No matter how much time I throw at my Linux+ cert, the first test, it seems like there is even more to do. Got through learning about time management, print management, and a couple more things.I've completed nine chapters out of the twelve. After completing all the chapters, hopefully by the end of this week, I'm going to go back and study the worksheets and retake each chapter exam to prepare myself.
I took a practice exam this morning and got a 53%. Terrible. However, I think it was more like 56% due to a couple questions, I just forgot a letter to the command, so I really don't count those as I will learn those.
In my downtime, and keeping with the theme of this blog post, I have been working on a AOKP JB-MR1 release for the T-Mobile G2x, aka LGE P-999. Its a slow process. While I am familiar with Tegra 2 products, as I have done a CM10 and CM10.1 and a AOKP port for the Dell Streak 7, this is my very first phone I've worked on with dedication. I've been having some difficulties the last week or so getting the ota package to compile. Its been compiling about an unknown 'property' in build.prop and halting the build. Nothing I could do seemed to affect this and caused this error to go away. Well, after sometime, I looked at the P-990 (a similar device) and release that in the last updates of AOKP/CM10.2 the implemented some changes to the scripts, resulting in my build to fail. So I have to squash those commits and and implement my own custom releasetools set. I've got that in place and compiling is going on now.
Sep 23, 2013
Sep 16, 2013
Another day, another dollar
Part of what I do in my life is try to keep myself busy alongside my studies. I tend to get bored quickly and this can diminish my quality of study time. For example, posting on this blog because Linux static/dynamic libraries is brain-dulling.
Today I was informed that I am being offered a part-time temp position with TAOS. I will be a part of a 6 member team to provide Apple product tech support for a woman's perfume/makeup shop. This store uses iPod's, iPad's and MAC's to provide their customers instant access to the best female product for them. So we shall be helping their temp help in figuring out how to use the fang-dangled devices.
I have had three iPod's, the last two being touchscreen ones, and I consider myself familiar with them, but not a real tech support on them, so this will be good experience for me to learn from.
Now back to studying. My goal is the first Linux+ test in two weeks and there is so much material to do and I am having a hard time as typically when I have a problem with Linux, I use 'man' , '/?', '--help' to figure out what a command needs to look like but this test will require me to know so many commands by heart.
Today I was informed that I am being offered a part-time temp position with TAOS. I will be a part of a 6 member team to provide Apple product tech support for a woman's perfume/makeup shop. This store uses iPod's, iPad's and MAC's to provide their customers instant access to the best female product for them. So we shall be helping their temp help in figuring out how to use the fang-dangled devices.
I have had three iPod's, the last two being touchscreen ones, and I consider myself familiar with them, but not a real tech support on them, so this will be good experience for me to learn from.
Now back to studying. My goal is the first Linux+ test in two weeks and there is so much material to do and I am having a hard time as typically when I have a problem with Linux, I use 'man' , '/?', '--help' to figure out what a command needs to look like but this test will require me to know so many commands by heart.
Sep 12, 2013
First one done
I took the day pretty much off yesterday as I "prepared" myself for the exam. I did a brief study, watched about 4 hours of "Bones" and then did one more practice exam, scoring a 92%. Felt like I was pretty much ready to take the test. I wanted to see how well my mind did with a brief study period, then hours and hours of distraction and how much I could recall. I was pretty sure I was ready for the CIW Web Design Specialist which is the course CUV1 at WGU.
This morning I took my test at my former community college, where I volunteer twice a week with my former instructor, helping out his new class.
I've been in the testing center many times before. I was scheduled for an 8:30am test, but no one was waiting so I started around 8:15am.
99% of the questions were NOT what I had studied. I had read on the discussion boards of the college, that the material we studied was outdated. For example, Firefox was listed as the #1 web browser, which is no longer true as Chrome holds the largest market share now. This chart shows usage as of 2012.
And here is another chart showing as of 2013
The questions on the test are similar in many aspects so I was able to extrapolate from my study and do well enough. It took me approximately 20 or so minutes to complete the exam and I scored a 78%. For the perfectionist inside of me, this is not good enough but my student mentor, Joyce, was very happy for me as I am way ahead in my schedule for completion of this semester.
My next class is Operating Systems 1, class ID of DRV1 which is actually the first part of the CompTIA Linux+ , LX0-101. I am pretty familiar with Linux, as I use it exclusively for my Android ROM development for the Dell Streak 7. So I am excited to start this next class. First class, I was scheduled for 6 weeks, I took 9 days.
This morning I took my test at my former community college, where I volunteer twice a week with my former instructor, helping out his new class.
I've been in the testing center many times before. I was scheduled for an 8:30am test, but no one was waiting so I started around 8:15am.
99% of the questions were NOT what I had studied. I had read on the discussion boards of the college, that the material we studied was outdated. For example, Firefox was listed as the #1 web browser, which is no longer true as Chrome holds the largest market share now. This chart shows usage as of 2012.
My next class is Operating Systems 1, class ID of DRV1 which is actually the first part of the CompTIA Linux+ , LX0-101. I am pretty familiar with Linux, as I use it exclusively for my Android ROM development for the Dell Streak 7. So I am excited to start this next class. First class, I was scheduled for 6 weeks, I took 9 days.
Sep 11, 2013
WGU, another step closer to my future
Wow, its been a while since I've posted to a blog. There are has been so many changes in my life.
