Fuel to the fire...
I was recently browsing (2 weeks..ish ago) the https://developers.google.com/ website and found a open source project produced and maintained by the google DEV team. Being ever curious and always attempting to further my knowledge in the realm of "the internets" I had to check out this project more in depth. The project was an open test environment written in python and set aside and has been dubbed "the original source code for asp.net" and page crawler systems that google used when it was first created so many years ago..
anyways, long story short I messed around in the test environment for a ridiculous amount of time, On my phone - On my laptop, at work, at home, middle of the night, etc... I found an apparently "not so obvious" flaw in the source and corrected it.. Having submitted my work I didn't expect much of it..
BUT.. Myself among 50+ Web developers and math based security professionals were contacted and invited out to google HQ in mountain view, CA.
Since I am by no means a programming genius, nor do I claim to be - This was a big shock for me. Being roughly 90% self taught I feel like this is an awesome accomplishment and I share this information not to brag but to update you guys on whats going on with me.