Spawn of blogger

The best piece of news I've had all year, is also one that I haven't shared here on my blog. Despite the wonders of our beloved pseudonymous internet, there's some things you don't want to share online until your friends and family know about it.

One of those is when your wife is pregnant.

A week of successes

Welcome, friends and neighbors, to the Correct Direction™.

I mentioned last week that I was on my way to take my CompTIA 220-802 exam, which was the second and final exam required for my CompTIA A+ certification.  First, I'm happy to report to anyone who doesn't know, that I passed with a score of 95.5%, and I am now a CompTIA A+ Certified Professional.

By itself, the CompTIA A+ certification is not terribly useful.  Well, it's useful, but it's not a free ride.  It shows perspective employers that I have a basic level of competence, which will help to get my foot in the door, but that's about it.  Most will still expect some verifiable experience. For now, I plan on enjoying the holidays, and digging into our next big goal, which is getting out of this apartment. (more on that in a minute) I'll also be taking a look at the CompTIA Network+ certification, but that one may be a more realistic goal with a bit more working experience.

In any event, come first of the year, I plan on making the rounds to local churches and other non-profits that may not have a lot of budget for IT support, and offering up my services free of charge, asking that they provide a letter of reference if they felt I was helpful and deserving of their recommendation. It's a nice way to get something that looks like experience, while also helping the community.  That's two very good things.

Now, I mentioned that our next goal was getting out of this apartment.  My wife and I have been saving, and have just about enough saved up for a down payment.  Not a 20% down, no PMI, 'ideal' down payment, but at least enough to get into a starter house.  As a matter of fact, I spent some time talking to a mortgage broker today, so with any luck, we'll be in our first home within just a couple of months.  The scary part is the mind bending number of options.  There's FHA, conventional, USDA (if we want to move out of town), we can use the small amount we have for a down payment or we can pull out some 401k money (I know, Dave Ramsey would throttle me for considering it) and give us a much larger down payment, which means a better loan and lower monthly payment, but the risk of terrible tax penalties.

None the less, I now have a widely respected entry level IT certification, our finances are well under control, and we're rapidly approaching home-ownership.  I've even trimmed off a few strips of bacon this week. That's all kinds of win.

Sadly, buying our own home will mean saying goodbye to some things.  I'd like you to join me, as you read this week's blog post, in a moment of silence for all the things we'll be missing once we've moved to a house of our own, such as:

• Neighbors smoking pot under our balcony
• Neighbors playing their music at 1:00am, so loud that it shakes the floor of our apartment
• Neighbors having screaming matches when they walk in on their cheating girlfriend with another guy. (admittedly, that one really was kind of entertaining)
• Neighbors walking out into the parking lot wearing boxer shorts and carrying a shotgun to menace other neighbors who won't stop their screaming match in the parking lot at 2:00am
• Neighbors getting into a 'who can bang on the walls harder' match with each other because I walked too quickly and they were able to hear the footsteps
• Neighbors underneath us
• Neighbors we share walls with
• A prime view of the busiest and loudest street in town

*begin moment of silence*

*pick nose*

*inspect findings*

*end moment of silence*

Yeah...  ...that's long enough.

As I look at that list, I can't help noticing a pattern to the things I hate about this place.  Sometimes, a USDA loan on a house in the country suddenly starts looking like a better option.

Customer Service training, and other useless things.

*Small apologies on this post.  I could have sworn I hit publish before I logged out yesterday.  Looks like I was mistaken.

Before I dive into this week's entry, allow me to bring everybody more or less back up to speed.  First and foremost, for anyone who doesn't already know, I passed my CompTIA 220-801 with flying colors on my first attempt, and I'm currently studying for the 220-802, which I plan to take within the next couple of weeks.  Once that's complete, I will have completed the CompTIA A+ certification, and will be one step closer to a meaningful career.

Between the test, an early Thanksgiving with the in-laws, studying, and some other really good stuff on the home front, I've missed a few blog entries, but I should be back on track for a little while now.  I've got enough material to last for several more weeks, and by then I should be done with phase one (doesn't it sound more exciting when I say "phase one" than just "step one?") and have an awful lot of other things to talk about as well.

In the meantime, I thought I'd take a break from my regularly scheduled studies to talk about Customer Service, and Customer Service Training.  I know that seems like a boring topic, and it is, but I promise to make it fun.  Well, that was a bald faced lie*, but I do promise to make it more fun than the last customer service training video I had to watch.

Things you can buy for $183.

I spent some time this evening taking practice tests for my first A+ certification exam, and I think it's time to schedule the first of two exams.  The exam vouchers run $183, and like most things in life, there's no guarantee.  I'm feeling pretty confident, but there's always the possibility that I've miss-judged, in which case I'm out $183.

In honor of the $183 I'll be parting with soon, I thought today would be a great day to look at a few of the other things a guy could get for $183.

