Whew! What a week!

My school schedule is settled. I'm not going to take the introductory course to the A+ series at Foothill, so I'm now officially enrolled in classes on Wednesday (networking) and Thursday (advanced A+) nights. I haven't broken the news to John, the A+ teacher yet.

Three 5 unit courses seemed like an awfully heavy load for me to take, especially when I wasn't able to keep up with one 5 unit software course last quarter. I was confused about which class to drop, so I emailed Mike, head of the department who just happens to be my networking instructor. He asked me to come in to talk to him before I went to the admissions & records office to register for John's courses. So I did.

We went over to the bookstore to look at the books for the course the John wants me to take. It turns out, John wrote the book for it himself. The only things in it I don't already know is how to use a DMM which I've always called an Ohm meter and about electronics parts I'll never need to know in this day and age. The rest is computer basics I've known since I put my 486 PC together eons ago. Mike said it would be a waste of my time. Eric had already said that. I know my cousin Barry, the networking guru would say that. Mike, with a twinkle in his eye, said not to tell John that he told me not to take the course. I twinkled back and promised I wouldn't. I've got enough other people to blame, teehee.

Even just the one class was $86 plus the $120 for books, and I still have to buy a PC toolkit, a DMM (Ohm meter), an AC outlet tester, a graphing calculator and a EDsomething wristband for dispelling static electricity. He also requires a mini maglite flashlight, but we've got several of those. Eric is excited about going shopping with me for this stuff. He's a little worried about being in the electronics stores since to save money, he's been avoiding them. We are both prone to impulse buying, so we just don't go places that tempt us. I have to and he wants to help me.

Mike said he wasn't sure how to advise people on their careers except to find your passion and go with it. He said he thought I was doing the right thing taking courses across the board to find my niche. Passion? That hit me. I haven't been passionate about my tech career for a very long time. RDS crushed that in me. I responded with an intellectual answer that the certifications for networking and security included A+. I have to be able to pass A+ as a base for the others, so that's why I'm taking it.. He smiled asked what I want to be "when I grow up." I told him I wanted to go as high into the certification process as I could to make the bucks I was making as a programmer. I told him I'm really comfortable with hardware.

He again mentioned passion, so I told him about my first exposure to computers at age 5 in 1960 when my dad was a computer operator for the county. I told him how the whole basement was filled with one computer and how I'd heard the printer hum Jingle Bells and that I was even more impressed when it printed a mermaid all in letters. It was so loud in that basement that my dad had to lean over and yell in my ear for me to hear him. He lost his upper range hearing because of that job. I told Mike that I'd looked my dad in the eye and told him "Daddy, I want to do what you do when I grow up!" and how my dad said "No you don't!" but I did anyway. A geek was born that day. I told him how I got tours of Data Processing every time a new computer system came in and how I got to see the evolution of main frame computers with my own eyes.

Then I told him I liked the idea of knowing how my own PCs work and why my laptop does what it does. He asked what it was doing. I explained that I've got a PCMCIA card inserted into it and how when it boots, it connects to the network just fine then it disconnects and tries to connect again. Half the time it fails and I have to repair the connection. He asked how I do that, and I told him I click on the icon, click on the properties tab and click the repair button. He said, "Oh, software. It's the OS." I told him I knew that much because it happened after a Microsoft update. What I don't know is how to make it behave. Hopefully, I'll find that somewhere in these courses.

I also told him that I'd like to learn how to make the stupid thing stop popping the dialup connection window when I'm in the middle of a battle in Puzzle Pirates and about to die. He asked how it was configured and I told him I kept turning the dialup connection off and it kept resetting itself to "on." He says there must be another setting somewhere that overrides the one I keep changing. Again, this started happening after a Microsoft update.

Mike asked me to please let him know if I have any career needs that aren't covered by the curriculum or if I have any suggestions for making their program better. He says he asks for input from people who have been in the industry for a while because he's determined to build the best department possible. What a cool guy! I might show it to Barry to see if he has suggestions.

