IT Insights Blog — training

How was everyone's Thanksgiving? Did you all pack on a pound or two during the once-a-year indulgence of in excess of good food and fantastic deserts? We only do this once per year, right? Smorgasbord City is a nice place to visit, but nobody ever moves in. Everyone is savvy enough to know that we can't just turn every holiday or festive occasion from now until March into an excuse to gorge on calorically dense edibles. Right?

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.

It's a great feeling to take a certification exam, get a passing score, and receive your official documentation, whether paper-and-ink (as has been the tradition for decades) or digital (as is fast becoming the new norm). Getting a certification is no small accomplishment, and anyone who completes the long process should feel justifiably proud of their efforts.