I’ve been adjusting my studies to focus on data. Right now, I’ve working on mastering Power BI, a Microsoft data analytics tool. Yesterday, as I’m finally starting to dive deep, I had a moment of sadness. I remember a role where this tool didn’t exist. I was cleaning up data from a multitude of sources, just me, Excel, and a wee bit of Visual Basic. And I had to tweak the process every month. The powerful tools in Power BI, and Power Query, would’ve been so helpful. I’m looking forward to what I can do with these modern tools.
Author: Carl Setzer
A blogger blogging from just north of Seattle.
Another Course Completed: System Administration and IT Infrstructure Services
I’m making my way through the Google IT Support Professional Certificate. I appreciate the refresher of many of my courses from pursuing my ATA in Web Application and Cloud Development. It may seem counterintuitive that I took two classes in CISCO Networking and one (of two) classes for the A+ certificate. But I saw value in them and did my best to fit them in.
And I’m getting to learn some new stuff, too. For instance, even though I’ve been managing Active Directory, I’ve not had the chance to dive deeply into things like Group Policies. And having an overview of data backups and disaster recovery was very insightful.
So, I have two more courses to go to finish this Certificate. I have a few different directions I can go once I finish this. The most obvious is to leverage my existing work in IT Administration and start exploring network administration. Another option, which builds more on my ATA is data systems (data analytics, database administration, that sort of thing). I do a fair amount of that right now, too. Less so in my work at the Edmonds Waterfront Center, but there’s quite a bit of alignment with what I’m doing at Trinity. I’ve been feeding a lot of ideas, my backgound, etc, into ChatGPT, and it’s recommending the data path. That seems good as I’m seeing things like “The outlook for network administrator jobs is mixed, with the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) projecting a decline in employment by 3% from 2023 to 2033”. And then this “The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) has projected substantial growth for occupations related to data analysis, with some categories seeing increases as high as 23% or more between 2023 and 2033.”
I’m trying to keep moving forward, to keep learning relevant skills. The world is changing so fast, one must work to keep up.
AI Impacts On Admin Work
I’ve heard a LOT about the expected impacts of AI on developers. When I was laid off right at the beginning of the pandemic, I opted to make a career pivot into Web Development, so I’ve paid attention to this trend closely. Add in all the lay-offs within the whole developer community, and this career, so recently highly lucrative, has become rather bleak. So much so that I’ve been looking backwards at returning to admin work (which is one of my two jobs right now). Now I see that admin work will be getting hit pretty hard by AI, too.
Earlier this week, I was on a Google Meet. With that, we used the built-in tool to create meeting notes. And, my God, it worked nicely! I was quite impressed. Now, as a long-time admin, taking and distributing meeting notes has been a significant part of my work. I’m confident that this will be done by AI going forward. And I expect that transition to be pretty quick.
Another key part of being an admin is scheduling travel. I expected AI to be able to coordinate travel pretty well. So, I did an experiment where I gave ChatGPT a very rough itinerary for a multi-stop business trip, asked it to recommend flights and hotels. It did a nice job with a few extra prompts. I had a pretty solid itinerary within 2 minutes. Impressive.
After just these two considerations, I am confident that AI will revolutionize Admin work significantly. With the job outlook for this work bleak (BLS projects a loss of 12,400 admin jobs between 2024 and 2034), and AI eroding the work, I expect it to become harder to find roles. (Yet it’s the main type of work I’m recruiters reach out to me for…go figure). It makes my decision to pivot to web development during the pandemic, and now shifting to data analysis seem that much more prudent.
Anyway, onwards!
Some motivation for those seeking to learn something new
I face this challenge every time I’m learning something new, this sense of awkwardness. It’s hard for me to accept this interim period where I lack expertise. It’s rather insane to expect to start studying something new and instantaneously become an expert. It’s rather cruel, no?
I think its roots lie in insecurity. It seems to me the confident won’t be impacted at all. Therefore, I’m working at keeping this at bay and, eventually, purging this tendency from my habits.
How about you? Are you one of those folks who stare blankly at anyone who fights imposter syndrome or its variants? I’ve long wondered what that feels like. Let me know, if you know, you know?
The Power Of Belief
A few days ago, I blogged about overthinking and launched into some thoughts on project management. Well, this quote came into my feed today, and I think it’s a good continuation of the theme (and it’s clearly from the same creator).
Something I’ve long believed: there’s great power in controlling your thoughts, in being conscious about what you put into your mind. My first awareness of this was simply thinking about how the music and lyrics I consumed played out in my attitude. But it’s slowly evolved into what Henry Ford said, “whether you think you can, or you think you can’t, you’re right”.
Letting your mind second-guess your hopes and dreams, your goals and ambitions, will drag you towards failure. By keeping a positive attitude, searching for possibilities, and moving towards them is much harder if you continuously undermine that.
I have decades of training on finding the negative, on looking for reasons for my efforts to fail. I keep seeking ways to keep that at bay. One key way: feed my mind quotes like this one, which reinforce the value of positivity. Another is to deliberately avoid doom-scrolling and seek out its opposite, what I call hope-scrolling. All ways to help my goals become real. What are you doing to ensure you don’t stand in the way of your own hopes and dreams?
A Quote About Overthinking That I Need To Heed
I came across this quote on Pinterest. I’ve heard various variations on it, and each time it strikes hard. Mea culpa: I’m a chronic overthinker. I will hyperanalyze things, obsess about finding and mitigating every risk, and my mind will get overwhelmed with catastrophizing.