You know, I am still passionate about computers. It's such a part of who I am that it's easy to overlook it. Yesterday was a good day to get back in touch with it.

Eric's excited that I'm taking this path with my career. He's finally going to be able to talk about his work and have me actively participate in the conversation. When we got married, I was a software person who did a little bit of troubleshooting and hardware installation on PCs and he was a hardware guy who dabbled in software to make fractal images. Now he's had to learn C++ and Visual Basic for his job and I'm learning hardware. LOL Eric says he'll help me with any gaps in my knowledge. I'll get him to show me how to use the DMM this weekend.

Jonathan is Linus tonight!

At about 2:30 this afternoon, I'm heading for Modesto to see Jonathan in "You're a Good Man Charlie Brown."

I've never seen it before. Jonathan is playing Linus, a part he has found difficult because his voice decided to change during this play. He's having trouble with the mid-range notes. He can do the high notes and the low notes. It's the middle ones that make his voice squeak. We'll see how he does!

He called while I was in school this week. Eric talked to him. Jon failed to tell Eric to have me call him. There was a message on the machine from him yesterday where he mentioned his play. I called him back. He was upset with me for not calling him before. I told him Eric didn't tell me I was supposed to call back. Jon refused to accept that. I asked him if he told Eric to have me call him. He said he didn't. I told him if he wants people to call him, he should say that. He said if you call someone, they're automatically supposed to call back. He refuses to accept that you should say in plain words what you want from people, and called it "A Montgomery moment." We're at an impasse on that. Since Jon does call sometimes just to talk and I was very busy this week, I didn't call until I got the message about his play.

Both Eric and I are very literal people. We don't pick up on hints. It's part of having ADD from what I've read. If people tell me things in plain English, I understand.

What do you do? If someone calls and talks to a family member when you're not home and doesn't leave the message for you to call them back, do you call them back? Is this a social subtly I've missed?

Oops! I thought I'd posted about the middle part of this week!

The router class had me worried. A student in the Networking class is also in an A+ certification course and told me I should show up there. They needed more people in the class. What he didn't tell me was that it's the final of the three courses in A+.

I walked in to a small class of all men and asked to add. John, the instructor looked a little worried, but said OK. He didn't have his add codes with him and sent me to Admissions and Records to pay for the course. They needed me to have him sign an Add slip, and gave it to me. He filled it out. I'd found out that the last day to register was the next day and told him I'd come back to do it then so I wouldn't miss any more class.

He was lecturing about power supplies and how they work. Part of what he taught us was how diodes, resistors and um... something else are part of the power regulation system to turn alternating current into direct current. I was impressed that he was getting into the meat of how PCs work instead of lecturing about how computers evolved and making us to binary arithmetic like the instructor at De Anza had in his curriculum.

The lab part came and because I didn't have equipment, I teamed with two guys to get it done. One of them was the guy who told me to show up. We were supposed to measure the power being put out by the power supply as the computer booted, for both the 12V DC and the 5V DC outlets. I mentioned I didn't know how to use a DMM. That's when the instructor suggested I take his Tuesday night course where the use of the tools is taught. He said it was a prerequisite to this one. I said "OK" and he added it to my Add slip. I needed the lab book so I scooted to the bookstore to get the books for this class, thinking I'd get the books for the other class on Friday when I came back to register. When I got back to the room, they were still working through the questions from the lecture. I quickly read through the lab book to get the answers I didn't already know and discussed the ones I couldn't find with my lab partners. It was clear I know more than they do, already. When the covers came off the PC we were supposed to examine, they were looking around for the information about the power supply we were supposed to find. It was right in front of us! Geez! I pointed at it and said "250 watts see? It's right here on the housing."

My lab partner with the DMM did the power output measurement as we watched. It wasn't as steady as it should have been. It's an old computer, of course. They're not going to let us mess up new computers. The power supply is getting old.

By the end of class, the instructor was much warmer toward me than he had been. I think he's seeing that I do know enough to be there. Yay! I'll be able to take that A+ test this summer, after all!