My name is Dave Reese.
I found the prep article to be informative, and I am going to look at the resources he gave later tonight, and see if I can apply some of them to my study plans.
I'm a an almost 55 years young non-traditional programming student.
I grew up in So. Calif. but I've been living in West Virginia where my father's family is from, for almost 24 years.
I've always loved learning, reading, etc,, and had I stayed on track when I was younger I'd like to think I might have been in a garage somewhere, involved in the early days of tech.
Unfortunately, I got off the education track in my late teens, and didn't get back to school until I was in my 30's.
At 31 in 1997, I transferred to WVSC (now WVSU) as a Communications student..and while managing the student radio station I started looking at streaming audio online as a way to get our little station out to more listeners. At the time I was barely proficient in I.T. related matters. I could email, search on alta vista, and do rudimentary word processing.
I had basically no life, so I devoted a massive amount of time to learning what I needed to know to stream audio. What was a server..a program, or a piece of hardware? (Of course, it turned out it was both)
I wore the guys down the hall in the Electronic Engineering Technology program out with stupid questions, searched extensively on the web, then went back with more questions, etc. and eventually got the station online with streaming audio of live programming as well as archived programming which had been recorded live.
I was using a 486pc to encode audio from the soundboard, I sent it across the hall via the lan to a PII pc in my bosses office and served it from a Xingmp3 server, captured that from the soundcard and simulcast it as Real Audio also. Eventually I moved everything to Shoutcasting in mp3.
I would sit in chat at a Yahoo group called Club Rasta (my show was Reggae formatted), and drop a link, which other chatters could click on, and listen live to songs I played which they requested.
As far as I know, I was the first person to do that type of interactive streaming.
Anyways, along the way I discovered a love for figuring out how to get systems to do my bidding, changed my major, first to E.E.T, and eventually attended Marshall University's community college (now MountWest Community and Technical college) as a transient student, obtaining my MCSE in Win2k in 2002, and then graduating with an A.A.S. in Information Technology.
I have worked in I.T. as a tech, an admin, Database Manager, and an independent I.T. consultant but as the administration side of networking became more centralized I kept looking at programming as an option.
At the heart of it programming was really the nuts and bolts of what I loved, which was still understanding how to make systems do something I wanted them to do
After several major life events, I now find myself once again with basically no life and having come full circle, I am hoping to devote myself to learning programming.
I apologize for the lengthy post, but I have always had a need to give the 'full picture' when describing things...and as you may have noticed, I still enjoy writing also.
(Which is why I started my return to education, originally...as a Communications major)
I have tried starting this path before, but got sidetracked by the aforementioned major life events. I'm hoping to make more progress this time, with the goal of getting a job coding asap.
I look forward to learning and progressing with all of you !
Greets all,
My name is Dave Reese.
I found the prep article to be informative, and I am going to look at the resources he gave later tonight, and see if I can apply some of them to my study plans.
I'm a an almost 55 years young non-traditional programming student.
I grew up in So. Calif. but I've been living in West Virginia where my father's family is from, for almost 24 years.
I've always loved learning, reading, etc,, and had I stayed on track when I was younger I'd like to think I might have been in a garage somewhere, involved in the early days of tech.
Unfortunately, I got off the education track in my late teens, and didn't get back to school until I was in my 30's.
At 31 in 1997, I transferred to WVSC (now WVSU) as a Communications student..and while managing the student radio station I started looking at streaming audio online as a way to get our little station out to more listeners. At the time I was barely proficient in I.T. related matters. I could email, search on alta vista, and do rudimentary word processing.
I had basically no life, so I devoted a massive amount of time to learning what I needed to know to stream audio. What was a server..a program, or a piece of hardware? (Of course, it turned out it was both)
I wore the guys down the hall in the Electronic Engineering Technology program out with stupid questions, searched extensively on the web, then went back with more questions, etc. and eventually got the station online with streaming audio of live programming as well as archived programming which had been recorded live.
I was using a 486pc to encode audio from the soundboard, I sent it across the hall via the lan to a PII pc in my bosses office and served it from a Xingmp3 server, captured that from the soundcard and simulcast it as Real Audio also. Eventually I moved everything to Shoutcasting in mp3.
I would sit in chat at a Yahoo group called Club Rasta (my show was Reggae formatted), and drop a link, which other chatters could click on, and listen live to songs I played which they requested.
As far as I know, I was the first person to do that type of interactive streaming.
Anyways, along the way I discovered a love for figuring out how to get systems to do my bidding, changed my major, first to E.E.T, and eventually attended Marshall University's community college (now MountWest Community and Technical college) as a transient student, obtaining my MCSE in Win2k in 2002, and then graduating with an A.A.S. in Information Technology.
I have worked in I.T. as a tech, an admin, Database Manager, and an independent I.T. consultant but as the administration side of networking became more centralized I kept looking at programming as an option.
At the heart of it programming was really the nuts and bolts of what I loved, which was still understanding how to make systems do something I wanted them to do
After several major life events, I now find myself once again with basically no life and having come full circle, I am hoping to devote myself to learning programming.
I apologize for the lengthy post, but I have always had a need to give the 'full picture' when describing things...and as you may have noticed, I still enjoy writing also.
(Which is why I started my return to education, originally...as a Communications major)
I have tried starting this path before, but got sidetracked by the aforementioned major life events. I'm hoping to make more progress this time, with the goal of getting a job coding asap.
I look forward to learning and progressing with all of you !
Sincerely,
Dave Reese
(a.k.a. Raggamufin)
wvc0d3guy@gmail.com