IT is IT!

Over the past month, during December 2024, I spent hours and hours and hours, took a break, and then after hours and hours and hours of CompTIA study, I passed the A+ Core I exam in late January on the path to A+ Certification!

Thanks to the good people at Total Seminars I utilized a variety of learning resources, such as the irreplaceable video tutorials led by Mike Myers. I also purchased the A+ Certification, 11th Edition hardcover book, and while I read a good part of the 1,000-page tome, I relied mostly on Myers’s breathtaking presentations.

There are so many different types of USB connections you have to know for the A+ Core 1 exam such as USB 3.0 A, 3.0 B and USB 3.0 Mini/Micro, and also USB 2.0 speeds!

Myers introduced the segment with chants of “U……S……B, U….S……B, U…..S….B!”

And then when he shifted to Apple, the segment opened with a rendition of AC/DC’s “Thunderstruck!” Thunder…….nana nana thunder!”

Those videos proved pivotal in scoring a 679, surpassing the passing grade of 675!!

Now I have to prepare for A+ Core Exam II, which will entitle me to an A+ Certification should I pass the exam. Taking turns studying for A+ I’ve been deploying my own home network. Last year, early Spring, I built my first PC!

Not knowing anything about how to build a PC from the ground up, I visited a local Micro Center store in Westchester County, New York.

They were just absolutely helpful, equipping me with an MSI motherboard, a Seagate HDD, M.2 SSD, fast and powerful G. Skill 64GB RAM and none the wiser a fast-moving Intel CPU!

I was up and running, well not exactly. I followed some PC-build videos on YouTube and was able to connect most of the major components without issue (applying the thermal paste to the CPU socket wasn’t even, however.)

But eventually I had to visit the helpdesk at Best Buy in Hartsdale, New York and they were terrific. After booting into BIOS and worried about the CPU temperature after the thermal paste application, it showed miraculously that the temp was within range!

They also helped with cleaning up and restoring proper cable management within the Montech Sky case.

I then got the idea, hey, let’s deploy a Windows Server and then have a couple of clients join a Microsoft Active Directory Domain.

That’s where the good folks at Trusted Tech Team all the way out on the left coast in California entered.

I was able to purchase a Windows Server 2022 license, but it turns out that my MSI motherboard proved finicky. I finally troubleshooted the Server 2022 install with an updated Intel chipset software so that my MSI motherboard’s network adapter can reach the Internet via my 1G Internet speed with Verizon FiOS (another undisputed broadband provider!)

But I enjoyed so much agonizing over a PC build, I decided to purchase the components for another PC build with Newegg.com. This time I did my own research, relying mostly on my paid Chat GPT subscription.

This time I went with an all-out server-based ASUS motherboard, high-powered RAM, HDD, SSD and Intel CPU (no external graphics card, though. Games. That’s for the gamers! I have to pass A+ Core II first!).

Now my SOHO network is comprised of a Windows Server 2022, two Windows 11 Pro clients and running a Linux Ubuntu server as a virtual machine on top of Windows Server.

It took some troubleshooting though to make sure that the Ubuntu server was able to join the Windows AD domain. At first Ubuntu couldn’t ping the Windows DNS server, even though Ubuntu “saw” my DNS server on the network.

SOHO in SOHO…not quite!

I am not in SOHO, but I was in Manhattan’s East Side for more than 10 years, but digging now Westchester County!

There’s no shortage of troubleshooting issues with a Windows Server Active Directory domain, but the PC builds, the software installation and configuration and of course the peripherals connected to the network are all good sauce for practicing and passing the A+ Certification exam!