[Author’s note: another entry about computer repairs. By this time, the school had totally disillusioned me. They had completely lied about the content of the course. At the end, I could not, as promised by them, fix computers. Instead, they kept saying I was not at the end. Well, as far as PC Professor is concerned, I was. Here is another picture of my kitchen table, not the schools mysteriously invisible computer lab.]
[Author's note 2016-04-04: nobody knew it, but it was this computer school scam and another similar complaint I made about Broward Community College that was instrumental in the later investigations into student loan fraud. I've covered it many times, so I'll just say of the class of 35 grown men, I was the only one who had the cajones to stand up and say we had been cheated. The entire purpose of this "computer repair course" was to sucker everyone into signing up for an over expensive college degree.
For the record, I did not specifically complain about the student loan part, but only about the constant pressure to sell you one. I was the only adult in the room that knew it was borderline loonie to enroll in a (then) $24,000 program for a job that paid $10 per hour. Here's a message from beyond the years: I hope all you tough guys who went along like sheeple actually got suckered on this one. Especially the bullshit artist who was after the Paki teacher's pudgy daughter. Dude, that story of her starting medical school was to get her married off. She was already pushing 30.]
It’s just noon and I’m exhausted. First of all, why did I follow the instructions in class on March 18, 2005? The teacher said not to make notes, that we would be doing the exercise so often that it would become boring. I should have ignored him. The exercise was installing the OS on a new disk. He meant a new computer, but in fact it is the same process used on a disk that has been wiped out by the former user. I just don’t know where Mike gets his idea that he can skim over important things and expect everyone to remember every word. To some people, it seems, all facts are created equal.The result is by today I still cannot get Windows 98 SE installed on that Hewlett-Packard from ABC Thrift. I follow what few notes I was able to reconstruct and the text is no help. Both Mike and the text offer directions that assume every step goes by smoothly, which has never yet been the case. It places me in a situation I don’t care for. If you ask Mike for advice, he always reminds you the material was already covered. This puts you in the position where you either have to tell him he didn’t teach it very well or falsely admit you were too dumb to learn it in order to get the answer. The last time I asked a question about what he had just finished saying, I was only told that I “got it backwards”.
That was a curious statement. I’ve gotten things mixed up in my life, but very rarely do I get them outright backwards. He had us create a read-only drive and in that drive create a folder that was read-write. The universities I’ve attended say that due to ‘containership’, a child cannot have more permissions that a parent. He had just taught us differently, and I wanted an explanation. Instead, the only thing I learned is that I’ve “got it backwards”.
From 7:00 AM until noon I tried every possible combination of installing DOS and Windows from the CD, that is, combinations that we did in class. Nothing works, it does not recognize the CD-ROM, although the read light comes on. The computer creates a RAM disk D: that nobody asked for. I want the CD to become drive D:. Typical of the way this class is moving, we have learned exactly what a RAM drive is by definition, but not how to use it, what it is for in practice, and we have certainly not learned how to get rid of it. There are huge gaps present when you can’t get these basics in a computer repair course.
Another thing that pesters me, although this could be my imagination, but the whole class has noticed whenever you ask Mike for advice, he kind of uses this as a mechanism to discover what your motives are and what you are up to, that you would ask. He should stick to just giving the answers. I have no idea whether the next fifty years will be as fair to me as the previous fifty, and therefore I don’t necessarily want or need some stranger from Florida suspicious that I may be installing pirated software. Especially when that stranger has a decidedly bureaucratic mind-set.
What was learned today? I’ve learned to insist on answers early in each class, but that is another matter. The terms ‘domain’ and ‘network’ were getting tossed around as if people just naturally knew what they were. Do you know? When you log on to your computer, are you in a domain, or a network? You can be in one but not the other, you know. You could be in neither. It turns out nobody in the class knew. The glossary definitions did not make much of a distinction, saying they were collections of connected computers. This seems to be a classic example of a situation where nobody wanted to admit they did not really have an idea of terms and it was too late to speak up. No guessing here, tell me the difference.
No, that’s not it. Both terms are computers hooked together with shared files, but that is not the answer. All the computers on a network share a common network name, but the same is true for domains. You’ve got to do way better to pass my course. The answer is the way that security is handled by the computers. Did you know that? A network is where the individual computer looks after it’s own security. In a domain, the system security is handled by a central server computer. Thus, a network is a peer-to-peer network structure, while a domain is a client server arrangement. In a network the password is to log on to your workstation, in a domain the password is to long on to the server. Some systems have both. Again, the difference is how security is implemented.
I should have warned you to skip today’s entry unless you wanted a boring recap of many recent events. A lot of the little things have been simmering for over a month. Take this thought: One of the reasons I chose A+ is because my unemployment only went until May. Computer repair, while difficult, could be learned in the available time if (and probably only if) I did most of it full time. There is probably no chance I will ever have such an opportunity again – to go to school at government expense. Now, I have this strange ability to name computer parts but not fix them. Throw in the first 1% of the quirks present in DOS and Windows, and that is about the limit of what has been taught. In terms of actual repair, it has been a waste of time. Dammit.
No amount of independent study makes much difference, since most of the books come from the same source. I can see how A+ evolved from an effort to give potential technicians a solid background to something quite different but I don’t know what. Five weeks ago we learned the I/O addresses of eight devices. Why? We have never used that information to repair anything, or at all.
So I ask, of what good was the effort of memorizing that table? Apparently there was no reason, except possibly to pass the exam. And that is ridiculous. We have watched the instructor do a bit of troubleshooting, mostly without explanations of what was going on, but we ourselves have never learned any firm and logical systems to repair broken units. While it may be possible to learn a trade or to play the piano by watching someone else do it, that is called apprenticeship. The word is that except for apprenticeship, mankind might have put a man on the moon in the 12th century.
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