Hi All, listening to Hans Zimmer on iTunes here – Interstellar Soundtrack and getting frustrated, trying to figure out how to use this blog thingy. What a cool movie (Interstellar) . Especially liked the robots (very original) and the flow of the plot. I thought that the “Mountains” on the one extraterrestrial world was a cool twist and really added a element of drama that made the viewer have to change their train of logic and review their Earthly intuitions.
I think I am going to use this blog as a rambling journal for a while. For me, this is a tool to gather some blog experience and vent. At some point, I ultimately want to utilize this to further my career but as of the present, I haven’t figured out how to do that.
Who am I? My alias “Ratpuke7” is a throwback to the 90’s when creating an online screen name for AOL, I couldn’t think of a name. My friend was “Ratfart7” and he said, “Who the hell would think of Ratfart as a name and I couldn’t imagine 6 prior screen names of the same name”. I thought that his logic was infallible so I chose Ratpuke7 with the same logic. It has stuck ever since.
I am a Software Administrator for a major Steel Fabrication company in the “Greater Chicagoland” area. I hold a Bachelor’s degree in Information Technology and hold a pseudo Physics degree in Materials Science (ill explain that in a minute). In no particular order, I love math, electronics, chemistry, physics, astronomy, drawing, painting, reading, fishing, shooting, martial arts, watching sports, music, photography, and art glass. I would include computers in that list but that is so interwoven into our lives anymore (at least for a software admin) that it just makes me sound old.
When I say a “pseudo degree” in Physics, I mean that I did all the work for my degree at a major Illinois University but apparently never received my grades for 2 of my last senior classes, and hence – a diploma. Now, I found about this little issue during a buyout of a company I worked for during the dot-com bubble where everyone needed to reapply for their job. A background check gets done and I’m called into HR. Ok, so I go to the school to talk to the department chair. He says, that if I can get my teachers to go back and look at my grades, they can apply them and I can get my diploma. As it turns out, he was just placating me. I go see my one professor who remembers me and my work, he goes to his file cabinet pulls out my grades and apologizes. Put in my grade changes immediately. Looking for the second teacher, I find out that she passed away several years ago. Go back to the chair – nothing can be done. Sorry. Now as it turns out, if I would have never taken the class, they would just waive the class for me. However, because I received an “I” (incomplete) in the class which defaulted to an F after 1 year, they cannot waive the class. I have to take another senior level physics class. Now I don’t know about you, but for me – “if you don’t use it, you lose it”. Other than doing some basic regression analysis at my first job, I don’t remember jack about differential equations, much less calculus and charge theory in different coordinate systems. My Physics degree was sacked. So you may ask, why didn’t you ever go after that piece of paper (diploma)? I moved around quite a bit after college and figured that it would be there at my parents house when I thought it important.
So, I chose a different school and went for my BSIT degree, which at this point was my career direction. Most of the classes I never used since it was really geared towards programming and infrastructure both of which were almost outdated or retired by the time I finished. As it turns out, it really didn’t matter since almost everything I have done since school has been replaced from a technological standpoint except TCP/IPv4 which will be retiring soon and replaced by TCP/IPv6, and DNS. Whoda thunk? Remnants from UNIX and the 60’s would still be alive today? I’m not saying that it was a waste, I was learning current technologies but the equivalent of Moore’s law applies to technology – technology doubles every 18 months. Everything I learned was an excellent foundation for my job.
Looking forward to meeting an old friend at the range tonight to blow off some steam in the form of a Para Expert 14.45 1911 – w00t!