First Tip of the Day!

I was thinking about starting a new not-a-regular series and calling it “Tip of the Day”. Where I’d highlight something I found, that I thought was interesting.

 

Today’s Tip of the Day is: Humble Bundle.

If you’re into cybersecurity and all things computer like me and you want to improve your personal library, go to humblebundle.com and look under their book bundles. They often have book bundles of 3 – 18 e-books for a donation (suggested donations I’ve seen at $18 or $25). They come in pdf or epub. I’ve seen bundles from PACKT, O’Reilly, and Sybex so far. Not just junk books, but books that are relevant to current certifications and issues.

Resist the urge for piracy and pay for your books (Next Tip article I'll do will be on how to become a book pirate! Arrrrr!). The second-best thing, besides the low price, is that humblebundle.com donates a portion of the proceeds from sales to charity. It’s like double karmic – you didn’t steal and you contributed to charity.

Don’t get taken to the cleaners when paying for books. Expand your personal library with humble bundle! (They should pay me for this paragraph, I sound like an advertisement.) I don't know what their schedule is for putting out new book bundles, so I usually hop over to the site a couple times a week to see if something new is up.

CompTIA Network+ Study Tips

 

How I Studied For and Passed the CompTIA Network+ 008 Certification Exam

This is a brief description of how I studied for and passed the CompTIA Network+ 008 on the first try. I took the exam and passed yesterday after about 2 and a half months of studying.

First I took and passed the CompTIA A+ certification exam(s). I think that they give you some foundational knowledge that helps with Network+.

I started prepping for Network+ specifically a week or so before completing my A+ exam. Here's a list of everything I did that I think helped me to pass.

• Print out and read the official exam objectives from CompTIA.

• Create Anki flash cards with all the acronyms on the exam. I copy and pasted the acronyms from the official exam objectives into ChatGPT and had it produce a list with definitions of each acronyms which I then put into Anki for daily review.

• Review the Anki flash cards EVERY day.

• Professor Messer videos. Over and over and over again. Watch the whole series once. Watch it again. Then watch it when your driving somewhere. Watch them when your working out. Go through his Network+ series repeatedly until you've taken your exam. He's got a new set of videos out for the 009 exam too.

• I took a bootcamp style class from Northern Virginia Community College. The class was 8 hours of lectures and labs for 4 days. It was instructor lead (Professor Nick Pierce) over Zoom and used Certmaster Learn. Make sure to do all the labs and PBQ's in Certmaster. When you get the PBQ's wrong, going back and figuring out the correct answers is a big help in learning to understand things.

• After the bootcamp I went back into Certmaster and re-read each chapter of the online textbook.

• Practice exams. I used the Sybex practice exams. Purchase the Sybex Network+ Study Guide and Practice Exam books and you get access to their online exam test bank. It's about 1200-1500 test questions. I did 20 exam questions everyday. Anything I got wrong, didn't understand, or needed help with I used ChatGPT to explain to me. I also had ChatGPT make additional Anki flashcards to help me with exam topics and concepts I missed.

• The final 2 things I did that I think really helped near the end of my studies were:
•  Jeremy's IT Lab. I got to day 30 of his series. I think that it really helped cement things I had been learning from all the other sources (Thankyou Dr. El Gbouri for pointing me to this resource).
• Professor Messer's Notes. They are an outline of everything and you should read through them for an overview and refresher on everything you've learned.

I didn't do all these things at once. I progressively went through my list above until exam day. Adding and completing things as I went along. Network+ can seem overwhelming. Take it all day-by-day and you will make it through it.

 

LRCC Professor Recommendations

This is just a quick post to either recommend taking or avoiding certain professors at Laurel Ridge Community College. As of my initial writing of this post I've only had 6 professors. I will update each semester as interactions warrant. I'm not going to write details about why to take or avoid the professor in this post (check for details in prior or future blog posts). Feel free to contact me via comments below if you have any questions.

