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.

I can tie my shoes, too!

So, I've been on this whole Growing Up™ kick for a while now, but I think I have to admit that no matter how hard we try, there is going to be the occasional slip.  Those little moments when your inner 12 year old comes out.  That happened to me recently when a coworker who is quite a bit my junior decided to explain some things to me.  Things like, the definition of the word "aisle."

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.

Taking tech for granted.

As we grow up, we also grow older, and the strangest thing tends to happen; we begin to take for granted that which we would have seen as miraculous only a short time ago.

When was the last time you complained about your cell phone?  Complained about your DSL connection?  Your laptop?  We take these things for granted every day, but the reality is that they would have seemed fantastic and unimaginable in our childhoods.  For most of us who are 30 and up, it's highly unlikely that you had a computer in your home when you were a small child, but today there are 6 year old kids running around with iPhones.

The first computer we had in my household was purchased at Sears, the day after Thanksgiving in 1986 or '87 when I was 6 or 7 years old.  It came with a 33mhz CPU and my dad paid quite a bit extra to upgrade it to 1MB of RAM, and insisted on a 40MB hard disk drive which the salesmen tried to discourage him from by saying, and I quote, "trust me.  It's not worth the money.  You couldn't fill a 40MB hard drive in a million years."

Today, I carry a cell phone in my pocket that has a processor which cycles 57 times as fast (never mind improvements in efficiency and the fact that it's a quad-core).  It has 2,000 times as much RAM, and more than 400 times as much storage.  Even the screen, which is small enough to fit comfortably in my pocket, has nearly 7 times as many pixels.

Even if we ignore the fact that it's a massively more powerful computer than what was available just a couple decades ago and we ignore the fact that it costs roughly 1/10 of what that old Packard Bell desktop cost my dad, we still have to admit that it puts the original Star Trek communicator to shame.

Voice, text, data and multi-media in something ¼" thick and roughly the outline of a dollar bill. It'll even do GPS navigation, connect to my car stereo, and connect to my car's on-board computer for diagnostics.  It keeps track of how long I've been jogging, and calculates how many calories I've burned.  You can even connect them to some bathroom scales so that it can monitor your weight, body fat, hydration levels, and countless other aspects of your physical health.

It's a communicator AND a tri-corder.

In the 47 years since the debut of Star Trek; secure, pocket-sized and crystal clear 2 way communicators have gone from science fiction to something we complain about if we have to reset them once a week.  Just imagine the technology that our children and grandchildren will take for granted.

It's staggering to imagine that 30 years ago, a portable phone was the size of a briefcase and incredibly rare.  50 years ago it was pure science fiction.

90 years ago, people routinely died from every day bacterial infections that we can now cure with a single shot.

A brief 600 years ago, Johannes Gutenberg was a teenager, and still almost 30 years from inventing the printing press.

Of course, above and beyond all that, the next time you take your high speed internet or your cell phone for granted; before your complain about or malign the marvelous technology that helps our world run so smoothly in this very young millennium; consider this quote by Cory Doctoro, my favorite novelist who has yet to write a great novel:

"Ten thousand years ago, the state-of-the-art was a goat."-