Tradecrafts provide freedom

Anything to do with the traditional world of get a degree, get a job as well as its alternatives
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TheRedHare
Posts: 202
Joined: Tue Dec 20, 2016 4:40 pm
Location: Atlanta, GA

Tradecrafts provide freedom

Post by TheRedHare »

Today I encountered a guy who stopped by my apartment building to fix the apartment's internet issue (he's my property managers friend). He walked through my room and made a comment about my computer which I had built back in high school. After some technobabble was exchanged I started to ask him what he does for a living. He said he was electrician, but he does pretty much any kind of repair work. He then proceeded to tell me about how things are just a bunch of different systems that are interconnected. I became interested because like most of us on this forum, we all tend to think like that. He was a retired army trauma medic. He said he got tired of that and then learned about networking and electrical work while on a construction job. Bottom line is that the guy new a lot about a lot haha and taught himself most of what he knows. Construction, electrical work, computer networking, programming, auto mechanics and anatomy....this is at least what we talked about and there is no telling what else he knew. The guy was like a genuine renaissance man. He runs his own business by basically selling himself as a network technician, and electrician. He works when he wants and makes bank on doing simple repair work to lazy people who don't take the time to learn it themselves.

I could see it to where you build up your repair work skills, learn a trade (welding, mechanics, electrical, pluming, carpentry), and then start building a network of people that know who to contact when they need repair work. This is very flexible as you can take as much work or as little as you want. You are also building up skills that are very useful and practical. You'd be able to construct you're own house by knowing what sort of set up you want and then hire additional help when needed. This is something I'm considering. He told me that you could start off as a basic Cisco network technician and work your way from there. Technician work is easy as you would only need to put down wires, connect them, and then dial in the parameters on Cisco equipment.

edit: more on the systems part: because this was super interesting. He said like most things humans make, they make it out of our own basic construct -for example, with pluming, their are inflows and outflows....just like the human body. Like computers, you have a cooling system (sweat glands) , and a central processing system (brain)....most things that we create are all like this. He said that once you can understand that, you can break down most anything.
Last edited by TheRedHare on Sun Jan 15, 2017 8:38 pm, edited 1 time in total.

OTCW
Posts: 437
Joined: Thu Mar 31, 2011 12:55 am

Re: Tradecrafts provide freedom

Post by OTCW »

See if you can work for him part time outside your day job? He may appreciate a guy who can do the grunt work and wants to learn.

TheRedHare
Posts: 202
Joined: Tue Dec 20, 2016 4:40 pm
Location: Atlanta, GA

Re: Tradecrafts provide freedom

Post by TheRedHare »

OTCW wrote:See if you can work for him part time outside your day job? He may appreciate a guy who can do the grunt work and wants to learn.
My thoughts exactly.

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