you're not nuts :) I studied Civil Engineering at university, and then faffed around for the next 10 years because I didn't know what I wanted to do. I discovered my passion for programming at the age of 32 through the initial Ruby on Rails podcast. Unfortunately I couldn't program at all at the time, had never knowingly used unix and so spent the next 2 years teaching myself most evenings after putting the kids to bed.
The key thing for me actually landing a job was through meeting up with a local programmer. I'd discovered his blog, realised he was local and arranged to meet up with him for a beer. He told me that there was a Ruby User Group in town and so I plucked up the courage and went to the next meeting - it was great! At the third or fourth meeting heard through a fellow attendee that the company he worked at was looking for rails programmers. Two interviews later and I was employed.
I'm not a world class programmer. But I consider myself very fortunate to have discovered my passion at what seemed to me at the time so late in life. Many people never do.
And getting a paycheck as a result of that passion is better than a kick in the teeth ;)
Let's say you own a motorhome/caravan and it's kept on your drive. To determine whether you are away on holiday or not, all I need to do is drive by your house and compare what I see with what Street View shows.
I can take a 2hr drive through suburbia and draw up a nice list of homes whose residents are unlikely to be in when I come by again in the evening.
