Caveat: changing lives, one operating system at a time…

It’s always amazing to hear from former students. I received the following email from a former student, the other day.

Dear teacher Jared Way

Hello, my name is ___ and I am a high school student now in Korea.

Why I decided to send this message to you is to express my thankfulness to you.

I was an elementary school student maybe 5 years ago, and I still
remember that you have taught me english in academy for quite long time.

Why I still remember you is because (maybe I’m not sure if you will remember me) of the story thay you have told us.

One day you told me that in America, about 70% use Windows as an
personal OS, but in Korea almost 99.99% use Windows just as monopoly.

And you told us about another operating system called ‘Linux’.

I was curious, and I searched over the internet to install Linux on my
computer, but it was too hard for me. So I asked you what kind of Linux I
have to install, and you told me that Ubuntu will be fine. And also
you’ve kindly print some installation manual to me and explained how it
will works, and how to install.

After I have succeeded to install Ubuntu on my computer as a multi-boot,
I still remember that you told other teachers thay I’m really good at
computer! And I also remember thay I have asked some Greek words to you
because i was also interested im Greek language.

Anyway, you gave me an worthy experience to Ubuntu as young, and from that on, I’ve tried to use Ubuntu everyday.

So,,,, now I’m now in “Daegu Science High School”, a school for students
talented in Science, and mathematics, of course still use Ubuntu in my
laptop : )

Because I have experienced Ubuntu when I was young, I could learn many
computer knowledge and my information science teacher in school asked me
to make an lecture resources about Ubuntu and Linux. Also my
information science report on first semester was “Usage of Ubuntu as an
operating system in science high school, and reaserch the relativity
between Android” which I got highest grade, and help me to get ‘A’ in
total.

So, I was always thankful to you to give such a great experience but
cannot,,, but I thought that i must do, and found your homepage and now
writing this long letter.

So, thanks for reading this long long letter, and I hope we could talk each other more by letter or phone in advance  🙂

So thank you teacher Jared, and I’ll wait for your reply~

26 January, 2013

I was very flattered. Daegu Science High School is very prestigious, too. I sometimes see my sharing these kinds of messages here in my blog as seeming overly self-centered or self-promotional, but it’s one of the reasons I like teaching – that knowledge, that comes back, sometimes years later, that I’ve maybe made a difference in someone’s life.
The email has some irony, as my own work with Ubuntu Linux ended not long after having apparently evangelized this student – I gave up on Linux, for the most part, in 2009 – it was too difficult to get Linux to behave in its interactions with typical walled-garden Korean internet, for one thing (e.g. Korea’s ActiveX addiction). But the smart phone / Android world created by Samsung is changing this, finally (and fast). Perhaps if I was using Linux, now, I’d have less frustration.

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Unrelatedly, here is a picture from walking to work yesterday, from near the same spot where I took the [broken link! FIXME] mist/rain picture the other day.