Easy Ways to Take A Cheap or FREE Disney World Cruise or Vacation using Gift cards and does not involve looking at a time share.

This is my method for making the cash I need online to take my family on a very cheap (actually FREE) Disney Vacation. It involves earning the money using online loyalty rewards programs and then using the reward cash to purchase discounted Disney Vacation Gift Cards. These cards can be used to pay for your next planned Disney Vacation by adding them to a DisneyVacation Club account. 

Here are the things you will need to get started (all are FREE to join):

1. Open a Swagbucks account.
2. Open a Perk TV account.
3. Use your current cell phone or acquire one (Android is preferred) that will run the swagbucks and perkTv apps.
4. Use BING daily as your search engine, even if you only use it to fulfill your searches for points.
5. Get a Target RedCard account. This is needed to get the 5% discount when buying the Disney Gift Cards and will take 7-10 days to be delivered to your home. Don’t forget you will need to register the actual physical card at Target.com website on your target web account to get the 5% discount on every gift card purchase online.
6. Have a Paypal account (Pays 1% on all purchases).
7. Open an Ebates account (Pays 1% on all purchases)
8. Open a TopCashBack account. (Pays 1% on all purchases)
9. *Get a Raise.com account to buy discounted gift cards. (Use RAISE75AF code at checkout for new accounts and get $5 off your first $75 purchase) - Use this to buy giftcards at 3-35% off
10. Have a shopkick account and use the app at local Target store.
11. Create a DisneyVacation Club Account (Pays 2% on all funds in the account)

SwagBucks and PerkTV - To earn the money:
Once you have all your accounts created, use Swagbucks and Perktv apps to make cash until you have enough to convert the points into paypal gift cards as rewards. $25 is the minimum to cash out for paypal. If you don’t have a paypal account or can’t get one for whatever reason, cash out your points into Target gift cards. I also wrote a blog on how to get the most Swagbucks points you can daily.

Swagbucks has 4 apps on Android devices (EntertainNow, SwagbucksTV, Moviecli.ps, and sportlyTV). There are only 2 apps available currently for iphone (EntertainNow and SwagbucksTV). These apps will max payout differently on a daily basis. Usually running all 4 apps will get you about 200-240 Swagbucks daily. That is about $2 or more a day. If you go to the swagbucks site and do some of the things they have there, you can increase your totals. Not bad for watching ads and videos on your phone. Plus, meeting your daily swagbucks goal will get you bonus points. Just remember to have your phone in wifi mode or you may be paying costly data overages using the cell data plan.

PerkTv is another app that can be run that will show ads and movie trailers that pay you in points you can redeem for gift cards. It is a little slower than swagbucks to get payouts, but the app runs and builds up points over time. I usually run this after I have maxed out my swagbucks apps for the day. It runs on tablets, nooks and cell phones.

Bing to accelerate Swagbuck earnings or get Target Gift Cards.
Go to Bing daily and do your required amount of searches for points. Some accounts have a limit of 15 computer searches for points you can get doing 30 searches. I have seen others be able to get 30 points a day for 90 searches. Not sure why it is different limits for some than others. You can also get 10 more points using your mobile phone to search on bing 20 times for 10 more bing points. I cash these points out and get swagbucks with them at a discount. There is a limit to how many times you can cash out for swagbucks using Bing, so I will start getting Target cards once I have maxed out my swagbucks option.

Use Reimbursement Sites: Ebates and TopCashBack to link to Raise.com for more savings.
Once you have paypal cash in your paypal account, go to Ebates.com and search by merchant and choose Raise.com. Using Ebates to get to raise.com will give you a greater percentage back when purchasing certain gift cards and an extra 1% cash back on most all other gift card purchases at Raise , except Walmart & Target*. When you are at Raise and have a local Kroger Grocery store in your area, purchase Kroger gift cards. You can usually get Kroger gift cards for 3% off at Raise and Ebates will have specials when you buy Kroger cards linked through to Raise from them.  Another option is to use TopCashBack.com and search for “Raise” to get Target and Walmart gift cards. TopCashBack offers 1% back on Walmart and Target Gift Cards purchased using Raise. You can also buy and use Walmart Cards in-store to purchase Target Gift cards. When you purchase using Paypal, paypal will pay you 1% for using the paypal card (not sure if this is for business card members only).

