Growning in the field / fun

[nyctomd]

For years I have been working in construction. Now I am into IT. I received a few certifications such as A+, Net +, Sec+, and a Windows 7 cert. For a while I have been doing Helpdesk. Now I am Tier II.

Where I need the forums help is to what can I do from home to learn more and grow in the field. I want to do some difficult but cool home IT projects. I have a windows 8.1 pro desktop at home. What can I do with it to improve my knowledge and just good to know in general? I also have a windows 7 home laptop. Anything I need to download or sites I can go to for ideas? I want to activate and use my hyper-v. Thats one project, anything else?

Thank you guys.




Moved from Technical Forum Issues. I think this is a programming question?

Anandtech Administrator
KeithTalent


Moving to OT, not really about programming either.

Markbnj

 

[velis]

Sorry, dude, you are too generic. Since this has been moved to programming: you could try to learn programming?

Otherwise do what you want to do with your computer. You'll get to learn how to use programs that you selected to complete your everyday tasks. Even managing your family's photo collection gives you plenty of options and things to learn

 

[purbeast0]

tbh this isn't really relevant to programming.

 

[Cogman]

tbh this isn't really relevant to programming.

Agreed, but TBH this really isn't relevant to any of the other forums. IT is such a broad field, which forum it belongs to really depends on what the OP wants to do in the IT field. Does he want to do stuff with networking? Probably the networking forum. How about sys-admin stuff? Maybe here and the OS forum. How about Security related work? Well, the security forum for that.

To the OP. I would suggest that a general "What do you need" would probably be experience with a linux OS. Just being able to find your way around a linux OS is pretty useful for a lot of IT jobs. Beyond that, I would start learning simple scripting skills with the likes of Bash, Python, or ruby. Having those two under your belt will be useful for pretty much all of IT dom.

If you want to get started with linux, I would start here

https://www.virtualbox.org/
http://www.ubuntu.com/download/server

Virtualbox is nice because you don't need to worry about formatting or repartitioning your HD. And ubuntu because it is common (Though really you could go with anything from Mint to debian to redhat, to whatever)

 

[Scarpozzi]

Go rent Office Space and you'll see you need to go back to Construction.....working outside, getting fresh air, bringing your lunch to work in a pail....

After watching office space, if you still insist on working with computers, you need to decide what you think you want to do. Try to find a job that allows you to work with a few departmental or low-risk servers. For instance, you might be able to manage 1-2 systems/applications to get your feet wet....then move up.

Otherwise, go for low hanging fruit. Take a job that requires you to do everything and pays you very little knowing that you're after the experience. There are quite a few office jobs that come up with bad pay and terrible expectations/conditions for startups and small industrial companies that are underfunded. Many of those are Microsoft shops simply because the concepts are easier for simple folk to understand.