I'm thinking without a degree, you might have to show your skills to employers in a different manner?
Interesting, and perhaps more practical than trying to attend college at this point. Other than just tinkering with Linux and FreeBSD on my own, how could an average stay at home person, such as myself gain enough knowledge to impress an employer? Seems like an interesting path.
maybe create your own platform, like an outconfigured graphical FreeBSD install that's reproducible and a bit universal
Maybe not outside the realms of possiblity, but realistically, from my point of view, taking on a task like this is probably something like a year away, but not impossible. I do have experience creating if statements in Excel, but not much beyound that. I think that I might be able to do it, but not next week.
One idea is to see if you can make an app that can help your previous colleagues with their manufacturing related job (based on what you wished you had when you were working!).
Another instresting idea. Understanding why the application needs to be created may help me better understand the steps I'm taking in creating it, and maybe I can find someone who would want to use it.
At the moment I will assume you are posting from somewhere in States.
The CEO of Ford Motor company just said there is a GREAT shortage of people that understand manufacturing jobs here in States.
Link here: So you (might?) be looking at the right time. There is (A LOT) of computer work in US manufacturing jobs.
Yes, I'm in the US, North Carolina to be exact. There is not a ton of heavy industry in my area, but there is some light industry and government facilities in my area.
if you've found a spark of passion in FreeBSD
I don't know why, but I'm absolutely fascinated by FreeBSD, and from my point of view, it reminds me of taking a complex four-barrell carburator, and then marveling at all of the engineering and workmanship that went into making that carburator work. Not to mention putting it back together, and still having it work properly. I was a little bit disapointed that I accidentally broke my installation of FreeBSD yesterday, by playing around with the nvidia driver, but I think that deep downside I was thrilled that I broke it, because next weekend I can figure out how to fix it, and maybe learn something in the process.
you have any friends or acquaintances in IT, it may be as, or more useful than a degree.
I do have a nephew.......Maybe I'll talk to him in the near future.
change your place to live to some other which allows you to have decent living on what you have as a pension.
I recently moved from California to North Carolina to make my retirement last longer. Not sure where else I could go, maybe North Dakota or Arkansas. Maybe I will do something along those lines, depending upon how things go.
RHCSA is probably quite doable. There are several good books avaialable. There's the Van Vugt and Ghori books. If you have FreeBSD, you can set up RH bhyve VMs quite easily, or use Rocky or Alma. Presently, I think the most current ones are for RHEL9.
There's also some helpful reddit threads about the exam.
Thank you, that is useful information.
Going way off the rails, if you really just need something to do to keep your mind off things and also bring in some money, one of the guys who used to work for me started delivering for Amazon using his own car. It's called Amazon Flex. I know he made something over $50K US/year for the past couple of years but he does it full time. He works when he wants to work but he's also really beat up his car cause they send him out to every farm, village and town you can imagine. It's not for everyone, and I heard it's hard to get into now, but I thought I'd throw that out there.
My neighbor did that, and he said that he wasn't breaking even after he factored in the expenses related to using his own car. However, I get what you're saying, it pays to be open minded, and if things get tight enough, I may do it.
I've run successful R&D projects in the aerospace/defense industries, and even designed spacecraft systems that have successfully flown, yet I cannot find a permanent job
Hmm...if you're having trouble, and it appears that you're a few years younger than me, with a lot more experience, then most likely to rethink my dreams.
it will also be more in-tune with what you are enjoying. Make the certification a way to give your mind a break from some of the stresses.
A bachelor's degree will be too generic to focus in on your actual interests.
Great sounding advice, and perhaps actually obtainable.
Not helped by the UK government doing a trade deal with india last year, allowing 60000 indian IT workers to come here each year on 3-year visas, without paying national insurance tax; essentially that makes them 20% cheaper to employ than an equivalent local.
Yeah, I don't see how this helps anyone born in the UK, but they are doing the same sort of thing in the US also without any regard to how it affects the economy. It's possible that I may just end up plugging away with FreeBSD on my own, without actually doing it as a job.
What sort of repair?
And for training... I wouldn't consider anything more than a 3 or 6 month course at this stage, or perhaps at a stretch a year at the very most, but only if you think it's really going to lead to something real in job terms.
That seems like a reasonable possibility.
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