Certified Job Hunter

It's been a busy summer and I haven't written up a post for longer than I had realized.

As I mentioned in one of my first blogs, I have been going back to school to update my computer skills. I was only attending part time so that I could work and continue my class schedule. Fortunately, things have come to fruition and I completed the series of courses from Cisco, who makes about 80% of the switching and routing equipment that connects computers together.

This prepared my to take the exam to qualify as a Cisco Certified Network Associate (CCNA), the entry level for working configuring and managing this equipment. And, after two tries and untold hours of study, I passed the test and now have a certification to put on my resume to show, "Look! See! I really can do this!"

Hence, I am now spending lots of time poking over the results of computerized job searches and applying for a job to start working and put those skills to use.

I can't pretend to have really figured out the modern job market. But, at least all those internet web sites let me look for jobs across several states without spending huge amounts of money and time on the road.

And, searching for a job as a "network engineer" gets results that are better targeted than looking for jobs working with computers, which is pretty much everything these days. But even something like "technical support" can turn up some weird results.

For instance, did you the know that the person who cuts, shampoos and styles your hair (otherwise known as an Associate Salon Designer ) is really working in technical support?

Or, if you're looking for a Computer, Information Technology and Mathematical Job, perhaps you'd like to work for commission as a Lady's Shoe Sales Person? Of course they have to check my email address every time I visit, so it helps to be a little bit tech savvy. Maybe I should have gone to cosmetology school?

And, another one that showed up from one of my searches was a Sephora Product Consultant. I noticed from the job descriptions that, if you work your way up to Sephora Senior Education Consultant, you will need a working knowledge of Microsoft Word which was part of one of my classes.

And, although it may seem so, I'm not trying to poke fun at the people who spend long hours working in these jobs. I need and use their services myself and have spent several years working in retail.

I think primarily it's just a symptom of the vagueness of word search algorithms. And, it's probably better to err on the side of including things the person searching is not looking for rather than leaving out things which they are seeking.

But, it would be nice if the job posting sites could be more specific about the job requirements and let you  focus your search a little bit tighter! It certainly seems feasible from all the questions you have to answer when you actually apply for a position.

Lest you think I have been starving all summer since I haven't posted any recipes, here is my breakfast special this week.

When I was growing up in Oklahoma, I learned to make biscuits and gravy by helping my grandmother roll out the dough on the counter in her kitchen and cut the biscuits with a circular cutter. Of course, that meant there was left over strips of dough from between the circles you cut out. This dough had to be reshaped and rolled out again for cutting.

But, thanks to the power of geometry, we know that a hexagon is a very efficient space-filling shape. So, with this Stainless Steel Hexagon Cutter, you can cut out six biscuits at once with no in-between strips! (There's still the strip around the edge, though.)

So, Monday morning I got ambitious (or perhaps just more interested in cooking than in reading about Microsoft Server 2012) and mixed up some baking powder biscuits with the recipe from my Better Homes & Gardens Cookbook.

Meanwhile, I browned some sausage and made a little basic white gravy with butter, flour, milk, salt and pepper. I liked the results and one of my sons must have agreed, because he finished off the leftovers!

From Tinker Toys and Betsy McCall dolls to Routers and Switches and Networks: Some Thoughts on Learning How to Put Things Together

I am going back to school this summer. I am taking courses in computer programming (C++), Cisco networking and Excel spreadsheet programming. My plan is to complete the courses AND take the certification tests AND get some real kudos that I can add to my resume AND make myself a better candidate for what the people in my exit interview from my last job called a “Dream Job in Computers”.

Last night as I was listening to the lecture in the CISCO Networking Academy Course I (Network Fundamentals), the instructor loaded up the CISCO Packet Tracer program that is a major learning tool for the course. It’s kind of a fun program to play with after you catch onto a few tricks because it lets you drag virtual routers and switches and computers and printers and other things onto a screen and connect them together in different ways. This lets you set up and configure and test a virtual network and get practice making the same choices with the same software interaction you will use setting them up in the real world.

But, when the instructor put a router (represented by a circle) and a couple switches (represented by rectangular boxes) and a couple computers on the screen and connected them with lines representing the different types of Ethernet connections, I was struck by the resemblance to the Tinker Toys that I used to play with as a kid growing up in Oklahoma.

I love putting things together!

Tinker Toys were fun because they came with a little folder with pictures you could try to put them together to match, but you could go on to fit them together in innumerable ways to represent almost anything you could imagine. And, then you could play with them!!!

So, you weren’t stuck pushing the same buttons to get the same few sounds or actions that you get playing with a lot of today’s technologically more sophisticated toys.

But then we got into trying to interact with them. And, this required entering the correct sequence of commands with (almost) the right spelling and syntax (if you get enough of it right you can press the TAB key to fill in the correct spelling for the rest). And, we were trying to follow and replicate that on our computers and I was having trouble reading the commands in the tiny font on the screen projection from the DOS command window on the instructor’s computer. I missed a key step and had to just watch and listen for a while.

Then, the instructor got into a discussion with another student about the pros and cons of doing it in this rather intuitive way that he was using versus the carefully set out instructions in the exercises you can download from the CISCO website.

And, I was reminded of the Betsy McCall cutout dolls that my sisters Ray and Cassie and I used to look forward to cutting out and playing with each month when our mother got the next issue of McCall’s magazine that she subscribed to.

Betsy McCall goes to School

 

Betsy McCall goes  shopping

Here's Betsy McCall

These were our favorite part of the magazine and we would eagerly look for the page in the back where we could cut them out and play with them. They were a bit tricky to cut out, especially the hats with a little line that you had to cut just right so that the hat would fit on Betsy’s head to complete her outfit!

And, you could put them together in different combinations to see what they would look like. 

Occasionally there would be one with a boy doll in it (I think his name was Buster) and our brother could cut him out and play with us.

The modern day equivalent of these is online websites like AZ Dressup http://www.azdressup.com/ 
where I created one of my avatars:

Joni's Second Avatar

And, of course, there are more sophisticated versions like IMVU

  www.imvu.com

where you can put together a huge variety of virtual creations (and spend lots of $$$ buying virtual goodies for them). And then you can show them off to your online friends as you chat and do whatever.

But, this brings me back to the original theme of how do we learn? With very basic toys like alphabet blocks, you can move and arrange them pretty much however you want. But, when you move on to more sophisticated toys like cutout dolls, you need some careful instruction (at least at first) and practice with the scissors to learn how to cut them out and have fun. And, this is good basic training for the more sophisticated operation of cutting out patterns and fabric to make real clothing like blouses and skirts. And, those require more careful and detailed instructions to follow.

And with really sophisticated toys like computers and routers, you have to be very careful and specific with the instructions you give them, or bad things can happen.

And the problem a lot of us in class were having was that we weren’t getting or couldn’t see those detailed instructions on how to get started and get the system to respond to us and so we never got to the intuitive stage of putting them together and trying them out that the instructor was trying to use.

So, it’s not really an issue of one or the other, as the teacher and student were discussing. It has to be both instructions and play.

So, please tell me what you think. Are cutout dolls good training for computer programmers?

Joni