The idea behind the title of my blog is that nebulae are where stars are born. So, too, I want to become a star in my new career. I came from an electronics background, but have discovered that this industry is chock full of people with all kinds of previous experience. For example, E-g has a CPA amongst our ranks and my own brother has a bachelor’s in mechanical engineering technology. I can only imagine that others, like me, who have converted to the IT field had an experience similar to mine. (Or maybe not, I suppose I’ve never done any real research on the matter!)
I have always been great at computers. I even took BASIC programming a couple of times in school. Back then the main machines to work on were the Tandy TRS-80s (more commonly known as Trash 80s). My father also brought home a Texas Instruments TI-99 that my brother and I played games on (Parsec anyone?), but also had a command line to program in BASIC. I also took a programming course in C and a couple in digital theory a few years out of high school. For some reason, I always loved making computers do things, even if it was just repeating characters in patterns on the screen, or a simple but comical Q&A program.
Somewhere along the line, however, my interests forked into music and electronics surrounding music. When I was in high school, I was especially interested in car stereos. What could be cooler than having a kickin’ stereo when you are teenager? Wouldn’t you know it, the father of one of my best friends owned a stereo shop.
The rest is history until I decided to go back to school a few years ago to ensure that I set a good example for my kids by earning my degree. Well, there was only one thing I wanted to study, programming. So, here I am, a newbie in a new career at thirty-two. Yet, just like I suspect about others like me, I am not really a newbie. I’ve really been doing this for a long time. It’s kind of a wonder, though, that it has taken me this long to come full circle.
I suppose the point of this long a boring story is that although I am a newbie in experience, I am not a newbie in understanding. It’s been a long time coming for me to find my way to the nebula, but now I can become comfortable in my ethereal surroundings and concentrate on shining as brightly as I can.