I’ve been working on mitigating this tendency for years and have met with quite a bit of success. However, it’s deeply ingrained, and I need to always stay vigilant. An additional challenge is that, as an analyst and project coordinator/manager, this behavior is a strength. Reminds me of the words of a mentor of mine: every weakness is a strength exaggerated.
Something my formal studies of project management have helped me with is understanding not just the nature of risk, but the importance of managing it well. I’m good at seeing every risk that I face. What I’ve long struggled with is evaluating them and understanding the possible impacts and how to manage them. Not every risk can be eliminated! Actually, very few can. So many are completely outside our ability to even influence. So, it’s critical to note not just that a risk exists, but how likely is it to happen, and what are the possible impacts of it happening. Then it’s relatively easy to manage. If the probability is low, and the impact low, well, let it be and monitor things. If probability is low, and impact high, you have options to explore. Same for the reverse: probability high with a low impact. Once these are mapped out (and, heck, put them into a risk assessment grid), you can evaluate how to manage them. I never thought of my project management studies (in the pursuit of my ATA and while studying for the Google PM Certificate) as therapy, but here we are.
So, I’m working on managing my overthinking by utilizing the tools I have available. I’ve found this pretty successful, but it’s challenged by the fact that I’ve been rewarded for diving deep into risks. Keeping the rabbit hole of calamity under control takes work, though.
Thanks for reading! Let me know if you have the same issue, or are you someone brimming with confidence? That’s a viewpoint I struggle to comprehend.
Hand-written notes…by robotic hands
On my friend Bill’s most recent blog post, one of the comments made me think. In particular, the notion of handwritten notes being the antithesis of digital. When I first read it, I was reminded of plotters. So, I jumped headfirst into this rabbit hole. That’s how I came across this project:
I found this whole thing fascinating. However, I’m left to wonder where the lines are between what’s truly, exclusively human, and the robot. What do you think of this?
Anyway, this looks like a fun project. Maybe someday I’ll have time enough to explore it in more depth than just watching the video.
Another Certificate Earned: Agile Project Management
I’ve been busy the past few weeks. Today I completed the second-to-last course for the Google Project Management certificate: Agile Project Management. The purpose of this series is to help tie together my years of admin work with my passion for technology. I now just need to finish my capstone project. After that, I will work on the Power BI Certificate.
I’m currently seeking to leverage the disparate parts of my career (the years of admin work, studies of web development, data systems, databases, SQL, my weird love of Excel, and my project management work into a hybrid role that leverages my strengths in organization, communication, and data analysis to facilitate seamless technical operations and enhance digital strategies.
Using Google’s Gemini, I am building plans for this work. I have a solid short-term plan in place, and am working on the medium and long-term parts. I’m pretty pleased with what’s been pulled together. I find it a nice use of AI. It can aggregate and summarize research that would take me hours (at best) or days to do.
I’ve also done some re-design on my website as part of the plan. It’s a key part of my communications and marketing. (Side note: I’m not sure I like this new theme, but I’ll give it a bit and see if it grows on me). I have a fair amount of work to do, so I’ll be tackling this in waves.
Thanks for reading all the way through. I have more to talk about with this journey, so subscribe to stay in touch. Most importantly, I appreciate each and every one of you!
An example of my advice to NOT depend on a single social media platform
A webcomic I follow recently ran afoul of Instagram’s TOS. Their 100k+ followers evaporated instantly. They appealed, Meta denied the appeal. So, their option is to rebuild or quit. Now, one way to rebuild is to launch under a slightly different handle, but really, the damage is done. Regaining that many followers will be hard. They are now launching a website to rebuild their connections.
Now, for years I’ve advised folks who do business online to NOT depend on a single platform, not Meta, not YouTube, not Twitch…no, not any of them. The main thing is that you are dependent on whatever decisions they opt to make. We, as customers, have no real influence over the business. Perhaps, if we have enough followers, we can force an action (ie: Linus Tech Tips and YouTube). But keep in mind that Linus has other channels to engage and enrage his followers.
So, the main gist of my recommended social strategy is to drive people to your website. Have them subscribe to the site or an email list. Then you are decently insulated from any capricious decisions by those companies.
I can hear some of my good friends saying “the 90s called and they want their technology back”. Or, even better, “yo, web dev, not everything is solved with a website”. However, I stand by my strategy and, as time goes by, I recommend it even more boldly.
Check out more of what I have to say about Social Media here. And if you like what I have to say, please consider liking and subscribing.
I’m annoyed with Windows Phone Link
Ok, on the whole, I like Phone Link. Being able to send texts from my computer, with my keyboard, is something I deeply appreciate. I used to use a tool called MightyText, but then Microsoft launched Phone Link, and it’s hard to beat free. But Phone Link has a glaring weakness, one that’s been getting on my nerves the past few weeks.
Somehow, I got on the Republicans’ spam list. I assume one of their tactics is to annoy folks like me. Which, I guess, means they’re successful. I’m annoyed. They’re averaging about 10-15 texts per day! Now, my phone’s spam filters are working pretty darn well, and somewhere around 90% of spam messages are caught. On My Phone! For some daft reason, Microsoft opted for ALL messages on the phone to be synced. Why did they think that syncing spam messages was a good idea? Ugh!
Rubbing salt in the wound, as I was researching if there was any way to fix this (some setting I’d missed, perhaps?), I found several complaints about this issue…going back to 2023! So, it’s been a known issue, but not a priority to fix? Sigh…
Google opted to win this battle. I discovered that Google has their own app, Google Messages for Web. Google was able to build their app so that spam caught by their filters stays filtered. Huzzah! So, this pleases me greatly. Now if Google’s app let me delete these messages from the computer, it would be perfect. Oh well…
I’m lobbying for spammers to be deported. Not likely, in this case. But one can hope.