(Side note to all friends and family members: This is not a birthday/Christmas list)

• A new video card.
• A box of 10 Don Carlos Robusto cigars
• 75 cups of espresso
• Dinner for 25 at Burger King
• An iPod nano, and still have $33 left to try and replace my soul
• Another tattoo, but not much left over to tip the artist
• The world's worst toupee
• Two $50 lap dances, plus $83 for pillows and blankets to make the couch I'd be sleeping on into a tollerably comfortable bed
• A short lived and pointless shopping spree to thinkgeek, Sharper Image, Brookstone, or Hammacher Schlemmer
• Dinner for 10 at a decent Chinese restaurant including a good tip
• 10-20 Sea-Monkey kits; also known as "enough brine shrimp muscle to take over the world"
• Of course, if I wanted to take over the world, why go with Sea-Monkeys when you can buy Uranium on Amazon?
• Speaking of Amazon, I could pick up a couple of these bad boys and never have to worry about a Cartman-style probe again.  One for home, one for the car, and I'd always know when one of those sneaky aliens was near by
• A speeding ticket
• Dinner for 3 at the most expensive restaurant I've ever eaten at
• I could walk past my wife's car.  Seriously folks, just walking past it.  That car either loves me and wants me to be close to it all the time, or it hates me and wants to watch me suffer up close. There is no third option here

There you have it folks, exam 1 of 2 for the Comptia A+ certification, or enough brine shrimp and uranium to create my own radioactive mutant brine shrimp army.

Forget about certifications, Pinky.  Tonight, we try to take over the world!

Dissatisfaction is not an excuse.

I mentioned last week that I had experienced some of the worst customer service I have ever encounter at the Service Center at Capitol Toyota in Salem, Oregon.  As promised, I'll tell you a little more about that this week, and share some of my thoughts on the importance of maintaining a strong work ethic.

Butt-Wings

No, you didn't misread the title.  Don't worry, I'll explain.

Real life gets in the way sometimes.

Over the years, I've developed a few phrases and quirks.  Things that I'll say, for lack of a better term, as catch phrases.  It's cheesy, I know, but it's not something I've ever done deliberately.  They just pop into my head, and then pop out of my mouth.  Think of it as cliché turrettes.  Some of them I've ripped off from books or movies, some I came up with on my own, and quite a few others, I couldn't honestly tell you where, when, or how they came about.

Shopping for things no man wants to buy.

There are many things in life that are unavoidable.  Death, taxes, and if you're a married man, buying feminine hygiene products.  That's right guys; sooner or later you're going to be sent to the store to buy pads.

Bad habbits

I started smoking cigars when I was 15 years old.

Mostly macanudos, but the occasional natural as well.  When I was 19 or so, I also started smoking pipe tobacco (apparently, at 5'5" and overweight I didn't look enough like a hobbit)  The funny part was that the first time I was ever carded I was 23 years old....

It's time to study.

The day after my wife and I got home from our anniversary, my study materials for the Comptia A+ certification exam were delivered by FedEx. (hence the lack of make-up post) They actually tried to deliver them the day we arrived, but as usual, they tried to deliver when nobody was home so I just got a 'sorry we missed you' slip.  I'll skip that particular rant for now...

In any case, I've spent much of my free time since then studying for the Comptia A+, and I've come to a number of conclusions.

50 Shades of Gr... WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE?!

As an update to my process of getting my career back on track, I've ordered study and practice test materials for the Comptia A+ certification, which I believe to be a reasonable way to begin making my way into the IT industry.  However, since there's little for me to do in that regard for the next couple of days (other than stalking the mail man) I have some thoughts of a more literary and entertaining nature to share.

Just say no.

It's not just a drug awareness slogan, it's a sign of maturity.

Unfortunately, it's one my wife and I are having to practice a lot right now.

Yes, it is your fault.

I used to have a roommate who had just split with the woman he'd been shacking up with. (there's that term again)  At the time, I was just starting to pull myself up out of divorce.  

As you can imagine, we weren't exactly the dynamic duo.  The only time the townhouse got cleaned properly was when one of us had a date; and to be perfectly honest, that didn't happen much.

Gossip pants.

Sometimes it seems that work, family, hobbies, and maintaining your health are just not enough to keep a person busy.  We look around at our spotless home, our finished work, our already fully assembled scale model of the Death Star and think to ourselves, "Wow, if only I had something else to occupy my time and energy, because this certainly isn't enough to keep me busy."

The solution is a simple one:

Gossip™

Get your butt to work.

People need to get their butts to work.

I'm not talking about job hunting here, although that's a great topic.  What I'm talking about is something a lot more basic.

When you have a job, go to your job.  Go there every day.  Go there on time or early.  Actually work while you're there.  You'd think that such a statement would be obvious; but you'd be wrong.

How to get better mileage and more performance.

A strange thing started happening on my commute to work this week.

Without so much as lifting the hood, my little red corolla was suddenly getting better gas mileage.  It even seemed to have better performance.  I was passing Porches and careening past Cadillacs.

The secret is actually pretty simple.

I wasn't towing a car loan anymore.

Talking to Professionals

When I first decided I wanted to move to an IT career, one of the things I did was to talk to IT professionals that I know in my area about my ideas, and whether or not I was heading in the right direction.  I think this is a great way to go, and can really help you to figure out the most reasonable path to reaching your career goals.

Pretty quickly, I figured out that around here, lot's of experience working around/with/on computers in non-IT jobs, combined with a few useful certifications, was a reasonable place to start.  It won't get you into a network engineer or IT manager position, but it will get your foot in the door with an entry level position.

I think that regardless of what you're trying to accomplish in your life, talking to people who are farther down the road than you can be helpful.

Make a plan, and make it loose.

Dwight D. Eisenhower once said, "In preparing for battle i have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable."


I've mentioned plans quite a bit lately.  My own plans, what makes a reasonable plan, and so on.  Today, I'd like to dig a little deeper into that subject.