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Father and manufacturing worker making the leap into IT through hands-on learning and certification. Currently studying for CompTIA A+ while building practical skills in Python, networking, and home lab environments. Documenting my journey from freezers to firewalls - one cert at a time.
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It’s been a few weeks since my last post, and I feel that I’ve made a decent amount of progress despite a few roadblocks that I hit along the way. Progress Since My Last Post Wrapped up Chapter 14: Maintaining and Optimizing Operating Systems The f...
The Impact Having a Baby Had On Studying While I was on my paternity leave, I set a lofty goal for myself of studying for 8 hours a day, every day, and getting the absolute most out of the time off work to push myself further towards the goal of gett...
Progress Since My Last Post When I was writing my last blog post, I realized that I was spending a lot of time doing little side-quests. While I was learning a lot of useful skills like Python, prepping my Active Directory learning environment throug...
Leveling Up My IT Skills
Kyle's Journey Into IT
7 posts
Documenting my real-time career shift into IT infrastructure, certifications, and hybrid cloud — sharing the wins, struggles, and lessons as I go.
This week didn’t go quite as planned in terms of book study. That’s not to say that the week wasn’t productive. Between my birthday, our baby shower, work, family time, study time was limited.
This weeks progress included:
Completed Chapter 5
Started Chapter 6
Purchased the Total Seminars Sim and Practice Test Bundle
Discovered that VMWare Workstation Pro is free for personal and educational use, installed it and set up two virtual machines:
Windows 11 Enterprise (evaluation version, 180-day limit)
Windows Server 2025 (evaluation version, 180-day limit)
Installed Visual Studio Code with the following extensions:
PowerShell 7
Python
HTML/CSS
Upgraded my main PC from Windows 10 to Windows 11
Refined my LinkedIn profile to better reflect my journey and focus
Rewrote my resume to include links to both my LinkedIn and this blog
During the beginning of the week, I did a little bit of browsing to see what local jobs actually require at an entry or mid-level. I noticed that a lot of positions desire experience using Windows Server 2025 and Administrative Tools. These are two things that I always assumed would only be able to be taught to me on the job, and that there would be no easy way for me to learn these at home. I was wrong. I learned that anyone can learn Windows Server 2025 and Active Directory right now for free. I am happy to share those resources to you as well:
Microsoft offers evaluation copies of Windows versions to anyone for the purpose of testing, and learning. These installations are valid for 180 days after installation, after which they require a license purchase or a fresh installation in its place.
VMWare was acquired by Broadcom in November of 2023. Part of this acquisition involved making the software available for free to anyone for learning purposes, with the caveat being that you can’t sign up using a Gmail account. You may have to experiment with different e-mail providers before you hit one that is allowed, or you may have to find the installation files through other means (not recommended). Once you make it through the different roadblocks, you will be provided with a feature complete, fully up-to-date version of VMWare Workstation Pro that you can play around with, no license required.
For Active Directory learning, Microsoft offers their own guide via Microsoft Learn. I’ve heard that Professor Messer’s CompTIA A+ and Security+ videos touch on this as well, and that CBT Nuggets’ YouTube videos are a good source as well, but I have yet to look through those myself.
Something I realized as I was going through the material in the book, was that a lot of the content referring to things in Windows 10 were outdated. My main PC was still running Windows 10, and I figured the best way to future proof my learning was to upgrade to Windows 11, especially before support ended. What was meant to start out at a simple in-place upgrade from Windows 10 to 11 quickly turned in to my first time taking the knowledge I learned from my book study and applying that in a real-world environment as I troubleshot a variety of issues relating to MBR to GPT Partition Conversion, Secure Boot, and BIOS Updates, all of which were required for Windows 11 to install. I documented the entire process here: https://blog.kylebouder.dev/uefi-boot-conversion-lab.
The last thing I did was purchase a bulletin board.
When I’m not studying, I spend a lot of time listening to various IT career podcasts on YouTube Music. One of my favorites is The Bearded I.T. Dad Podcast. I highly recommend it to anyone considering a jump into IT. I connect with his story on a very personal level, and the advice from him and his guests are incredibly helpful. Through listening to his guests speak about their various roles in IT, it helped paint a picture of what I want my path to be. Hybrid Cloud Infrastructure Engineer or Architect with working knowledge of PowerShell and Python to help implement and maintain efficient infrastructure solutions. Without this podcast, I would not have had such a clear goal in mind.
One of his guests talked about a concept called the “Hawaiian Vacation”. It’s not necessarily about going to Hawaii (although it could be). It’s about creating a visual reminder right in front of you that you see everyday that reminds you why you are putting all of the work in.
My “Hawaiian Vacation“ bulletin board is hanging up right in front of my desk, full of pictures of the family, notes from the kids, and a picture of them holding up our first ultrasound picture. For me, transitioning into IT isn’t for the money and never will be. Sure, there’s money, especially in cybersecurity, but technology has always been a passion of mine ever since I was a child. I’m not chasing some fancy vacation. I’m chasing stability, meaningful work, and the ability to be home in the evenings. I want to provide my family with every opportunity possible, whether that’s sports, school, or just time together.
That is why I need to make this work. That’s why I’m putting in the effort. And in all honesty, I’m loving every second of it.
Sometimes, life and familial obligations make it difficult to keep up with studying, especially when working full time, on 12 hour night shifts. This week in particular was very busy. We had our baby shower as well and our last family trip before our baby's arrival.
Despite the hectic schedule, I've tried to stay productive in small ways like jotting down notes while I'm on break at work (our breaks were just reduced from 30 to 20 minutes which makes this difficult to manage), or during long car rides. I've generally found that sitting down for a long study session works better for me than doing it in a place with many distractions.
This next week I want to focus primarily on the book and note taking, as well as start using Total Seminars Simulations for chapter review. I may go on some learning side quests if time permits. Right now, I really need to buckle down and continue getting through this book.
Still one dad making the leap into IT. Still going all in, one cert at a time.
You can follow my progress, connect, or reach out anytime over on LinkedIn. I'd love to connect with others on the same path or those a little further ahead.