Recommendation: Take 

Dr. Jose Nieves (Intro to Software Design & Programming)
Dr. El Gbouri, Abdessamad (Intro to Networking)
Professor Jamie Coleman (English 112)
Dr. Margaret Ross (Logic)

Dr. George Efi Agbor (Be aware that Dr. Agbor has an accent that can be hard at first for American English speakers to pick up on. Give him some time for your ears to become accustomed to the accent. He's a good professor.)(updated 12/6/2024)

Professor Rebecca Smith-Terry (updated 12/6/2024)

Recommendation: Undecided

Professor Fernando Seminario

Recommendation: Avoid

Dr. James Allen

Dr. Josephine Leach (updated 12/6/2024)

LRCC ITN100 Review

 

LRCC ITN 100 Introduction to Telecommunications Review

"Skynet will remind us: 'you should have written your papers word by word when you had a chance, but instead you helped my AI learn from your mistakes until it owned you[.]'" Dr. Sam.

I love the class and think the instructor is great. As of the initial publishing date I don't have a lot of time to do this review: I'm doing a 'bootcamp' style CompTIA Network+ class this week from Northern Virginia Community College (I will have an upcoming review of professor Nick Pierce and the NOVA CompTIA bootcamps - It's 4 days, 8+ hours a day) so I don't have time to flesh out my ITN 100 review. On top of this, mid-term exams are next week for the 2 classes I'm taking this summer at LRCC and I need to study for those.

This is a review of ITN100 Intro To Networking at Laurel Ridge Community College. The professor is Dr. Abdessamad EL Gbouri ("or Just Dr. Sam)." The quote at the top of the blog from Dr. EL Gbouri typifies the great nature of the professor and the class. It was in the first Module for this weeks lessons where Dr. EL Gbouri was discouraging folks from using AI to write their essays. When I saw it, I knew it needed to headline my review of the class.

Pros:

• Professor is very engaging; often creating multiple videos each week discussing the state of the class and providing a lecture of the material covered that week.

• Plenty of projects and essays that allow you to put concepts into your own words which, in my opinion, helps to learn a subject.

• Multiple attempts on quizzes. I like this. I think it gives you a chance to go find the correct answer to something you got wrong. It encourages seeking out knowledge.

• Multiple videos from other content creators that help explain concepts.

Cons:

• In my opinion, the professor is too easy on grading. I know some people think this should be in the Pro's section.

Tips for studying:

• Print the quizzes out for study later. You can print the quizzes out once you complete them. They make great study material for the exams.

• You are allowed multiple attempts for each quiz. This gives you an excellent opportunity to: 1) see what you've retained, and 2) learn what you missed. At the end of each chapter in the textbook is an index of subjects. You can often use the index to quickly look up the answers choices in each quiz question to find the answer.

• Each week there is a Power Point presentation. The slides can be downloaded. Download the slides. The downloaded slides are great for reviewing the Chapter at a future date.

Criticism

If I could offer 1 criticism for improvement to Dr. El Gbouri, it would be to stop recording his video lectures late at night. He often records his videos after 12 a.m. midnight and he is difficult to hear sometimes.  It sounds like he's talking in a manner to not wake up people who are sleeping. I have to turn the sound up on my computer to 'full' and lord help my ears if some notification comes through with my sound all the way up. That's the only real complaint I have with the class.

Summary

In summary ITN100 is a required and fundamental course for several IT degrees. It can be difficult for someone who has no prior experience with networking/ telecommunications. If that's you, you should find an instructor that is going to effectively teach students new to these concepts well. Professor El Gbouri fits that bill. The professor provides a ton of supplemental material and projects to help students grasp fundamentals. I like the way Dr. El Gbouri engages with the class. At this point I would 100% take another class Dr. El Gbouri teaches.

LRCC ITN260 Review

Updated 8/5/2024

LRCC ITN260 Network Security Basics Review

This blog post provides a review of my experience in the ITN260 Network Security class at Laurel Ridge Community College during the summer of 2024. The course, taught by Dr. James Allen, has had a mix of pros and cons. On the positive side, the assignments are self-paced, the zyBooks material is user-friendly, and Dr. Allen is knowledgeable and personable in live lectures. However, the class has been marred by scheduling errors, poor communication, and mistakes in the midterm exam content. Despite these issues, the class has improved over time, with recent meetings running smoothly. While Dr. Allen has considerable expertise, his course management and communication have significant drawbacks. For me these problems are a big enough turn-off that I want to avoid his classes in the future. Others may find the problems tolerable, or overcome-able, due to Dr. Allen's experience and expertise in the field.

