I booked a room on booking.com a few weeks ago. There was an accident and I booked a smoking room---technically my fault. But since booking.com is just yet another internet middleman, their response is "you should have looked closer" and the hotel, which didn't have any non-smoking rooms that night, let me know there's no refunds for same-day online booking and told me to get bent (after hours on the phone trying to talk to people). I did not stay in the room, but they already had my money and I'll never see it again...
I really dislike how companies like booking.com (and others) plus physical merchants enable "gotcha capitalism" like this, where each party points at the other and they both keep my money.
Your perspective and feelings are hugely influenced by the environment you are in. Anyone who has ever worked a horrible job or went to grad school can tell you that. In your case it seems that your parents are---consciously or not---really holding you back. If they are questioning your life choices every day, and if the topic of how you are going to make money is something that is continually discussed, then it's no wonder you feel the way you do! My advice is to get out of your house at any cost. Move to a different city, get a job you're not too happy with, it doesn't really matter, but get to a place where you're not being questioned and second-guessed every single day! Seriously, it will make a world of difference to get out of the environment you are in.
There is also the HTK toolkit, but last I used that, years ago, I was pretty disappointed; it did not compile on a 64-bit system. Both of these are single-machine toolkits, so there is a limit to how much you can scale, but I think you may be able to deal with a million or so points with mlpack. There's also MATLAB's implementation, but that is not very fast.
Personally I had no idea such experiences were possible until taking a trip like this was suggested by a friend (who is the owner of the Model A). The people we talk to (or more accurately the people who talk to us) are from a different time, and remember when travel was very different. We've heard a lot of fascinating stories.
For me it is very enlightening to realize that the technology sphere in which I live is actually only a very small part of the world!
My friends and I actually road trip like this! We drive a 1930 Model A from town to town, and because of its maximum speed (about 50-60mph), we can't take interstates or main roads. Well, we could, but it's better to avoid it.
This means that when we say something like "let's go from Panama City to Charlotte", we must plan the entire route beforehand, much in the style of these books. And it's definitely necessary to have a navigator to point out the turns correctly; it is still difficult to navigate on, e.g., tiny backwoods Alabama roads. The directions end up being quite long; when I saw that there were only 40 directions from Fort Morgan to Denver, I thought that was fewer than what we usually get in our ~140 mile days!
What makes these trips really interesting is that we have to go through towns that are not served by the interstate system (and in some cases do not even have U.S. routes going through them). This, combined with the fact that we often come to a stop to fix something, means that we meet a lot of interesting people and discover interesting parts of the country that none of us knew existed.
We also stop at old bridges and take pictures in front of them:
Anyway I know this comment is quite long at this point, but, I highly recommend road-tripping like this to anyone and everyone! I have learned more about the rural Southeast in three weeks of roadtripping like this than in ten years of living here.
I really dislike how companies like booking.com (and others) plus physical merchants enable "gotcha capitalism" like this, where each party points at the other and they both keep my money.
booking.com: 'talk to the hotel for a refund'
hotel: 'talk to booking.com for a refund'