Author: Karen

I'm a Gen X eldergeek, currently working in IT and going for my degree in cybersecurity. I'm passionate about photography, vintage inspired fashion, K-Pop, gaming, sci-fi cons, my two doggos, and lots of other assorted oddities. I'm a proud bi liberal feminist, I support LGBTQIA+ rights, believe that Black Lives Matter, and am a firm believer in mental health support. BE NICE OR LEAVE.

never enough.

I mentioned on Mastodon yesterday that I’ve got a craving to just completely wipe this blog and start over. I don’t want to do that, though, because I don’t want to lose all the work that went into my other sites and this one.

But I do feel the need to change some things up. Maybe it’s just because the season has officially changed, maybe it’s just me procrastinating so I don’t have to study. I’m not sure what it is, exactly, but I want to mess with something.

I added a “now” page yesterday to talk about what I’m doing in life these days, and I’m probably going to add an “ideas” page with things I’d like to do with this site or just tinkering online in general. I also want to do a redesign, but I’m not sure what I want to change – I like this site style, but maybe the layout just needs some adjusting. I may move most of my sidebar stuff to separate pages, not sure yet.

But the biggest thing is that I’ve been eyeballing Ghost as a new blog platform. I know, funny how I’m looking at that since WP’s birthday was just yesterday. But I really want to streamline the CMS I’m using, without having to go to a full static site build. (Although learning how to make a site with 11ty is on the ideas list.)

I guess site ownership is like home ownership – you’re always working on where you live.

A+.

I started studying for my CompTIA A+ Core 1 class this weekend. This is harder than I thought. Lots of discussion about cabling and voltages and connector types and speeds and such. All good things to know in the IT field, sure, but realistically…do I need to know ALL of these details? Sure, if I was building an intense gaming desktop system, I may need to be aware of these things, but when it comes to connectors and the like, I don’t really need to tell a Molex from a Molex KK connector, I just need to know where it gets plugged in to and what it’s connected to.

The awful thing is that I’m semi-familiar with these things. I’ve never built a computer from scratch, but I’ve watched Doug so many times and he’s showed me what is what so I have a good general basic idea of what goes where. Although I will say that reading up on this is really making me consider building something, maybe a Linux box? I do need to become more familiar with Linux and I have been considering moving my laptop to a dual-boot system to work with it, but I’m hesitant to do so in case it may cause more problems than solutions later.

I also am noticing that the majority of the things discussed in this class is building DESKTOP PCs, NOT laptops. I wonder if they’re going to get into the internals of laptops. Desktop PCs are becoming less common and most people are moving to laptops, so it makes sense to familiarize what the parts look like in a laptop as well if you’re going for a support certification, which is what the A+ is.

Also…would be nice to see some women in these demonstration videos. Just saying.

some awesome things!

I GOT TICKETS TO SEE ATEEZ IN ATLANTA WITH TWO OF MY BEST FRIENDS. Managed to snag them in today’s presale! I’m looking forward to seeing them live again, they put on such an astounding show and they’re my absolute favorite K-Pop group ever. Not only that, but some very dear friends from my Discord server are also going to come into Atlanta for that week, which means we’re going to have an amazing time seeing each other and hollering about our respective blorbos, biases, and other weird fun things.

I have not only completed all four courses I had in this school term, but I also added a fifth class and passed that exam today! I have eight weeks left in the term so I’m going to focus on my IT Foundations class, which is the first half of the CompTIA A+ certification. I’ve got some good momentum going and I’d rather not lose the drive to move forward I have going right now. Plus, finishing these courses early means I may get to graduate earlier than I expected.

I like this feeling of accomplishment and having things to look forward to over the summer. It’s an enjoyable change.