*Exclusions at Ebates for Raise purchases: Cash Back is not available on gift card purchases under $20. Cash Back cannot be earned on purchases of the following gift cards: Bloomingdale, Target, Walmart, Amazon, Home Depot, Lowe's, Macy's, iTunes, Restaurant.com, Starbucks, Best Buy, Facebook credit, Google Play. 

Use the TargetRedCard account for 5% discount and the Target Gift Cards to purchase Disney Gift Cards
Once you have a few Target gift cards, you can go to a Target store near you or online (use 4 Gift cards at a time online per purchase) and purchase Disney gift cards. Buy This gift card. Don’t buy the Disney Gift Card STORE cards. I think the limit is 3 Disney Gift Cards per transaction for $150 total ($50 each). Using your Target RedCard, you will get an extra 5% off your purchase. If you purchase online, go through the Shop button at Swagbucks to see if you can get Swagbucks for making your purchase. If you go into store, use an app called shopkick and get points back for giftcards for being in store.

ShopAtHome.com & Sam's Club using Walmart Gift Cards
In the event that Target runs out of Disney Gift card stock (which seems to happen periodically), you can use Walmart Gift Cards at Sam's Club Online and buy the $150 3/$50 Disney Card for a discount of $142.98. By going to ShopatHome.com first and searching for Sam's Club, you can save an extra 3% on your Sam's Club online purchase. Also, I have been told you can use shopathome.com before going to target, but you will need to add an item like shampoo to your cart to get the 2.5 - 4% using gift cards.

ShopKick
I can’t tell you much about shopkick app as I don’t have a Target Store in my area. However, I understand that you can earn more giftcards by using it when you are in a store, like Target, that uses shopkick app.

Add Disney Gift Card amounts to your Disney Vacation Club account
Once you have the Disney Gift Cards in your hands, use the numbers on the cards and add them to your DisneyVacation Club account. DisneyVacation Club account will give you a $20 Disney Gift Card for every $1000 you save in your account. Basically, giving you 2% return on your vacation investment. Once you have enough cash in your Disney Vacation club account to purchase the vacation you want, take it and enjoy!

Summary

• Make the money for vacation using Swagbucks and Perk TV (or you can use the money you normally budget for vacation).
• Use Bing Search account to earn points to redeem for extra Swagbucks or Target gift cards.
• Use cashback reimbursement sites that will reimburse you 1% of your giftcard purchases for linking to Raise.com. Use Topcashback and link to Raise for Walmart and Target gift cards. Use ebates for Kroger and all other gift card purchases. Use Walmart and Kroger giftcards to buy Target gift cards.
• Once you have purchased Target Gift cards, use your Target RedCard account for an extra 5% to buy Disney Gift Cards.
• Put your Disney Gift Card numbers into your Disney Account and collect another 2% toward your vacation.

This method should get you a Disney vacation at well above 10% or more off regular Disney prices and it should be mostly free if you are using only perktv and swagbucks. You have the option to use your own money and add to it to take a more expensive vacation through Disney. Just remember to use the gift card route to extend your savings.

Google Chrome SSL Error

Ran across a Google Chrome install that would not open and go anywhere. Only gave an https SSL error when it opened or tried to browse websites. Internet Explorer was working fine. After uninstalling it and then reinstalling it and having the same issues, I looked in the Internet Options under CONTENT and CERTIFICATES. under the Untrusted Publishers tab, google was listed twice. I removed those two entries, closed chrome and opened it and it worked again. Not sure why this worked or why google.com was untrusted, but this worked for me.