This summer, 2024, I am currently enrolled at Laurel Ridge Community College's ITN260 Network Security Class. Events in the first 2 weeks of class had me wanting to write a poor review. I'm re-writing it as a tepid review of the professor - Dr. James Allen - as of the above posted updated date.

Class instruction is done weekly on Mondays from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. via Zoom.

In short here are the pros and cons of my class experience so far:

Pros:

• Assignments are self-paced. They do have a due date, but we can proceed ahead of schedule as much as we are able to.
• The zyBooks material is easy to use.
• The professor, in person via Zoom, is a likeable fellow and seems quite knowledgeable on the subject matter.
• Dr. Allen uses the internet proficiently to add supplemental material to class lectures.

Cons:

• Scheduling Errors: Incorrectly scheduled Zoom meetings, leading to missed classes and unfair grades. Don't expect grading mistakes to be corrected with any type of urgency. He did not correct my attendance grade until the last day of class (I guess it's better than not correcting it at all, but it just seems like bad management to wait that long).

• Poor Communication: Slow response times, or no responses to emails, exacerbating confusion and frustration.
• Midterm Mistakes: Inclusion of questions from chapters not yet covered, demonstrating a lack of attention to course structure.
• Points assigned to completion objectives in a chapter of the book that does NOT exist (Chapter 20). At the end of class he changed it to a Chapter of LABS that were provided at the end of the book

• He appears to have difficulty navigating and controlling Canvas and the eBook for the class (not able to operate the grading system effectively nor assign dates to assignments properly). He's also not as proficient at operating Zoom as other instructors I've had.

• Despite the ease of use of ZyBooks, it is filled with errors. Some remedial, some significant. Overall I found the errors to be annoying. The errors I did find made me question the overall competency of the material. I caught errors that were somewhat obvious. Because of the nature of the subject matter, to which I am not an expert or adept at, I assume there are more. Errors I found were incorrect links to web pages, questions to material not covered. Questions to material that had yet to be covered. Mixing/ conflating vocabulary/ vernacular terms. 

I'm not going to go into too much detail (as I did in the original version of this blog post) but, as mentioned in the bullets, there was a scheduling snafu with the Zoom meetings. They were incorrectly scheduled for 12 p.m. Mondays instead of 7 - 9 p.m.  Mondays on the second week (despite the college course catalog AND the Professor's syllabus listing the correct dates and times). The professor has since 'owned it' as a 'mistake' and corrected it so that Zoom meetings are being held at the proper time. Personally, I would have claimed it was done on purpose if I were him. The alternative, which apparently is reality, to me implies incompetence (how does a professor NOT know when his class is to be held?).

I've reviewed my blog post with Google's Gemini. It believes my chief complaint with the professor is his pedagogical, or course management, performance; which I believe is accurate. For me it was enough of a turn-off to the learning experience that I would still avoid Professor Allen despite his experience in the field. Someone else may feel this is not a significant hurdle, or may value his experience over whatever administrative issues he may have. Go for it if that's you.

At the bottom of this Post is an example of one of the midterm exam questions from a chapter of the book we had not covered yet. There were many like that. 

The final exam was a mind numbing 200 questions long. It was open book. It took me over 4 hours to complete. I felt the book had inadequately prepared me for many of the questions on the exam. Many of the questions I ended up answering only after eliminating as many wrong answers as I could. There were many questions where you could not find a direct, correlatingly correct answer in the textbook and the best you could do was select the correct (hopefully) answer after eliminating incorrect ones. It was tedious work. Many of the questions required far more comprehensive understanding of topics that were only briefly touched on in the textbook. I got a B on the exam (I got a B on the midterm too). Without knowing how the exam questions are selected/ created it's hard to ascribe the problems with the exam to the professor, or to the course material/ content.

I apologize for the differences in perspective throughout the blog. I originally wrote it in the 2nd/ 3rd week of class and updated it over time. At the end of class I tried to come back and tidy it up and summarize my experience, while leaving some of my original thoughts in place.

