Learning is great. Challenging myself to pick up new skills each day now. There are so many I’d like to acquire and master. A greater amount of time to devote to it is fast approaching giving me a new level of excitement about the future.
The tools we have to learn with and the resources seem boundless. When I was growing up everything was trial and error with at best poorly written instructions or bad diagrams on paper. No YouTube videos. No dozens of reviews, phone numbers, or manuals to refer to. YOU figured it out. You cussed a lot, you left many layers of skin on various toys, bikes, furniture, yard equipment, and mysterious blood stains around the house.
Oh, and the cars, a whole other level of learning and pain. Anyone without money learns to work on a car. And when you get some money all of a sudden you’re supporting a family so you continue to work on your cars. You learn some tricks like taking the part you’re replacing with you because then you can prove to the newby behind the counter he just gave you an exhaust gasket for the wrong motor.
And then there were the early days of computing of mainframes to racks of servers and networks where if you had touched it you were the expert. Even the limited courses offered were one thing and the real world another. You learned by doing. You learned never to repeat a mistake. You learned to plan, question the plan, test the plan, have fallbacks to the plan, and test and test and test before moving to production. List of commands in order to run. And then you better be able to pull out any solution needed because of course you have the test equipment that is different than you run in production.
In the early days, you would never convince management to have a high availability test system to match what they have in production. So even if you had matching OS, DB, Apps you couldn’t test failover with all the new elements. Oh yeah, most of the time DB and OS upgrades are done at the same time to minimize any downtime to production. And why not throw in different storage subsystems as another variable? Ah, the early days.
So the curve to getting better at my crafts should be shortened if I take advantage of this information. The first task is out with the old and in with the new. Decades worth of print and computer knowledge will get pushed to the archives or probably trashed.
New skills developed, ones of my choosing. Brings a smile to my face.
Keeping in Touch
I make it a point to stay in touch with family and friends on a regular basis. I write a lot, I will also pick up the phone and get in the car often to talk and see those important to me. Being a good friend takes lots of effort. Being a good friend to a lot of people takes a great effort. And when you make great efforts, usually you get great results.
Random Thoughts of the Day
- It bothers me that so many innocents suffer for the actions of so few so often.
- This change of season has my body doing a hard reset.
- Unlike a bear, I shed most of my fat insulation recently. I hope that doesn’t mean I’ll be even colder.
- I’m off to create some sawdust. Have a great day.
