Category: Technology

I is Smart

So I’ll start by saying I know post-secondary education (“college or university”) schooling is tough at most any level. It can be either because of a direct result of the degree pursued (a dr for example) or it can be for external forces causing strife (like life events or such). For context now, it was circa winter 2010 and I was about 3-4 years out of high school (wow!) and I was encouraged to go get a degree. Before this, when I was wrapping up high school, I had already applied to and been accepted into the music dept program at my local university, but I was not accepted to the school itself due to being just a few points shy on my SAT and ACT (dumb). So I put it off for a couple of years. Eventually, I did decide to go to the local tech college to get my Associate’s degree. I, among dozens of other students, were about halfway through our degrees when the tech school decided to “align with the university system” and changed everyone from a quarter-based system to a semester-based system. This made majority of our degrees that were typical 2-year into 3.5 or more year degrees. That coupled with me finally leaving my first ever retail job and getting my first ever “Corporate America” big boy job means that I paused college.

You know how they say (to some effect) that when you say you’ll go back a good percentage likely won’t ever go back or whatever? Well I did not get to nor choose to go back. Fast forward to 2019 and I’m feeling the the ceiling of my experience in technical support and knew I had to make a decision of some kind or be stuck in this kind of role for as far as I could foresee. I was able to talk to one of the local universities and was flabbergasted to find that after almost 10 years of being out of college that about 95% of my credits would transfer from my previous Associate’s degree program (obviously not classes on legacy stuff like Windows 7 or Server 2008, which made sense). I told the recruiter (or whatever) rep I was definitely willing to go back to “finish” my Associate’s; however, after a further review (matriculation I think they called it) of my official transcript, the rep told me that I would be able to get not only my Associate’s but also get a Bachelor’s because 100% of the courses in the Associate’s are in the Bachelor’s program + the Bachelor-only classes thereafter. After looking and talking it over at home, it made sense to shave off a whole year of transferred credits and get both an Associate’s and Bachelor’s degree a year early each. I’ve since been trucking along pursuing my degrees. I had not yet earned my Associate’s yet, but I do think it was one of many contributing factors in me finally getting out of technical support and into help desk. I absolutely love the role, the folks I work with, but above all that the freedom I now feel of not being bogged down like I was for 10 years to a headset and a tv callboard. I can think, plan, be flexible, contribute, and do all sorts of things previously impossible in my working life.

It’s been a realllllllllly long last couple of years as a result. Selling our first AZ house … buying land to build … Covid … selling said land b/c of covid and other factors … getting a new role at work… and of course school. But all of that aside, I can say that I officially triumphed and received my Associate’s degree in Information Technology in the mail yesterday! I am now smart! It was quite a bit surreal looking at a piece of paper that has taken so long to get, but it’s more than that.. it’s an accomplishment that I didn’t think I would ever get and at several points I felt “too old”, “not smart enough”, or had not met some indescribable quota in my mind to go back and get one. All excuses, of course, but nevertheless, it was pleasing to finally see my name on that (expensive) piece of paper and that I can now mark off that miniscule worry from the back of my mind. Getting my advanced education makes me feel great personally and professionally. Here’s to the same or a greater feeling after I get my Bachelor’s in a year or so.

Until next time,

Andrew

Ubiquiti Networks

So I just purchased my first Ubiquiti networks product. I’ve been a diehard Cisco fan since my early days in the IT field, but it’s worth giving them a chance at least based on the recommendations I’ve had from some colleagues (and some hype). Can Ubiquiti beat Cisco (in my household?) … we’ll see!

I’m going to do a really basic test with just a single, small switch to start with because we’re still in the apartment while house matters are still rolling around (I’ll do a post about the large gap in time since my last post soon, hopefully).

Based on my initial research, they have a really good ecosystem and user experience no matter if you’re doing a small home setup or an enterprise/sport-like setup, so that’s good to hear if it turns out to be true. I’ve only done a limited bit of research so this just whets the whistle so to speak.

Right now I have an HP v1810-48g switch, and on this small desk in small space it takes up a laaaaaaaarge corner of the back of my desk (even though I have it caddy-corner standing up angled off the desk … don’t ask). This new switch will give me a smaller profile and I can save this HP for some other use.

