There is no doubt in my mind that through the past decade plus, I have had the single most fun in my life while dealing with the most problematic people ever. These classes I’m taking at the University to pursue a Degree in Network Administration have been completely awesome! I’m having so much fun in them learning things in black and white, published material that I have been questioned on and myself with everyone else that has been along for the projects we have done in the “garage”. The only regret I have is that I didn’t start this when I had a Y2K party where we watched a PC count down to its death as the clock ran out and the system shutdown. We all cheered, raised out drinks up, cranked up the music as we already knew that important systems across the country relating to the electrical grid and utilities had been patched with updated calendars.
After, I joined the USAF instead of pursuing a career in computers, but that taught me more about life and myself than anything else would. Personally, I think it is pretty cool that I can work on fighter, cargo, reconnaissance aircraft, really anything Aerospace, Graphic arts (previous work before the Air Force), and now Information Technology. My intention is not to brag but I am very happy and impressed that all this information is squeezing into my brain. The experiences and memories of people I’ve worked with and run into are paramount to my motivation and enthusiasm to keep learning and who knows, have the greatest LAN in the world while creating some new technology that blows everyone away!
Learning about CPU’s, Memory, Motherboards, Ethernet Cables, Power Supplies, it all brings up a lot of our custom builds we would spend months designing, prepping, building and submitting for judging. So many hours of frustration of being told by Engineers and Top Industry leaders like Lee Harrington of the Nvidia Garage that I just didn’t know enough but I was getting there. (Btw Lee, if you ever read this, I told you at LANFest your GPU was dead right off the bat because it didn’t transition from basic VGA mode to Hyper Over-Clock Kingpin Nuclear GPU mode at the Windows load screen. That is okay though, you’re still awesome!)
Not one person can possibly know it all, and it is a huge turn off when IT people ask a few questions to determine who is superior. We all have to help each other in this industry, we all have to fill in each others blanks and help each other to keep learning. That is the only way we can be the best!