I've lost my job, went back to school, received my AAS in Information Security and Digital Forensics, and onto my Bachelors in IT-Security now at Western Governors University.
I found out about WGU actually from a supervisor on an internship. I was doing an internship with my community college's security engineer, working on configuring the school's IDS and every week he had these calls he had to do with someone he had said was his student mentor. After asking him futher he mentioned he was going for his Masters in Security from a school called WGU. I thought that was pretty cool, but tossed it out of my mind. As time went by, graduated and began looking for a job. I had one strong possible job and was even packing up to move when financially it wasn't going to work. I began the process of registering at Boise State University and was pretty much all setup to get my Bachelors in Applied Science, minor in Computer Science. However, I was pretty disappointed that I was going to have to complete three more math classes just to begin the computer science part and I wasn't even wanting anything really to do with computer science as I hate programming.
As time got closer to getting ready to go to BSU, I was talking things over with the wife, and I had mentioned to her about WGU and out of curiosity, we both looked at their website and discovered they had a Bachelors program and it was completely online and would give me tons of certifications as a way of completing each class. That is something that was a great interest to us as all the good schools with security programs were not in our state nor offered online classes exclusively. I began the process of finding more information the very next day and quickly was guided through the enrollment process and I took care of transferring transcripts, financial aid, VA GI bill stuff, and getting excited more every day.
I started my first day of class on Sept 1st and have a student mentor named Joyce who is an electrical engineer (Masters degree) at Lockheed. She is there to make sure I stay on track and focused.
My first class is CUV1, which is actually a CIW Web Design Specialist certification. In the first day, I did 8 chapters and took a practice exam scoring 75% easily. There was a lot of JavaScript, CSS, and XHTML questions that I had a tough time with. I did another 8 chapters and started scoring 80-84% on the practice exams. In order to "test out" of the class and take your certification exam, you need to consistently score 85% or better. I proceeded to skip the next 14 chapters which had to do with various softwares and designing websites and graphics with them, something I have no interest in. The last 4 chapters had to do with JavaScript, databases, web site maintenance practices, and a few other subjects. After completing those I did 600 questions which covered the entire book and started doing 94-97% on the practice exams.
So where does that put me? I'm on Day 11 of my first class and I take my exam tomorrow. I was scheduled to take at maximum 6 weeks to complete this class.
This is another reason why I chose this school. My pace, my time. I am a quick learner and don't need as much time to absorb information as a lot of people do. I don't meant to brag, this is just the way I was made.
I am excited to start this school and I want to do well. I want to write down about my classes in this blog to record my experience.
Oh yeah, this station on Pandora helps me drown out noises and distractions. http://t.co/vzoKHmDVh1
I've lost my job, went back to school, received my AAS in Information Security and Digital Forensics, and onto my Bachelors in IT-Security now at Western Governors University.
I found out about WGU actually from a supervisor on an internship. I was doing an internship with my community college's security engineer, working on configuring the school's IDS and every week he had these calls he had to do with someone he had said was his student mentor. After asking him futher he mentioned he was going for his Masters in Security from a school called WGU. I thought that was pretty cool, but tossed it out of my mind. As time went by, graduated and began looking for a job. I had one strong possible job and was even packing up to move when financially it wasn't going to work. I began the process of registering at Boise State University and was pretty much all setup to get my Bachelors in Applied Science, minor in Computer Science. However, I was pretty disappointed that I was going to have to complete three more math classes just to begin the computer science part and I wasn't even wanting anything really to do with computer science as I hate programming.
As time got closer to getting ready to go to BSU, I was talking things over with the wife, and I had mentioned to her about WGU and out of curiosity, we both looked at their website and discovered they had a Bachelors program and it was completely online and would give me tons of certifications as a way of completing each class. That is something that was a great interest to us as all the good schools with security programs were not in our state nor offered online classes exclusively. I began the process of finding more information the very next day and quickly was guided through the enrollment process and I took care of transferring transcripts, financial aid, VA GI bill stuff, and getting excited more every day.
I started my first day of class on Sept 1st and have a student mentor named Joyce who is an electrical engineer (Masters degree) at Lockheed. She is there to make sure I stay on track and focused.
My first class is CUV1, which is actually a CIW Web Design Specialist certification. In the first day, I did 8 chapters and took a practice exam scoring 75% easily. There was a lot of JavaScript, CSS, and XHTML questions that I had a tough time with. I did another 8 chapters and started scoring 80-84% on the practice exams. In order to "test out" of the class and take your certification exam, you need to consistently score 85% or better. I proceeded to skip the next 14 chapters which had to do with various softwares and designing websites and graphics with them, something I have no interest in. The last 4 chapters had to do with JavaScript, databases, web site maintenance practices, and a few other subjects. After completing those I did 600 questions which covered the entire book and started doing 94-97% on the practice exams.
So where does that put me? I'm on Day 11 of my first class and I take my exam tomorrow. I was scheduled to take at maximum 6 weeks to complete this class.
This is another reason why I chose this school. My pace, my time. I am a quick learner and don't need as much time to absorb information as a lot of people do. I don't meant to brag, this is just the way I was made.
I am excited to start this school and I want to do well. I want to write down about my classes in this blog to record my experience.
Oh yeah, this station on Pandora helps me drown out noises and distractions. http://t.co/vzoKHmDVh1
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