Learn With Harv: Blog

Hi.

I’m Harv.  I’m way overdue for starting one of these blog things, so, here goes.

I live in Canada (Vancouver!).  I was born and raised in Johannesburg, South Africa.  Moved here when I was nine, now I’m 21.

Me!

I began working in the IT industry while in high-school.  I was offered a job administering a 20-something workstation office, with roughly half of them were Macs, the other half, PC’s.  One Mac file server, two physical office locations, and a bunch of printers.  The company makes beautiful custom themed interiors.  They have a killer team- from the creative director, to the general manager, to the graphic designer who doubles as the office octopus, to the drafting techs, all the way down to the carpenters and paint specialist. I was their system/network admin for about five years.

At the same time I was involved with a medium-sized business that wrote software .  It was more or less my first introduction to a corporate, enterprise-level arrangement.  I worked with two great network administrators.  There was an office in Burnaby and another on Vancouver Island.  The company was roughly 200-strong.  At this point high-school became a bit more intense and 6-months in, I was forced to leave.  I really wasn’t a necessity there anyway, I think it was just really convenient to have me around. </ego>

In 2006 I decided to try my hand at being self-employed.  I got together a few IT clients of my own.  I also decided to learn a bit about a few other things- I worked in audio/video installing high-end home theatre systems with some of the most detail oriented, clean, get-it-done-right-the-first-time guys I’ve ever met.  It was fantastic.
I also got involved with a telecom guy who was starting up a company.

At the end though, it wasn’t sustainable.  So in February, 2008 I signed on with an IT services company.  It was just the owner and myself.
Roughly six months later, the owner got an offer from one of our bigger clients that he couldn’t refuse.  He flew to Cape Town, South Africa where he is now happily serving as their regional IT manager.

My journey is just beginning.
I’ve had residential clients, worked on my own, as part of a team, touched the three key OS’s and server variants (Mac OS, Windows, Linux), learned programming languages, and the list goes on.  Most of it has been self-taught.
I’ve recently decided to become certified in something.  Not because I feel I need it, but because I feel it will bring some more value to myself and it’s a bit of a confidence booster.  I’m working towards my MCITP: Enterprise Administrator certification, as well as my Cisco CCNA.
For those that don’t know – MCITP = Microsoft Certified IT Pro.  This is basically the 2008 Server equivalent of previous years’ MCSE.

During my time as a computer tech, I’ve seen so many of the same problems haunt users time and time again.
I have big plans for how LearnWithHarv.com will evolve, but for now, it is simply this;  I am going to make notes on this blog and chronicle my progress, as I work through these two certifications.  I think it can really help people get certified, but I’m not stopping there.  I want to help people with other computer-related problems, and this seems like the perfect way to do it.

So come on, join me; Learn With Harv!