Installed battery may not be properly connected error - Sony Vaio

ERROR: The installed battery may not be properly connected to the computer or may not be compatible with the computer.

Had this error pop up on a Sony Vaio laptop the other day. Found out it is due to replacing the battery with a non-sony replacement or the program not recognizing the sony battery correctly. The message wants you to hibernate and then reinstall and that does not fix it. The problem can be fixed by going into startup and disabling a program called "ISB Utility".

In Windows 7, go to Start and type "msconfig" and ENTER
SELECT the Startup tab
Uncheck ISB Utility
Close MSCONFIG and Reboot.

Maximize Your Swagbucks Earnings

If you use Swagbucks, you know how awesome it is to earn enough Swagbucks to start getting giftcards. I was on it for nearly a year before I started finding ways to maximize my time while using Swagbucks. I would look at that daily goal meter and just think there was no way I was every going to reach the goal, so I would just get a few Swagbucks (aka: SB) a day and not even try for the larger goals. Finally, I started trying to figure out how to maximize my time. I joined Swagbucks groups on facebook. I picked up tips along the way from various sources that helped me out. If you use Swagbucks occasionally, I hope this little tutorial will help you get the most out of your swag time. If you are not a member of Swagbucks, you are missing out on a great opportunity to make some serious giftcard cash. As any current member will tell you, it is real and it works. Click this link to start earning.

1. Download the swagbucks apps to your phone. Earn 200-240 SB on your phone daily wherever you are. This is by far the EASIEST method to earning SwagBucks. Android Apps are SwagbucksTV, EntertainNow, MovieCli.ps, and Sportly.TV) Iphone only has SwagbucksTV and EntertainNow apps. These apps run by themselves and rarely need you to click on them.

2. Make all of your favorites or bookmarks into Swagbucks searches. You have sites in your favorites or bookmarks that you probably visit everyday. Replace these favorites with a Swagbucks search of the bookmark and always have a chance of winning Swagbucks from search. You do this by going to Swagbucks search and typing your bookmark address (ex. www.msn.com). When it completes the search, copy the entire URL address (http://search.swagbucks.com/?t=w&p=1&q=msn.com) and replace this address in your favorites for what you were using. Now when you click on it in your favorites bar, it will search Swagbucks for msn.com and you only need to click the found msn.com in the search list below to go to your bookmark.

3. Change your homepage. As with #2 above, you can change your homepage to a Swagbucks search and up your chances of earning SB every time you open your browser.

4. Do the daily poll and NOSO (No Obligation Special Offers). You get 3 points just for clicking on the left side of the main Swagbucks page for these. You can skip through the NOSO if you wish and go to the end where you have to fill in the captcha for your 2 points.

5. Play games. At the top bar at Swagbucks site is a button labeled "Games". You can play the free games and get rewarded every two games you play for 2 SB. I play swag jump and play until I get about 1500 points in game (about 5 seconds), then stop. Every two times you play the game, you will get 2 SB up to the limit of 10 SB per day. After 10 SB, you will no longer get anymore SB for playing games for that day.

6. Referrals. Under the referrals section, refer your friends to swagbucks and get bonus swagbucks when they search and win and get 1% of every swagbuck they earn.

7. Use Chrome or Firefox and get the extension. I love chrome web browser and the chrome Swagbucks extension is a God send. You can get it from Swagbucks site under Discover Extension or through the Google chrome app store. You get 1 point just for opening your browser with it installed. It will also alert you when there is a SB code available. The best part, you can use it to open Swagbucks TV and have it open in a separate window beside your normal browsing. I open it and unlock it from the browser (using the double squares) and keep it open almost all day while I work and surf the web. When I see that it needs to be clicked for the next video, it is easily available to click and continue on until it needs me to click again.

