One thing a lot of folks know: I also run and manage sound systems. I started doing this in high school and have been doing sound tech work ever since. Currently, I am the main focus for sound at the event center I work for.
Yesterday I was called by them while at my other job because our Bluetooth transceiver wasn’t working. Long story short, they opted to not bring me in right away, but I needed to tackle this immediately when I got there (which I had planned for early afternoon).
Once I got there, it took me a couple minutes to figure out that someone had pulled the cables out. Argh! Now, in the grand scheme, minor problem. But I struggle with understanding any “why” for this besides simply being a jerk.
Frustrating for my poor morning users who, though they don’t depend on it, do like to use Bluetooth to play music. I do have regular users who do depend on that, though. Playing music from a modern phone via an aux port isn’t so easy anymore.
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.
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!
This one was sent to me today. Now, back in the day I used Dashlane, but I deleted that account years ago. That was my first clue that this was a scam. Now, let’s explore this further.
This one has a few other easy ways to see that it’s a scam. The first is the email address it was sent from. Notice, the sender is NOT Dashlane.
The second comes when you hover over the action button:
Again, nothing to do with Dashlane.
There’s no way to know if the scammers “know” I had a Dashlane account due a data breach which has been dumped on the dark web, or is just a random guess. They usually send these sorts of messages out by the thousands: a purely numbers game. But it doesn’t matter. The investment from the criminal is minimal, so they only need a few clicks to make this payoff.
TLDR: This manager was forced to let the best sysadmin he’d ever worked with go (ah, economics!). So, he posted this post to Reddit, and got amazing results.
The community rose up and have kinda crowdsourced said admin a new job. This is so cool to see! This is the kind of person I strive to be, so it’s particularly nice to see that valued and rewarded.
I’ve long loved the webcomic xkcd. This one drifted through my inbox and thought it worthy of all the sysadmins I know.
As far as my own sysadmin skills, I do hate running cables and (shudder) crimping connectors. As I only have one thumb, these evolutions are rather uncomfortable, and sometimes painful.
Anyway, sysadmin types out there, you have my respect and admiration! Keep that uptime high!
I’m a bit behind on my 2025 planning. This “bug” I’ve been fighting has sapped away SO much energy. As I’m FINALLY feeling my energy return (at least more of it) this week, I’m starting to map out what my career direction and focus looks like in 2025 and forward.
Quick summary: I spent the pandemic working on a degree in Information Systems with its main focus on Web Development. In a weird twist of fate, I finished it right as the tech sector meltdown was hitting hardest. Competing with 500k+ tech workers has made the transition challenging. But I did land an IT role. Currently, I work 1/2 time as an IT/Systems Analyst for the Edmonds Waterfront Center, and 1/2 as a “tech savvy” Administrative Assistant. I feel like I’m straddling both my past and my future. My vision of my future, though, is to move full-time into IT/Information Systems. And that’s the plan I’m building.
However, that’s not a narrow enough focus. Within this umbrella is a huge array of roles. Network administrator, help desk analyst, web developer, systems analyst, information security, and data analyst….and there’s plenty more! First world problems, a plethora of riches….you know.
Anyway, focus, right?
After looking over my notes, exploring all the projects I’ve worked on the past few years, reviewed the classes I’ve taken, exploring what I’ve found the most fulfilling, most valuable, and even what I thought was the most fun, I have pretty much narrowed things down to what I’ll call “data systems”.
I’ve worked with data in many settings, and have spend many hours with Excel. And I like this stuff! While studying for my ATA, I got to work with a LOT of database systems and tools. Besides extensive projects in Access, I got to do a lot of work with SQL. Not just MySQL, but also SQL Server, and even a few variants of Oracle. I find this stuff endlessly fascinating. And I see that “data” is a huge growth area in our economy. Between data analytics, data security, data warehouses, and data lakes, there’s a huge need for people who both understand these systems and structures, but also, well, enjoy it! My experience with data is pretty extensive as well. From budget tracking for my teams at both Starbucks and Microsoft, creating dashboards for real estate teams, and tracking projects and feasibility for construction companies, I’ve done a lot.
Looking towards the future, I want to dive deeper into key skills. First, Data Visualization. I have studied design and worked extensively with PowerPoint. Power BI and Tableau are a logical next step. Thus, I’ve started the Microsoft Power BI Data Analyst course on Coursera. I also want to build my skills in Python/R and Statistics. Perhaps via the IBM Data Analyst Cert or Google’s Data Analytics Cert. I’ll evaluate that as I move forward.
I recognize the place of privilege I’m in, where I have all these options that I struggle to choose amongst. For that, I’m grateful.
So, I know some of you have experience in this area. I’d love your thoughts on my framework/vision (I’m still turning it into a plan). And if you have any advice, I’d deeply appreciate your thoughts.
Today I finished Google’s Operating Systems and You: Becoming a Power User certificate. I have two more to complete in order to finish the Google IT Support course. Initially, it was nice to refresh on a lot of the material that I studied completing my Associates in Information Systems. We’re pushing through that now, which is pretty cool. In particular, diving deeper into Linux is something I’ve really wanted to do. This wasn’t terribly deep, but I enjoyed the Linux focused labs, which took me a bit.
I’m still exploring what I want to do after this cert. There are so many options within the world of tech. I could dive deeper into systems administration, or I could move into data analysis. I really enjoyed my studies into data systems and structures. And I enjoy my current IT role.
I didn’t post yesterday, so I’ll post about the project I did yesterday and the one I did today. Yesterday, the project was for an Animated Countdown timer. Using CSS and JavaScript to create this animation was pretty cool. My consternation came from a bunch of mistyped elements in my code. Finding those little glitches (like typing “igm” vs “img”) gets wearying after awhile.
Today’s project was an Image Carousel. I only made one code error, but it was a sneaky one. The images would not sit well in their frame. Turns out, I tried to set the size to 500px, but I had a stray “1” in there (1500px…opps). Once I found that, viola!
These are rather small projects, where I’m mostly trying to refresh my understanding of HTML, CSS and JavaScript. I want to be far better than I am, even if I don’t end up becoming a coder. I really enjoy this and want to grow.
I also am working on Google’s IT Support Professional and Project Management certificates. Both of these are valuable skills, and useful things to understand regardless of role in IT.
