I Have Found My Happy Place

in the IT field that is.

I can't believe one year have already passed since my on-the-job training. It was hard to adjust at first. Leia and I had a rough start. The only thing that kept us going was knowing that we were living in a very beautiful subdivision for free, we get to eat in almost all restaurants/food chain in the nearby SM every weekend, and I get to wear (and buy new clothes for) corporate attire (which honestly, really makes me feel happy. :).Despite all the stresses, the endless photocopy jobs, and the little trouble we went through during that 250-hour OJT, I am so thankful because I learned a lot (both IT-related and not). Since the call center I had my internship on was catering technical support for Linksys devices, and we were assigned in the Training department, we get to listen to the lectures and before our intrernship ended, we had a special mini-lecture series from the trainers there. We also get to harness our computer troubleshooting and reformatting skills, plus a lot of tips and tricks in computer security from our boss, the lab administrator of the training lab. So yeah, that was my first time to be exposed to networking devices, and learn how to configure routers and all. We also did an inventory of all the networking devices there so up until now, I am still a bit familiar with the model numbers of some of the devices. Haha! I actually enjoyed the training and I'm happy that I learned a lot during our OJT.

Then I took up Network Administration as an elective. And the rest is history. Haha! I fell inlove with the subject. Our teacher also inspires me and my classmates a lot. His encouraging stories give me hope and patience to endure BSIT, a course I never liked ever since I realized it was not as easy as I thought and flunked my first major subject. Yesterday, we had a meeting. Our teacher wanted to confirm who are the ones who are really committed to join the review and take the exam. I never thought it would be an inspirational talk kind of meeting. Haha! His stories about people he trained who are now at the peak of their careers now and of course stories of his own life of course. Imagine, there are only more or less 30,000 people in the world who passed the CCIE exam of Cisco. Wouldn't it be nice to be known as one of the 30,000 elite and unique people on earth? We are only gearing up for the CCNA. I'm not aiming for the CCIE yet. But this is already a big accomplishment and a big stepping stone for me and my classmates. For me, I'm just loving networks more and more now. Partly because of the demand of network engineers abroad, and partly because all this time I thought I can never love IT and now, here comes a field I know I enjoy studying and will still enjoy studying in the future. No matter what happens, if I go that far or not, this step is a very crucial part of my studies so I really need to do good. I want my dad to be proud of me. Review classes will start soon and I'm excited and nervous at the same time. So wish me luck in this endeavor.

Where is RJ-45?

Whew. I have to admit I hate attending make-up classes because most of the time, if not all the time, they're boring. I also hate waking up early on Saturdays because it's my me-time. It's the time when I stay in bed almost whole morning and just get up when I want to eat and take a bath. It's been two Saturdays now that we've been having make-up classes for our Computer Networks subject. Even though this is what I want to Major in IT, it's not an exception when it comes to taking away my me-time. It's not that boring though compared to Bio classes but still..

Well, still, I had to deal with it.

Today's class was very frustrating. We had to crimp three UTP (unshielded twisted pair) cables for our hands-on exam. Yesterday, I was pretty excited for this. But dang, I didn't know it would be hard and FRUSTRATING!! No wonder Network Technicians get paid Php1000 for crimping just one cable. hahaha! It's hard aligning those color-coded copper wires to the slots of the RJ-45. When you cut it, it's straight but when you put it in the RJ-45, some wires fit and some are too short to reach the end of the jack. So what you're gonna do is to cut it again. I guess, my one-meter cable lost 1/4 of its length because I couldn't do it right. Phew. Such a clutz. Good thing I'm not the only one. hahaha! A lot of us were whining. After you align the color-coded wires correctly, you'll crimp it and viola, - a crimped UTP cable. But it's not yet ready to use for connecting your networking devices, you still need to test it. And when it fails to function using the tester, you'll have to do it again - cut a portion of the cable that is connected to the RJ-45 and bye bye RJ-45, you're now a garbage! We were only provided 6 RJ-45s, just enough for making 3 cables - the straight-thru, the crossover, and the rollover cables. So... saying bye-bye to an RJ-45 is really painful. hahaha!


It was a busy afternoon. We were like busy buzzing bees packed in the inadequately air-conditioned classroom. Everywhere you go in the room, you'll hear people saying, "where's the stripper?" or exclaiming, "hey, who took the scissors??" But what'll really sting your ears would be, "Oh, no. Where's my RJ-45???" Well, goodluck with that. hahaha

I actually lost my other cable. I only finished the straight-thru with my friends to rescue me in the midst of my frustrated state. And until now, my thumb still hurts for pushing the wires just to fit it into that RJ-45. Good thing our teacher said that submitting one working cable would be fine. I was saved!