Going back a bit further, I was a line cook to fulfill a work co-op class in my senior year of high school. That experience paid off as I moved on to being a grunt doing various construction work. Mostly concrete walls and flatwork though. The cooking experience helped pay the bills during the winter months when the weather impeded being able to work as well as getting to work. You would be surprised how many taverns can't get a decent cook and are willing to pay (under the table) quite well for one.
A high school friend helped me (BS very well on a resume) get my first computer job for Compaq Tech support via Bell Atlantic Business systems. This was right around when Windows 95 had come out. I still have (somewhere) the 25 floppy diskettes that was the original version of '95 that you could install. After that, it was about 10 years of working several "consultant" positions (ie: glorified temp worker) for other companies including: QVC, Consolidated Rail, Herman Miller, UPS, and my favorite, a local dial up provider. There were others, but those were the learning experience ones. I worked Desktop Support, Help Desk, Field Tech, etc. Desktops, Novell Servers, Windows Servers, Cisco Servers, Mainframe equipment and dummy terminals. Jack of many trades.
Got tired of IT work and took up a job doing cable installations for a while. Went from residential worker, to teacher, to QC, to Lead Tech, and then to Commercial Installer in about 18 months. Did that for the next several years. Got laid off and my wife finally insisted that (and won) for me to go back to school. I started that in January of '10 and took advantage of every semester (including summer 1 and summer 2 half semesters) and by adding 3 more classes to my roster, was able to earn an Associate's by June of '11. (in case I got interrupted and had to go back to work, I thought it would look better to say I had a degree AND was close to a bachelor's, than just saying I almost had a bachelor's) Transferred all but the 3 extra classes to a university i n June of '11, and "walked" by April of '13. I had talked to an IBM rep at a career fair a few months before and ended up accepting a job there in July of '13. I have been there since working a few projects until I settled on to the one I'm on now.
You now know more of me than you wanted to.
