Hi ya'll and Greetings from Fabulous Las Vegas! I'm William. It's 05 January 2026, my first day in the group. TL;DR WARNING -- My therapist says I'm a storyteller, and he's not wrong. I'll try to keep it short, but this introduction will probably be rather lengthy. I became interested in music at a young age. My mom and grandmother had organs in the house. My mom taught me the notes on the keyboard and how to read music. I didn't take formal lessons, nor did I play regularly, but I did practice occasionally. When I was in 4th grade, my teacher was offering guitar lessons. I very much wanted to take them, but didn't. My parents told me recently that they never knew about my desire to take guitar lessons -- that I never asked them -- whereas I'm pretty sure I did, and they said no. If the latter is true, I don't know whether it was because of the cost or because they didn't want me to give up baseball, which would never have happened. I live and breathe baseball to this day, even though my baseball career ended when I finished my 12-year-old season of Little League. Anyhow, my early home-schooled music education became useful when I started middle school, joining band and playing trumpet/cornet. Between 7th and 8th grade, I attended summer school. One of the two classes I took was band, but since it was summer school, I wanted to learn to play drums and other percussion instruments. That didn't last long. My teacher switched me back to trumpet and had me play a solo during the summer concert. I continued with band in high school. I didn't get selected for marching band as a freshman, but instead of playing trumpet, my teacher, the same one from middle school, had me play French horn, presumably because there was only one French horn player. I actually preferred the French horn over the trumpet, but in 10th grade, I ended up switching back to the trumpet for marching band, performing halftime shows at football games, and various parades. I quit band after the first semester in favor of taking the first-ever computer class at my high school. That was probably the best decision I made in high school (I've tested software for 23 years and counting).