8. Check your SwagBucks inbox. There is usually a banner at the top for 2 SB for watching 5 videos. This changes from time to time but has been fairly consistent with opportunities lately. Almost unlimited times you can go back to your inbox and keep doing it. Very rarely do I not find it there.

9. Surveys. This one is HUGE when you are eligible for them. Even if you are not, they will give you a few points for trying to become eligible to answer surveys.

10. Shopping. If you are going to shop online, you might as well try the Swagbucks option first. Whatever I am shopping for, SwagBucks usually has some affiliate offering it so I can get SB for buying it through the SwagBucks link.

11. Hit your daily goals. You will see a daily SB meter. It will have 2 goals for you to try and meet. The first one is usually pretty reasonable if you have done the steps listed here. The secondary goal will pop up once you have completed the first goal. If you meet one or both of these goals, you will get rewarded the bonus bucks on the 5th of each month. Hit your daily goal consecutively every day and you can get even more points.

12. Join a facebook group with other swagbucks enthusiasts. They will help keep you alerted when a new code pops up or when they have found a great tip to share on earning more. I prefer https://www.facebook.com/groups/Swaggernauts/ awesome group of people who enjoy swagbucks.

Follow these tips and you will be meeting your daily goals easily and accumulating gift cards like a boss.

Forge of Empires Strategy & Tips (A guide for the beginning noob)

Forge Of Empires Strategy and Tips

This is a quick, simple write-up I did for my guild in Forge of Empires for newer players. It is assumed you have a little bit of playing experience and want to really fine tune your playing time on FoE. I am not the end all authority on the game, but I am pretty good and I have never dropped any cash for diamonds to accelerate progress. If you do want to pay for diamonds to upgrade and get big quick WITHOUT using your own money, then check out swagbucks. I use it daily to accumulate points for $25 Paypal gift cards. You can use these Paypal gift cards and spend them on Forge of Empires or whatever you like. Yes it is real and it is free. Basically, watching a few videos to be rewarded points. Hope it helps and I welcome any feedback that may improve everyone's playing time on FoE.

1. Follow the donate strategy early. Some call it the Diamond mining strategy, some call it the donate strategy. I call it smart. The donate strategy is when you start off in bronze age (works for other ages too) and build lots of huts for coins, plus 2 potteries and 2 blacksmiths. Abort all the quests you can UNTIL you get to the gather coins quest from the jester. This will be a random reward quest. The more huts you have, the quicker you can get the coins together. Once the quest is complete (1800 coins), you get a random prize and you can KEEP your gathered coins. Usually it is coins or supplies, sometimes it is diamonds, goods or FP packs. Lately, it has been mostly goods. However, once the quest is complete...IT WILL REPEAT. Cycle through the quests and abort again until you get to the coin quest. If you have built 2 pottery and 2 blacksmiths, you can actually accept those quests for random gifts too. It will asks for two 24hr production gifts from those suppliers. I do those everyday and get MORE random gifts. Also, you can do the quest for using FP (Forge Points). All told you can repeat the quest infinitely until you advance in age (keep reading for my thoughts on this and why not to do it) or until you do the research 2 tech quest(DON'T DO THIS QUEST). So keep aborting and hitting the random gifts. save the FP packages for another tip I will give you later (see tip#6). 

