In a Nutshell (part one)

I imagine I have written enough "opening" rambles, so thought I should cover some information about myself, where I came from and where I see myself going. I was born on August 23, 1972 in New London, Connecticut. Maybe a little too much "where I came from," alright, we'll skip ahead. I began my professional computer career in the fall of 1989. PCs were still "IBM clones," DOS was the platform and you still had to low level format a hard drive for the controller it was connected to (mostly MFM with a few RLL thrown in). Ahhh, the good ole days of writing batch file startup menus for the computers.

I learned a lot apprenticing at that first job: monitor repair, printers, operating systems 101, networking and even managed to install an AS400. We had a joking statement for working on monitors and the need to discharge the caps,

"You know it’s not the voltage that kills you..."

<pause and wait for the people "in the know" to say something about it being the current>

"It’s your neck snapping when you hit the wall behind you."

A bit morbid, but if you have ever been hit with a discharging capacitor while sitting at a workbench, you know there is some truth to it.

Good times were had for several years, but as with all things they had to come to an end, for it was time for me to move on and learn more in pursuit of my dream of robotics. And so I enlisted in the US Navy as a Nuclear Electronics Technician. I learned everything you never wanted to know about electronics in a quick six months. Rumor had it that the course was basically a two year MIT electronics program crammed into six months. Considering the flunk out rate and long hours nearly everyone put in, I would not be surprised were it true. It was also one of the only times in my educational career that I can remember being even remotely challenged, something I greatly enjoyed.

Fast forwarding again, when I left the Navy I once again embraced the computer field, just in time for AT&T GIS to begin their Windows 95 roll out, which I was lucky enough to be a part of. (Side note: if you do the math at this point you might notice that I did not stay in the Navy for the six years normally required for a Nuke, which was mostly because I was no longer a nuke.) From there I went on to a variety of differing companies learning all that I could from each; playing with different applications, differing hardware, a variety of OSes and networks.

At some point I started collecting certifications. Not for any real purpose, just mostly in competition with friends and coworkers. I had possessed a few at the beginning of my career, but they were required per the company I was employed with. These new ones were more of a fun thing. Unfortunately, and there always seems to be an unfortunately, having too many certifications can sometimes wind up being a bad thing. Had it not happened to me directly I would have never believed there was such a thing as being over qualified; that was a myth after all. Of course until Bank of America I would have never believed in such a thing as being "too ambitious," but that is a story I will likely not bother to share.

Specialization became a huge thing for a lot of companies, which likely was part of the whole over qualified thing, but it left me at a crossroad in my career. Play dumb, which I just can not bring myself to do, specialize in a certain field, which feels like playing dumb with a different label, or find another option. I suppose I could have played ball and labeled myself as an Exchange Expert, or a SQL Expert, or Oracle, or any number of other things that people were looking for. I knew the information after all, but it would be wasting knowledge. So I found something else.