This past week, I’ve been taking an LPI 1 certification course and getting a better grounding in the fundamentals of Linux systems. In a previous life, I was a very junior sysadmin for a friend’s webhosting firm. I’m already learning stuff that I wish I had known then (such as how to do a major backup without crashing the whole system). Back then, I pretty much taught myself all the tricks I know by reading the man and info pages on the commands I was running and by hanging around /. So, my education was definitely spotty and lacking in the basics.
For instance, I never really understood what the chmod command did properly. Sure, I knew that if I said “chmod -R 777” it would make the directory readable, writable, and executable by everyone on Earth. I knew that most directories should be set to 755 or 775 but I didn’t really understand what it meant until my instructor broke down the binary for me. When the lightbulb lit up, I was staggered. When he turned around and showed us a MUCH easier way to do the exact same thing without having to memorize binary number sequences and do the math, I wanted to hunt down and shoot the guys who started trying to teach me Linux for not showing me the non-mathematical method.
What am I hoping to do with this training? Well, if all else fails, I’ll come out of this LPI 1 and 2 certified and that opens up access to a wider range of jobs for me. I may also come out of this with a degree in law which opens up even more jobs. My mid-future plans will open up yet even more jobs. By the time I’m done with this, I think the only things I won’t qualify for will be things like practicing medicine, building physical structures, and being Pope.
The economy sucks right now so I’m hoping that the more diverse my skillsets are, the better chance I’ll have of landing a decently paying job if my current plans go to /dev/null.
And now, back to finishing up the update to Alayne’s Story and the next chapter on Midnight of Lanar’ya.