I’ll do a follow-up post and let you know how Ubiquiti turns out.

Until next time,

Andrew

Going, going, and going…

So it’s been a little bit over a month since I last posted, and a LOT has gone on. Let’s get right into it all.

After we sold, we had moved [basically our entire house of stuff] into an informal rental (informal as in a place a family member had available we could use), but we had to turn around within 2 months of moving in and move out due to some misunderstandings from both sides on financials that would hurt our much needed budgeting for the new house. All good, though, we got storage for all of our stuff, and our cousins are gracious hosts letting us stay with them during our build.

Whew. Danielle and I are mentally exhausted from the seemingly non-stop work really since last November when everything started, but more so the last few months. We’ve been going, going, and going, but at least we can slow the brakes a little and rest a bit easier for a little while now. Yay!

On top of all the chaos of selling, moving, buying (land) and building, I’m still in school. My worst and least favorite subject on the entire planet … no, in the entire cosmos is math. It was inevitable that I’d have to take two maths, but way back starting out at Phx I wasn’t aware nor prepared both classes would be back to back. There are pros and cons to this. Con: you’re stuck with math for 10 weeks straight… Pro: get math done in 10 weeks and concepts from one class are fresh for the one right after. I had been dreading the math classes ever since I knew they’d arrive, but now one of them is already over and I’m 2/5 of the way through the second one. I was thankful I passed the first one and I pray I pass this one, too. Harder to come IT classes will surely have their challenges, but I speak computer … not math. So that’ll be a huge lot of academic stress out of my way when the final math class is done here in a few weeks.

Since everyone is stuck at home during the Corona/Covid pandemic, recent studies have shown that video gaming has skyrocketed. You don’t need anything but common sense to know this. Still, gaming is one of my favorite pastimes (and currently my only one). I was a Sony PlayStation fan when I was younger and have been a Microsoft Xbox fan since I was a teenager. Without going through essentially a book on my gaming history, suffice to say I’ve experienced and understand both companies and their offerings. I just like Xbox more. So, I jump on lots of opportunities when I can. Plus, with technology as a passion of mine, it was a no-brainer when I got a chance to participate in Microsoft’s beta for xCloud, which was their mobile phone game streaming technology. It was fun and pretty cool to use regular 4G cell service to play high-quality games. Since it is out of beta now and part of their new subscription offerings, I got a cool emblem for being a beta user. That’s all I really wanted to make this whole section about (hahaha).

I was also able to secure an Xbox Series X earlier this week during the madness for pre-orders of the next-gen consoles coming out. Future-proofing is good to go.

If you haven’t noticed yet, I set in place the official changeover from andrewcoody.com to andrew.coody.co. While selling, moving and Corona/Covid put a wrench in my videos for the Coody Connection YouTube project I started, I do like the different website name and merging my personal site in with the YouTube business site. It’s smoother to refer to so that my blog and personal site have moved here permanently along with the business site (just remember: it’s .co not .com!)

Well, I think that about wraps up this post. It is not as linear as most of my posts usually are, but sometimes a jump around of topics is all you’re gonna get when my mind and life are all over the place. 🙂

Until next time,

Andrew

Corona Quarantine: Day ~80, and Lots More

I had high hopes to post something every few days during quarantine, but that didn’t pan out. Well, here’s a chocked-full update on day 80 … at least I think it’s been 80 days already. Wow, what day is it?! I don’t think I can post updates every few days for what feels like a year already…