2. Do not advance in age until you are ready. You need to know that there are bullies out there like me who will take your stuff. I prey on the weak and those who refuse to defend the goodies. In my profile you will notice that if you don't want to get plundered (who does?) send me a friend request or beef up your defense. I don't want to be a bully but if you leave your stuff guarded by a couple of stick tossers, I am taking your groceries. Best things to build in bronze are either 2 spear chuckers or 2 slingers bldgs. That give you 8 of either troop you decide to make. I like using 8 slingers in bronze. Small buildings, relatively cheap and quick soldiers who can kill from a distance. You can pick off tons of neighbors small troops with 8 slingers without sustaining any damage. This is also a good way to learn how battle mechanics on the battlefield work. If people complain about how you plundered their 20 lumber they had been saving, tell them to invite you to be a friend so you can't attack or kiss your butt and learn how to defend. This is mostly a war game, stop crying. Why should you not advance too early and just wait and gather stuff in your donate strategy? Because your neighborhood will change on Mondays. Sometimes it takes two weeks, but you will see new neighbors eventually. The hoods are arranged so that players are grouped into like technology advancement. If you are still in bronze or iron or whatever, then you will most likely get matched with players who are still in that age too. however, if you wait and keep building and waiting, you can use your forge points that you were going to use advancing in tech on something a bit more useful...(See tip#6).

3. Gather a lot of friends. I don't recommend using your friend invites on your neighbors. Let your neighbors invite you to keep you from plundering so you don't waste your invites on them. I think you are only allowed 80 invites and another 40 you can accept from others (not exactly sure on those numbers). Besides, your neighbors are either going to provide you with plundering time or they are going to join your guild. Why would they join us? Because you are a war-beast and they want the pain to stop and they are unaffiliated with a guild. Yes send GUILD invites to these neighborhood players. You don't want to friend your guildmates, it just waste your friend spaces. Now that you know what to do with neighbors, you need more friends. Go to Global Chat and tell people you are accepting friend requests or that you would like to add more friends. You will get a ton this way. Fill up your friend list as best you can. The more people you have as friends, the more chances you will get of getting blueprints from them through motivating/polishing. 

4. Use your profile page for a reason - Learn how to write on your profile area. You need to tell people what you would like to have done when they visit. Polish, Coins or Supplies and in what order you need them in. Advanced players usually just state PCS or S-C-P. That will tell you the order they prefer. I like to have POLISH as my first option because I like to stay polished and happy. The reason I do this is because I don't keep too many happiness buildings in my city. Why? If you have a big cultural building like a tavern and it gets polished, the happiness DOUBLES saving you much needed building space. If you have happiness at 120% and you have no polishes on your big items, you are wasting space. This is the reason for guildmates and friends as stated before. They will keep you polished and happy with far less buildings needed to maintain the peace. Don't over do it with the small decorations in your town either. Stick with the big stuff. So with stating you need polishing as your first option, visitors will know that you need a polish before anything else gets done. 

5. Never Polish/Motivate (M/P or polivate) STONE AGE ITEMS - It is a debated area that I have done actual research on. You should know that if you want to find a Blueprint (BP) for a Great Building (GB) in a certain age (example Zues in Bronze Age), then you M/P an item in that age and you may get a random chance to find that BP. However, there is the little known secret that there is a counter that on every 100th M/P in whatever age you are in, the counter will give you a BP of that age. If you are in Bronze and you polish 100 Bronze Age(BA) items, you will get a BP. You will still get the random BP pop up here and there, but you guarantee yourself a BP on #100. How can you possibly screw this up? You reset the counter to ZERO when you polish a STONE AGE(SA) item. The counter is going even if you polish upper age items, like Iron Age(IA). You can polish 15 bronze and then 2 Iron age, it will keep it going on each age. When you reach 100 on any age, it will pop a BP. Just say no to stone age m/p. 

6. Use your Forge Points (FP) at Age end. - You have researched all of the technology and reached the end of the age and are still using the donate strategy and not ready to move up yet...what now? You are still earning FP, but not using them to upgrade your tech anymore. Use those FP on Great Building donations of others. Preferably in your guild, but any GB is fine. Your goal is to rank top 5 on someone's GB or at least make rank to win a BP from that GB. I don't advance in age until I have built the GBs from that age or at least have the BP to build them. My other strategy on GB donations...snipe them. Sure some people get all ticked off about snipers, not me. Sniping is when you find a GB that is near ready to give out the rewards and you can slip in and use your FPs to snag that spot that will get the win. This also means using your FP packages you have hoarded from staying in your current age on donation strategy. You use these to boost yourself into the top spot and take the goodies. That is usually a BP or two and more FP packs...that you can use to snipe other GB. You see it feeds itself and is the reason I am usually pretty quick to get my GBs. Know the system, beat the system. Another tip is to figure out how many FP are needed to be the top person, subtracting how many would be needed to complete the GB level vs. the next rank player passing you up on the chain. Advanced stuff and math...figure it out and be a true sniper player. 

