IT Insights Blog — certification

Several weeks ago, as Hurricane Irma, a Category 5 storm, was making a beeline for Florida, I grew concerned for my IT instructors living in the Miami area. Fortunately, most came through without too much damage. The rest of the state wasn’t as fortunate. As the storm rolled northward, the devastation and flooding became horrific. The preliminary damage estimate for the U.S. already exceeds $50 billion.

You can't get money for nothing — unless you're the guys who sing that one song from the '80s or '90s or whenever it was — and money usually gets you more than, well, nothing. It's always a good idea, however, to try to get the most that your money can purchase. And, as we all know, the price of most things that you can buy with money is more of a suggestion (ever heard the acronym MSRP, or "manufacturer's suggested retail price"?) than a hard-and-fast rule.

In 1991 Noel Vallejo started TestOut Corporation (not its name at the time) to help computer training companies better market and sell IT certification training programs. As demand for these programs grew, one significant hurdle to get over was that many busy professionals lacked the time and means to attend expensive training seminars.

Goblin Valley State Park at the edge of the San Rafael Swell in central Utah has a spooky, otherworldly atmosphere. The extraterrestrial vibe is so strong, in fact, that the makers of the Star Trek-spoofing comedy movie Galaxy Quest went to Goblin Valley to film the scene where Tim Allen's blithely inexperienced "crew" visits a strange planet to locate and recover a "beryllium sphere" to fuel the Thermian exploration vessel where they have become honored guests.

In my last blog, I bragged about my nascent IT repair skills and offered three reasons why Average Joes should tackle computer repairs themselves. What do you do, on the other hand, when your best-efforts just aren’t good enough? Or when you don’t have time to tackle the job? Or maybe you just don’t want to deal with it.