Anywho, a lot has happened in 2020. Sure, a lot happens every year, duh, but humor my point for a moment, this is the first year for majority of humanity that a worldwide pandemic (Corona) has ever occurred, but also the first time in a long time that something so egregiously unacceptable on the scale of “human disgust” (the murder/death of George Floyd) that makes me and most others want to get a refund on 2020 and go back a few years or skip on to 2021. Yes, I acknowledge many other Black men and women have been wrongfully killed (the ones that come to mind are Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Philando Castile, and Breonna Taylor). I also acknowledge that not only Black men and women are killed; lots of people are killed of all races, colors, shapes, and sizes by not only guns, knifes, and hands, but also not by just police, psychos, and terrorists. What I’m getting at is that we cannot err on an excuse along the lines of “Well, the world is a complex web and people die all the time for different reasons.” Sure, that’s true, but dang don’t diminish nor take the situation out hand or context. Anyone who knows me knows I love and support our military and our law enforcement … but I do not, under any circumstances, support the pieces of trash humans masquerading as law enforcement killing and hurting innocent people for whatever the heck reason is going through their minds. I love my fellow Black man and woman just as I do any other race, ethnicity, religion, or whatever attribute you think of. We are ALL humans and should treat each other with the same love and respect. No….this is not a plug for “all lives matter”, rather just a simple universal fact of humanity. Black lives NEED to be heard so that then truly all lives can matter vs what we have now with “some lives matter but we’ll put up a front that all lives matter”. Man I could go on and on and on with the errancy of humanity but I’ll move on. Just love thine neighbor, truly without reproach and judgement.

My office is still work from home right now and for the foreseeable future (not terribly happy, but it has its perks). I’m both an introvert and extrovert (just depends on situation), so I thrive working alone, but the job I do necessitates that face-to-face interaction with colleagues. That’s what’s getting grueling typing 10 billion messages each workday. AARGH!

Also, dumb humans who can’t wait to get their hair cut, nails done, or go to the latest beach party or rave are the brainless individuals stirring up “round 2” of Corona. Yeah, I know it may not be them, but they are definitely playing a part in it. The wife and I did go out to the hardware store, grocery store, and dinner (finally!) recently, but we stayed away from folks as directed or the best we could … there honestly really is a difference in us vs the idiots. At least I understand there is a set of universal do’s and don’t’s to abide by for your fellow humans, but some people can’t put their narcissistic nature and urges aside for a few weeks (or months) to let the rest of the world solve this crisis and heal. Sometimes you just can’t fix stupid.

Lastly, I’ll end with a happier note. It seems only like yesterday that we were moving from GA to AZ, and now here we go again (just local this time lol). Some of you may know already that we’ve been setting the groundwork to move in 2020. No, there’s nothing wrong with the house we live in nor the neighborhood, it just no longer fits our needs where we’re at in life. We’d like to downsize to a single-story with more land than to have a 2-story with less land. Plus other obligations and such help urge this along. Well, all the non-essential info aside, today marks the first day of an official journey: we had the realtor photographer come to take pictures. We had just finished this week with what I’ll say is about 98% of evvvvvvvvvvverything we’ve been working on for the better part of a year, plus or minus, and it is finally list worthy and ready. We’re excited to see the photos when we get them from our realtor next week and then we’ll begin the next phase to start listing soon. I’m not putting a date in here in case there are any unknown-to-me conflicts that could arise from doing so (maybe there aren’t any, but it doesn’t matter), but just stay tuned. Hopefully this will be our last “forever home” search (again).

Until next time,

Andrew

New YouTube project

Some of you may remember a YouTube project I ran from 2017 until just a couple months ago called Peach Cactus. It was a sort-of play on the name Peach for Georgia and Cactus for Arizona representing the states I’m from and moved to and one of their –if not the — key features. Even further back than that, which is merely a memory for me now, was another project called IT Central. Both of these were focused on the IT (Information Technology) field but ran their due course for different reasons.

One thing I always am an OCD (shouldn’t it be CDO???) person about is meticulous details. Even though those names were great they weren’t perfect nor long-term … at least not in the likeness of some of the other great tech users out there (Linus TT, for example).

Well, now I have finally decided on a name that I think can carry its own weight and is worthy of long-term investiture (one day!). I present to you Coody Connection! Sure, it has a better ring with “The” in the title, and I’ll use that, but officially it’s just “Coody Connection”. I will leave the videos from my prior two projects as-is like a freeze-frame and maybe link back to them somewhere, but everything will be fresh and it’ll have its own site, blog, and other properties as it goes on.

Because the name is more generic (in a good way!) I can focus on not only Tech things, but other news, vlog, and tidbits. It’ll take a while to get started, but if you were a fan of Peach Cactus or IT Central, please go ahead now and subscribe to Coody Connection at coody.co.

See you there!

Andrew