Diversions

Exiting out of IT!

Clickford, Steven M.

(I meant “IT” as an acronym to be silly!)

Life is all about changes. Sometimes changes happen suddenly, not just technology, but people. I have changed over the last few months. I am no longer interested in technology. It’s not to say I am going off the grid, but I may not be purchasing more IT gear in the going forward. It’s not to say I don’t have interest tinkering around with a server or two it’s just that…

  • I do not like the direction Big Tech is going to.
  • I personally hate Microsoft’s roadmap post Win32 (this includes Windows XP/2003/2000 and some of the other pre NT Windows). I am tired of reteaching myself an entire new operating system with the same brand name. Windows 7 to this day makes me swear and get peeved off often figuring out why something can’t work because the thing is so damn secure, even a moderate genius can’t figure it out!
  • I personally am skiddish on Apple’s roadmap as well and how selling phones and internet connected computers will sustain product development. I do not like how Apple has abandoned servers, server appliances, the networking gear, and others alike.
  • I am skiddish on the cloud, and feel that leasing apps will cost me more than spending some apps refreshed every decade on a CapEx (savings account.) I don’t like the consumerization of IT, even in the business sense. Why would a company spend cash in the long run on operating expenditures and get half rate quality of applications only because people want to touch screens more than using a USB rodent and a keyboard?
  • The idea of perpetual upgrading because of “planned obsolesce” because breaking websites is the only way to keep “innovation” afloat by forcing users to upgrade operating systems or buy new hardware to “defend” the small growth the industry makes. 20 years ago it made sense that PCs had to be swapped out every 3 years.
  • AI, social media and other ethical concerns also make me skiddish of the future.
  • People are so happy about the future, but what about jobs?

I’m really tired of messing around with PCs, Macs and other stuff. It’s like a “job” and I do not like how the industry is going all apps, and other glorified garbage for pro-consumer solutions.

I just want to create things now…

*

Vanessa

Clickford, Steven M.

2017 Preface: I had memories of Vanessa, a former para of my high school program. I wrote this as I had developed a special friendship with a staff at my now former day program. She was my sister figure. My only sister figure – ever! Or at least I thought. When I left in November, she has not remained in communication. Vanessa I have not seen in years.

This post is about a paraprofessional from over 11 years ago. Her name is Vanessa and she worked with me over a decade ago. She was an awesome woman. A few years older than I am, kinda of a sisterly figure, a cute looking lady whom I would refer to her as my best friend if only things went a different way. Professionally she was cool, calming, would deescalate my anxiety and was able to have this peer-but-authorative figure only because I knew my boundaries (or at least that’s what I felt back then.)

Well we parted ways as she left GLEC about a year or so after I left my first program there. We had great chemistry and we both got along better than I did with the aforementioned teacher that I previously wrote.

For a while after I was very devastated, it was like loosing a best friend. It was a breakup only because the way GLEC operated wasn’t like other places upon transfers of good professional relations, they follow them. Vanessa was unable to follow me.

As stranger things had happened, it was a couple years ago where my mother and I took me to Manchester to the Mall of New Hampshire to acquire my Mac mini. As we left Best Buy to go and have lunch, we went by one of those photo places. Vanessa working there! But after lunch, we walked by to not see her again. She was working with a customer (a family you know) when we first went by. The following months, I’d try to do walk by. Her name tag and face matched, and she I believed lived in Lawrence.

I’ve known that some paras ether go out of the field altogether and go a 180 in the career sense. That may have happened to Vanessa a couple years ago. If Vanessa was able to follow me to the school to work program, maybe the 21st birthday debacle would’ve been less painful.

There is an individual that kinda meets the above profile in my current day program. I need someone like a Vanessa and I’ve been longing to find a day partner in crime with a multi-year relationship for decades. I hope ether that individual or someone else can fill this void.

It would be an underestimate to say I need someone like her in my day to day life.

🙁