7. M/P and GB the right way - You should know that your guildmates are your life blood in this game. You take care of family first. So when a guild mate states they need a particular thing in their profile, you do it. If they state PCS, you polish first, nothing to polish? move on to Coin suppliers next, no coins left, then motivate supplies. In other words, do what they are asking for. Guild polish is not about what you need, it is about your guild. Your friends get polished on what you want them to have. This is your choice on what to m/p. They may ask for a polish first, but you may need to finish a quest for motivate. Not your problem what they state they need, friends get what you want. Neighbors? You should be attacking them for points and plunder. Neighbors are enemies until they join your guild or friend you. No need to m/p them. If you must m/p or in a fit of rage you want to annoy them...you polish 1x1 decorations just for your 20 gold profit. This does not benefit them much at all but still helps you get your gold. Usually I polish like this in my hood when players are higher than me and have a better army. As you m/p your own guild, you may notice requests for a GB in the sticks. GB in the sticks is slang for a GB that just got put on the ground and still have bare bones showing. It is not complete and does not offer much in terms of winning a prize for being the top donor. These are the hardest things to get funded because not many people want to waste an FP on something that will not give them something in return. However, you are here to help your guild and having a GB out of the sticks is important. You should always heed the call to give up just 1 FP to a new GB that is in the sticks. It only takes 40 to get it from sticks to bricks. Once out of the sticks, donations are easy to come by as people want to donate to try and win the blueprints. Help a guildmate out when they ask, you may be the next one to drop a GB and you would want people helping you, right?

8. Trades and your goods - You are going to need a wide range of goods from different ages. Guilds are essential in having goods. Trade with other players without using FP. This may be just my OCD acting up, but I like keeping my goods evened out in numbers across ages. For instance, BA items, keep trading them until you have 100 of each good. Once you start to get out of whack from having more of one or two goods, trade to get them back even. Serves two purposes, you always have a little of something to spare for guildmates in dire need and you don't flood the market with too much of one thing. Once you move up an age or so, you might consider, removing your previous age goods buildings to make room for other things. Say you are in Iron or EMA. Remove the lumber mill that you had in Bronze age. You can always back trade if you end up needing lumber. Also, only build goods buildings that you have a boost for. I cannot emphasize that enough. On your map you will win territory that has a boost for the goods it makes. If it is lumber, build a lumber mill. You are wasting your time making any goods without a boost. Once you have enough of that boosted good, TRADE for the others. 

9. So you think you are ready to move up in age? - Great. Advancement is fun and the ultimate challenge in this game. If you are following my strategy, then you need to get ready to move up. Wait until the hood changes. It will change and you will get paired up with people still in that age. Most likely, you are going to be close to the top in rank of your hood due to points. That is good. The lower minions will be afraid to attack you and you have a large new supply of people to terrorize that are lower than you. While you wait for the hood to change, accumulate money and supplies. Gather at least 50k of money and supplies before you launch. The next age will require an investment for the new buildings you can create. Be ready to spend to upgrade quickly. Have the next age front tech ready to advance before you jump. In other words, research that first level of the next age's tech tree, but DO NOT COMPLETE THE UPGRADE until you are ready. You can use FP to get them all leveled and ready to pop, just wait until all of them are maxed up before you do. Save some FP packs for the jump. You have the first level of tech ready to go, to jump to the next tech tree leve in your new age will require a bunch of FP. Use those FP packs to get you where you want to be. I like high coin houses first, then military buildings, then goods, then supplies in that order. Get your military up so you can start competing in the PVP tower and get some medals. You can add just one of the new age soldiers to your current lower age attack group to get points in a higher tower until you have your new age army at full speed.

