Less so than you might think. I met my share of characters, sure, but most of the time when I wasn't synthing I was either driving through the middle of nowhere or waiting around. I read a lot of books in a lot of motel rooms and taught myself Attic Greek and programming to pass the time. My first language was Perl via the o'reily book and I used to write out the solution code on a legal pad.
It was after I made the amount of money I wanted that things got weird haha
