The road to CompTIA A+ Certification

I spent the last 11 years of my life gutting and building computers.  Computers and gaming have always been two of my favorite hobbies, so when I decided to go into the world of gaming and hopefully become the next Ken Levine, I was told that to get there, I would have to start near the bottom.  Not the absolute bottom; that’s where I am right now.  I’m that guy who fixes your Dell in his garage while simultaneously downloading the latest Jesse Jane porn on his WiFi connection.  The thing is, people like me are entirely capable of doing such work; we just don’t have that little piece of paper saying that we are qualified.

So when Alan badgered me last year at PAX to take the A+ Certification Exams and actually start a career in the world of computer and gaming technologies, I thought to myself: that’s a great-ass idea!  I can buy a couple of books, score some training DVDs off Ebay, and teach myself at home the inner workings of the PC.  I am well on my way, just by having this idea planted in my head, to leaving my dead-end job and persuing my dream of designing video games.

So I got some videos from CBT Nuggets.  I bought the latest edition of Mike Meyer’s All-In-One A+ Guide.  I began studying every chance I got, and am now studying every night at my workplace.  And do you know what I discovered about computers?  They are an absolute and complete pain in the ass.  I know most of the stuff in this book, but when it comes to the the minute details about the things I thought I knew that are required by CompTIA… I realize that I really can carry a migraine around for more than a few days at a time.

So as I write this, I am officially 700 pages into an 1100 page book, and am trying to teach myself binary code and doing my best to memorize which IRQ is designated to the serial port where my girlfriend plugs in her biometric vibrator.  And as I go along on this seemingly endless, tiring, and absolutely jacked-up journey to a new career I plan to keep everyone updated.  Hopefully someone somewhere will be inspired.  Inspired to go to college and not try to do it from home.  Shit.