I did similar. I asked for double my previous salary, figuring that's absurd. They told me that's too low for the position, so they gave me 5 grand more than what I asked for. Clearly I could have gotten substantially more.
But the way I look at it is I got a very high salary that I wasn't expecting, and the company feels like they got a deal. Win - win situation, right?
A friend in high school helped me install a counter strike server on linux on an old desktop. From there, I experimented with hosting some forums and an upload script to save files remotely. In the days way before the cloud was a thing. That got me interested enough to start figuring things out and get into it.
Thanks, I didn't need to sleep tonight. [shudders]
I've been using them for a few years now. Always good and reliable. My wife and I both have accounts on a custom domain from them.
This American Life
Radiolab
Decoding the Unknown
The Running Channel
Every so often Planet Money
I used to listen to Reply All until their whole thing and they shut down.