per aspera ad astra

I need advice.

Here’s the situation: I’m seeking the second half of a technical certification. I was speaking to my Grandmother the other day, and she generously offered to cover the cost. I did not make it out as if I was seeking that by want or need, or at all. I do, after all, have tact. Of course I thanked her profusely, and the check ought to be in the mail.

A few minutes ago, I got an email from my former tech instructor saying that, until I am actually given my diploma in June, regardless of whether or not I am attending classes, I am technically a student there and that the school may be able to cover the cost of my exam through a voucher program.

I’m trying to figure out how I ought to handle this, but I can’t settle on any end. So, should I:

1) Politely decline the voucher offered to me and suggest that it goes towards another student’s certification being as I DO have the financial means, now.

or

2) Accept it, and use it first. If I fail that try, then I can fall back on the money given to me as a second chance. If I pass on the first [free to me] shot, then that money does not have a place, so…

a) I can send that funding back to my grandmother, explaining that after the fact, I was offered a free means to do it, thanking her for the assistance anyway.

b) I can give that to my parents who are now saying that, although it was initially agreed that they would cover costs of online courses, I need to pay them back.

or c) Keep it and put it to my Christmas budget or something like obtaining a phone [which is becoming more important what with the possibility that I may not have a phone at all].

I just can’t really decide what to do. I face getting bitched at by my immediate family if I take any option two and need it as a backup, although I didn’t know about this until after my discussion with my grandmother, and though I am not being scheme-y. [They like to assume I act based upon the way they do.] Reasonably, though, if I do need it as a backup, I can just wait until I have re-started my job, and I can take it once I have money there, with them being none the wiser.

What do you think? ><

If I wanted to go to Uni, the illustrious MITwould be my choice; hands down. Yay for geeky excitement and education-ness.

For those of you who want a laugh or happen to ride the subway/metro/whatever the hell it’s called wherever you are check out their Defcon Presentation Re: Hacking Subways, aka Anatomy of a Subway Hack.

Now, I dunno how much this is gonna affect you UK/Euro folks [unless they have done or are doing the same/similar], but Google has made a little site called Free The Airwaves, which is a petition-gathering site devoted to the advocacy of making the FCC let people use unused radio waves for internet stuffs because old TVs aren’t using them anymore. [Well, that's the highly condensed version, anyway. If you want the decent one, click the link.]

Basically, yay for trying to increase bandwith-ness, yay for trying to make available the internet to folks or places who otherwise wouldn’t have it.

Alright, so I retook the aforementioned test on Friday. This time, I scored 805 out of 900 [the passing score being 675]. I finished in the exact same amount of time as the first attempt–less than a half hour. I think that’s pretty spiffy, what with there being one-hundred questions and all.

No, if I had gone slower, I wouldn’t have done better. That time included double checking of the whole test and triple-checking of those I was uncertain of.

My [now former] tech teacher is happy, and can hook me up with some more vouchers to take the second half at half price [to me]. That’s a relief, especially as I have yet to obtain another job.

Meantime, I’m trying to study as best as I can for the second half so that I may become properly certified. Murr.

I’m not a computer genius or IT whiz or anything. I’m not.
But I do like computers, and I do want to work with them, so I’m trying.

I was taking classes in school to prepare me for the shitty, standard CompTia entry level exam, the A+ exam. As a result of my good grades [a 96 average for the whole year!] the state funded two vouchers so that I may take the two-part exam, using one for each. Hoorah.

The last day of school was June 6 [for me, the fifth] and my tech teacher didn’t feel it prudent to let the qualifying students know that the vouchers would only be good until June 20…even though he hadn’t given us the info that he had received them should we be interested until barely a week before [when I was incapacitated due to my surgery].

So I scrambled to schedule an exam, scheduling it for earlier today. I was nervous…with the exception of phixious–and I’ll get to that in a moment–everyone I know, from my school, who had taken it said that there was a great deal of things that we didn’t cover in class and that obtaining a prep book would be a good idea. I emailed my teacher, knowing he has them, so that I may borrow one. On Friday, he said that he set one in the school’s front office. I couldn’t get a ride on Friday, which I let him know, and that I would get it on Monday. Yesterday, I had a friend take me up there, but he had repossessed the book…and was already gone. Great. So instead I crammed from little websites and from my curriculum from my course I’d taken, hoping I’d be able to skate by on that.

All of my friends were acting like cheerleaders and were like, “You got such a good grade in his class, it should be fine. You know this stuff! ^_^” And upon expressing my nervousness to Jeremy, he proceeded to tell me that I had nothing to worry about and that it was marvelously easy. Okay, fine. That helped a little.

So I go to my testing place, get signed in [all the while being sneered at by the receptionist who I suppose was scoffing because of the fact that I uh...I guess I'm not the typical testee there, huh?] and go to take the test. Which proved to be marvelously easy.
You know, except for the about 25% of shit that I had literally never seen before. Ever.
You need 75% to pass the exam…and I missed it by one question.

One.
One fucking question.
That is the most infuriating type of failure ever.

