First of all, thanks for being here! I hope that documenting my adventures in the world of I.T., and Cloud Computing specifically, will help others on their own path. So, who am I, and why should you care what I have done in I.T. so far? Let's dig in to those answers and more.
As you may have guessed from the website address, my name is Charles. Why should you bother with my story? Well, I'm hoping that if you're looking to break into I.T., some of my experiences may provide a helpful guide for you. If you're already a seasoned IT veteran, maybe some of the cool (to me, at least) pieces of technology that I run across on my learning journey will spark your interest, too. So, where do we start? Let's go with what I was doing before I decided to change careers.
I am definitely not someone who knew from a young age that they would work in this field. In fact, I always thought that I would be a police officer. As an older student I graduated college three times, two of which were Law and Justice programs. Educational credentials in hand, I landed an interesting job that was the perfect launch pad for a law enforcement career. To my surprise, somewhere along the way I lost my desire to work in that field. The loss of interest was so slow and gradual that I never even realized it was happening until it was far too late. There I was, three years spent as a full-time student and another five years spent working the best job to prepare me for a career in policing, and it was over. Fun fact: I was able to use two (!!!!) of my college classes as transfer credit years later. For those of you keeping score at home, that's eight years spent to earn two college classes worth of credit towards my eventual I.T. career goals.
At this point, things were definitely uncertain. What do I do now? I decided to consult the internet, of course. After searching for promising careers in at least one hundred different ways, and poring over hundreds of Reddit threads, an idea began to take shape. I could see what the IT hype was about, risk-free, just by watching some YouTube videos about something called "A+"? Alright, deal. So, in the summer of 2021, I set my kids' tablet on the kitchen counter and fired up video #1 in a CompTIA A+ Core 1 playlist. It was horrible.
Thankfully, I decided to give I.T. a second chance to make a good first impression...