problem. We tried getting help,but nobody could figure out what
that book was talking about! Well,I still don't truly get what algebra was about.
Remember that I still didn't have a computer at that time. We kinda gave up on the algebra.
I continued to do math by myself and play video games. There came I time when I got a computer with
512KB RAM and 2 5.5 floppy drives. I did some cool stuff with it. Back then I only had regular DOS.
It was DOS 3.22 I think. Well,needless 2 say it couldn't do much,but hey,I played with it.
I got a PC with Windows 3.1 later! It was sweet,for the first time I had calc! I played with it.
Also played Castle of the Winds. I still did lots of stuff. I always leveled up a lot in my video
games cause I was obsessed with high numbers. We eventually got the laptop. It had 128MB of RAM
and a 6GB hard drive. I nearly fainted. I was SO happy. I still didn't have internet for awhile
though. I played with debug. I didn't know what it was for but it was cool!
We finally got Walmart Connect. It was dial up and was slow,but it was the best thing I ever had.
I finally could email! It was so much fun. Patrick told me about google.com .
I then found games,music,etc. It took hours to download many things! It was worth it though.
Then,an idea hit me! Why not learn to be a programmer? So that's what I tried. I searched for
an "easy" way to make things,but I still didn't know exactly what I was looking for.

I gave up the idea and started hex editing. I read about people hex editing the save files
of Castle of the Winds. I did it by following the directions. I got XVI32 since it was a free hex
editor. I still use it to this day when I hex edit. I had to learn hexidecimal if I was gonna do
much. I got tired of using calc to convert between decimal and hexidecimal.
So I went and googled it. I read guides on hexidecimal and it actually made sense.
They often talked about binary. I'm like "what you say?". I read about that too.
I was REALLY impressed with the idea of expessing any number with only 0 and 1.
So I read loads and loads. I started doing the powers of 2 all the time.
I simply did it in decimal as I was used to. I started writing it on paper. Just started at
1 and kept adding the numbers to themselves! I got really good. I then wanted to tell the world
how cool binary is. I made a powers of 2 ZIP that had stuff I wrote about powers of 2.
I then needed somewhere to put it. I never had thought about it. I wanted my own website where
people could download my stuff. So I did this!

http://www.freewebs.com/chandlerklebs/

I haven't updated it in over a year,but it still has good stuff.
I was definitly freaky about powers of 2. I had 1 problem. I wanted high powers of 2!
I mean REALLY high. I tried doing it myself in notepad,but I ended up making a mistake.
I looked all over for powers of 2. I found

http://www.newdream.net/~sage/old/numbers/pow2.htm

I was impressed. I wanted the program that did that,but there was no EXE. Only source.
I asked my friend Ben 2 help me with it. He installed Visual C++ on the gateway my sister sent me
for my birthday. He showed my how to edit it. Sadly,I didn't have a clue how it worked.
When I saw the size of it,I got so mad. I knew that powers of 2 were a simple operation!
I just finally decided "I am going 2 make the ultimate power of 2 program!"

I searched even more! I searched every day. I never found anything.
I triedn searching easy,simple,idiot programming,etc.

I finally typed in "basic". I found QBasic.com! I downloaded QBasic and played with it.
I read the help file and looked at examples. I figured out what print did!
I even got a program that did powers of 2,but only the lower exponents.
I decided I needed some more help. I went back 2 QBasic.com and searched around.
I found the forum!

http://www.network54.com/Forum/13959/

I told them who I was and how I started with QB. They were helpful. They taught me a great deal.
I had 2 learn data types and arrays. I worked on it for so long. I eventually got a program that
could do powers of 2 with thousands of digits. I was so happy. It took me 2 years!
Well,I had broken the record 4 the highest powers of 2 calculated in QBasic,but I soon wanted more.
I wanted something faster. The guys recommended FreeBasic. It wasn't all that hard.
I did cool stuff with it. I then thought back on that old C program that I didn't understand.
I attempted at C. I asked my friends what they used. Somebody told me about Dev-C++.
I got it working,but the help wasn't exactly the most useful thing.
I had 2 get more help. I got info at

http://www.cplusplus.com/ref/

It took time,but it wasn't far away from FreeBasic. It took a lot more work,but I was enjoying
it. I eventually got a program that did powers of 2 even faster than the original prog I saw!
I had reached my goal,but.......now....it was 2 late. I had become so obsessed with powers of 2.
I looked and read about converting between bases. I never dreamed this would happen. I spent at
least 3 or 4 years with my obsession. I hasn't ended yet though! I had 2 tell you all this!
It's pretty much the story of my life,but I kinda left out the stuff about what happened with
my friends. I don't know how much they want me saying!