What really gets me is that phix made such a big deal of it not being anything to worry about and that I shouldn’t have to study for it, and then a quarter of the test was stuff I’d never seen.
It’s really disappointing.

Anyway, I can retake it, and I’m scheduling it for Friday. Hopefully I’ll manage to pass by then. :/

Good golly gosh, who would’ve thought?

http://www.thinkgeek.com/stuff/41/betamaxhd.html?cpg=70H

Make sure to watch the video…amazing how and why someone would want to convert an obsolete Betamax into a lost-out HD-DVD.

Also, three.

In my closet there is a big box. In that big box there is an array of fettered cables and devices.

Yester-evening, I took to untangling the mess and came up with:

• Three PS/2 ball mice, one of whose wiring was exposed.
• My old Kensington Orbit trackball mouse…whose sensors were broken.
• Six Ethernet cables.
• Nine USB cables–some for printers, a few extenders…whee. Well, ten, including the one I will mention later…but I had taken it out before I had done the rest of the sorting.
• A few standard power cables.
• A blown surge protector [yeah, great, huh?]
• The old power cable for my PoS [& long since gone] Lexmark printer.
• Oddly enough, an AC and a car cig lighter adapter for a Gameboy Color.
• A few RJ11s…
• Two old DSL modems & a ton of signal filters.

I did all of this because my dad just went out last week or so and purchased a Gateway [ew]. It came with a 3-in-1 [misleadingly labeled all-in-one] Canon printer that did not come with the appropriate USB connector. Somehow, he allowed himself to be talked into being sold this gold-plated one for like forty bucks.
+Facepalm.+
Upon coming home and mentioning this, I ask, “Why? We have several of those.”
“No, we don’t.”
“We most assuredly do. We even have a gold-plated one.” I dig it out and show him.
“Are you sure that will work?” he asks, worriedly.
“…yes.”
“How sure?”
“As sure as I possibly can be? Go take that back, jeez…this is why you shouldn’t be allowed to make your own compy purchases. Not knowing what the salesperson is saying to you can be baaad.”

After I sorted the mess of cabling, I brought the sorted and bound masses upstairs to show him that they probably won’t need to purchase cabling for a while. x_x

Naturally, he was annoyed that he was talked into buying something he didn’t need. Then again, since he hadn’t checked before he left [and no longer carries a cell phone], I don’t suppose he could have known. With most things, he tries to be a pretty frugal person. I thought it was common knowledge, though, that to effectively live thriftily, then one must be an informed consumer.

Can you imagine, though, how much it infuriates him that my mother isn’t a frugal person? That’s another post, though.

Nice gaming mouse by Razer. At ~$60, it’s not bad. It has an 1800dpi infrared sensor and 1000hz of ultrapolling. The sensitivity, for me, was a bit overwhelming, so I needed to turn it down to about half capacity…but I’m working on it.

If I actually had time to do any gaming anymore, I’d get some great use out of this new purchase. :]

All of us have suffered computer crashes. They’re so fun, aren’t they? I don’t suppose everyone, though, has experienced the delight of a Macintosh Crash, though.

“The update manager was bouncing … like a Jack Russel FUCKING TERRIER!”

I don’t own a Mac, and I probably won’t…ever. When the iMac G3 first came out, though, my school bought a shitload. Why? I couldn’t tell you; they must’ve gotten one hell of a deal.

None of the teachers were familiar with the Apple OS and so they were freaking out because they were ripped from the comfort-zone that was their PC and put on this monster with ONE MOUSE BUTTON and NO START BUTTON [oh noes!!11?!] … You would’ve thought it was the apocalypse.
And that was only the teachers.

The majority of the students were fucked six ways from Sunday. Not quite everyone had a computer of their own yet [at my school, now, maybe 2% of students don't have machines. 3% max..and most have 2+] and the ones that did were busy worshipping Windows 98 or just then switching to Win2K. [We did maintain one lab of PCs, though, running 98.] This was a middle school…most kids were just then using the computer for more than goofing off with some little kiddy game. A few of us were fine with the switch [albeit not being pleased with it] whereas others, throughout our time in Middle, were often put to tears–no exaggeration, there–out of frustration. The source of their frustration was often the notorious seizing-up of machines in the middle of, oh, typing a paper or doing some other work that wouldn’t be saved or salvaged.

The drama and catastrophes went on unaided or remedied. So, a little bit later with the G4 came out, the school system decided to purchase a whole load of those, as well! “Oh, these are newer; they’ll be more stable.” Okay, they were slightly less stable. The issue remained, though, that new teachers were mostly used to PCs, all the teachers were more comfortable with PCs, the students who were growing accustomed to them [the Macs] were still dealing with the machines eating their work, etc etc. So why the hell buy more of a problematic product?

In my Freshman year [my second year of high school, as eighth grade was high as well], I heard that they got some damn sense and reverted to the PC.

A few of my pre-CISCO and CCNA-in-training cohorts are pushing to put Linux on the school’s machines. No luck yet, but y’know. ;]