[TriLUG] Linux Careers in the Triangle

[John Vaughters via TriLUG]

Greg,
There is nothing wrong with courses, but now that you have a degree, you may consider reducing your costs by just self training. People may disagree with this recommendation, but if you really want to go with the Administration route, then seriously consider getting RedHat certifications. Even if you get the lowest one, it will help with the weed out issue. Getting the opportunity is the toughest part, so if you are going to spend money put it in places that help with the weed out. Your degree and some Certs are good places for money spent (This is where some may disagree). Scripting.... The resources on the web are huge and incredible. Not many people will care if you took courses in scripting. I think for the most part people expect that you learn scripting on your own time and show enthusiasm on solutions you created. Others mentioned fun scripts. To add to the list, I recently creaetd a every simple script to download the Weather extremes data for RDU airport. Today was a record of 105 back in 1952. I have webscraped Earthquake data and loaded in a database to run statistics. So what do you like? Smiple but fun and make a good conversation piece. 
Concerning the question about MediaWiki. Similar to the William Sutton's advice. I created a problem of wanting a wiki and settled on MediaWiki becasue it was the most well known Wiki. Managers who know little about Tech, still know Wikipedia. Showing that you were able to create your own Wiki with the exact same software as Wikipedia will go far with non-techies. So I read and read and read and did and then did more which lead to even more. That was the shorthand explantion :~). 
First, I had to get Apache web server working, and learned many things about configuring ApacheThen I had to get MySQL working and learned many things about MySqlThen I had to load PHP and learn many things about PHPFinally I was ready to install MediaWiki
These days most of this is pretty standard, but go back far enough and it was not trivial and was ripe with issues. I learned alot and spent tons of time. 
I learned how to manage Apache, MySQL, PHP, MediaWiki. I learned how upgrades will knock you down and you will spend entire weekends getting it working again. Respect the upgrades was the lesson. I learned to script backups of databases and webpages. This eventually lead to custom web applications that interfaced with databases, which were very crude, but very informative. I learned about Dynamic DNS to make my webpages available to the world, so I could showcase them. 
All of this seems so trivial to me now, but it was not when I started. Which brings me to another saying I like.
"It's difficult until you know how".

I have a degree in Mechanical Engineering and I have always been an electronic and computer enthusiasts, which makes my career background in factory automation seem to be a likely area. So certianly this is where I spent much of my career. I mostly now spend it creating solutions on computers and what I love about the Open Source movement, is creating solutions. The biggest problem I have is choosing the best path for the solution because the options are so crazy limitless. The path of learning seems almost infinite to me. 
You too have this problem now. `,~]
Have fun on the Journey. That's my goal, to have fun in the Journey.

John Vaughters
 


     On Thursday, July 23, 2015 12:05 PM, Greg Pubill <gregpubill at gmail.com> wrote:
   

  Thanks guys, I have spent of courses and certs before. It feels like they are just there to help non-tech recruiters to sort thru resumes!
 
 Greg
 
 On 07/23/2015 11:59 AM, John Vaughters wrote:
  
  >You don't need to spend money on courses.  just practice with what you 
 have. 
 +1 
  Open Source gives us access to some of the most powerful applications on this planet and the only thing preventing us is the will and desire to work with them. This was not always the case, I remember as a young professional in the early 90's not having access to software becasue of cost and hardware and being frustrated that I was not able to solve problems that I knew were just lack of access.  
  This barrier has been obliterated, and now the only limitation is desire and effort needed to learn. 
  John Vaughters