[astroglide]

i advanced by lying mostly. i wasn't qualified to tech at best buy but i figured it out. i wasn't qualified to consult for sure. for example, my first job involved rexx scripts and os/2 at bank of america (nations bank at the time). had no programming experience, even scripting, other than batch files and bbs administration from my house. wasn't really qualified to be a network admin at my first major job either. i always figured i'd get it or i'd get fired. i've been fired a lot but it was over laziness/disinterest.

my current one is the only one where i was pretty ready for what i was doing, but the actual process of growing the company and infrastructure with no help was pretty new. the environment is pretty hardcore too. around 30 employees, but literally hundreds of computers. huge mix of unix (openbsd, freebsd, linux) and windows servers and lots of clusters. i'm in the process of documenting it all now incase i get hit by a bus, and also so i can train an IT consultancy to have some chance of covering the place when i go on vacation. it's crazy how simple things seem to you when it's built on blocks, when you look at it from a top level it's really not something somebody can sit down and grasp like a regular office network.