SwagBucks, Bing & Gifthulk - Money for Nothing

Use your computer to get something for nothing. You should know about SwagBucks, Bing Search & Gifthulk.
What person is not interested in getting stuff for free? I spend a lot of my time looking at a computer screen on a daily basis. Not sure how but I somehow stumbled across swagbucks. I must have registered for something and it signed me up for a swagbucks account. Either way, I forgot about it and never really used it. One day while checking my spam email address, I saw that swagbucks was giving away 90 swagbucks because it was my birthday. Never heard of them, so I thought I would see what I could get for 90 swagbucks. That is when I started to learn more about swagbucks.
What is SwagBucks?
SwagBucks is a loyalty rewards program. You can earn swagbucks from watching videos, searching the web, doing surveys, shopping, etc. Being overly suspicious, I thought I would give it a try because it just seemed too good to be true. Turns out it didn't take but a few searches for a few days before I was able to get my first gift card, a $5 Amazon.com gift card. Then it only took a few more days to get another one. In just a few short weeks, I have been able to get $20 in Amazon gift cards, just doing what I normally do anyway. I will keep on until I get enough to buy some big purchases for Christmas presents. It is real easy to get the bucks and I am thrilled to have come across it. You know there is another way to get more swagbucks? Yes, referring others to join. Anyway, swagbucks offers tons of gift cards and other things to spend your bucks on. Plus it is easy to earn the swagbucks. Win-win situation if you ask me. Try them out.
Bing Search
Bing also pays you in points you can use on gift cards. Sign up, search a few times everyday and get points. Free is almost always good. Sign up here (insert shameless referral plug and clickable link here)
Gifthulk
Basically, the same premise as Swagbucks. Surveys, watching videos and searches get you hulk credits for gift cards. Gifthulk

Backstory and History

Backstory & History
I have worked with computers since I was 8 years old back in the early 1980s. I got my first Commodore 64 and the obsession began. I spent many hours writing code to play simple games on that machine copied directly from coding magazines of the day. From these examples, I was able to help write a simple tax program for my father's business that helped him print tax records. I didn't like all the typing and coding but I knew enough about it to be useful. I began to find that I really enjoyed fixing and upgrading the hardware.
I was able to work on computers during high school years in the late 80s and was able to take classes for Diversified technologies as a senior in high school. Every day we were allowed to go to the local community college as a part of our high school curriculum and learn outside of the normal classroom studies. My tech class was geared to electronics, robotics, computers and industrial engineering. It was 90 minutes of daily bliss in my boring school day. That one class helped me get many jobs early in my life.
After High School
I attended community college for one semester and just didn't connect with the college life. I quickly found myself bored from what seemed like a glorified high school agenda again. Nothing new, same old stuff. I dropped out of college and started working various jobs. It wasn't until I was able to land a data entry job for the State of Mississippi that I was able to get my foot in the door in computers. At this time of my life, desktop computers were just starting to become popular with business and government agencies. Since I had some knowledge from my technology class on computers, I was hired. I did the daily work doing data entry and helping others learn how to do a few things on the computers that were less skilled. The great part of this job was that they offered to pay for employees to take courses that would help them develop new skills. So naturally, I took courses in computer certification. These certifications helped me to get better jobs in computer industry until I finally was able to fix and upgrade computers full time with a limited college education.
Currently
I now work as a contractor for the Army as a computer specialist. My day is filled with problems to solve and I enjoy making things work. Many times it is trial and error and thinking outside the box for a solution. Most of the time, it is knowing how to "google" for the fix.I have come across many complex scenarios and errors and have fixed them all. I thought I would start sharing those fixes here in a blog.