Why Does LRCC Gatekeep Its CompTIA CE Classes

Why Does LRCC Gatekeep Its CompTIA A+  CE Classes Behind a Graduation Requirement?

I'm getting ready to start Finals week at LRCC (Laurel Ridge Community College). I started my ITP100 capstone project early without the full set of instructions. Why am I doing all this work ahead of time based only on the grading rubric the professor made available? Time crunch. Wise or not, I signed up for a CompTIA A+ class from NOVA's (Northern Virginia Community College) continuing education department that runs Tue. - Fri., 9 a.m. to 5:30 p.m., for the next 2 weeks. I finished my ITE 152 class 2 months early because we were allowed to self pace. English 112 - as much as I hate English - I'm proficient and fast at it and turned my final project in last week for grading. Logic (PHIL100) class and ITP100 are all I have left. Getting the bulk of the work done for this class, where all I have to do is modify my code to conform to the actual instructions should be relatively easy.

And "why?" might you ask did I sign up for this class at NOVA? I did not verify the information provided on LRCC's website, but on their website it says if you want to take this same CompTIA class as I am from NOVA, you first have to have completed either a different CompTIA certificate or an A.A.S. in an IT field. Yes, that's correct. LRCC is the only community college in the Virginia System, that I am aware of, that requires you to complete an IT degree program BEFORE taking a CompTIA CEU course. SMH. 

Why? I've got no idea. It's not the first time I've had to deal with a gatekeeping policy at LRCC. I wanted to take a course - ITN 260 - this summer that has as a prerequisite ITN 100. I asked for and was denied permission to take them concurrently - despite the fact that I had previously passed the ITN 100 (Introduction to Telecommunications) some time ago when it was listed under the old IST program. I didn't ask to skip the prerequisite course, just to take it concurrently with another course that requires it as a prerequisite. I'm not going to elaborate on how, but I was able to have the original Dean's decision that denied my request overturned. 

I'm concerned I may have burned some bridges in getting the prerequisite waived for ITN 260, but the gatekeeping of these things is at a next level. I understand it's there for a reason, but if a student can demonstrate a sufficient reason to modify or waive it, it shouldn't take actions that burn bridges or requires a student to apply to a further away community college to get things done. Instead of butting heads with the administration again, this time over the CompTIA certification class prerequisite requirement, I chose to bypass LRCC all together in this decision. Easy enough. No fuss, no fight.

I have one other problem with LRCC's CompTIA classes - they all seem to be in-person/ on campus classes and run on a very limited schedule. NOVA's has a myriad of classes. Zoom, in-person, and hybrid; spanning multiple time frames. NOVA's classes are just more accessible vis-a-vis time and place (NOVA's summer schedule is a little tighter though than when they run classes during the regular semesters. The classes in summer also run on a condensed time frame that is still better than what LRCC offers).

ITP100 Capstone Project

 

ITP100 Capstone Project criteria is up. 

Edit 5/11/2024: Project completed. If anyone in the future is doing their capstone project and finds this blog post here are a few pieces of advice I would give to complete the project. I encountered issues. Take a break. Sometimes you need to let your mind rest and then come back to the problem. When you run into something you think is impossible just remember: There is a way to solve this problem using the information we were taught this semester. Ask yourself, "What did we learn this semester that I can use to solve this problem?" Almost all the solutions can be attained by using the programming methods & practice we learned and did during the course. 

Right now all you can see is the rubric for grading but, there's enough information there that you can start your pseudo coding for the modules your going to create. You should be able to start coding too, you'll just need to adapt your code to whatever requirements we find once the project is unlocked Monday morning. This information is currently available to anyone in the class and you can access it here: Rubric for Capstone Project (you must be logged into your school account to see it) or just clicking on the announcement in Canvas. If your like me and use the weekend to try and get the majority of your school work done this is a big help being able to plan your logic out a few days early.

I'm assuming the project is going to be in Java (since that's what we practiced on the most), but I couldn't tell from what I read. Feel free to share any insights you have below. 

Edited: 4/19/2024 for brevity and clarity.

Edit: 4/21/204 - 

I've got to say that I'm loving this project (I'm saying this with sincerity even though I'm describing my issues below). I feel like it's really forcing me to think and learn. I've had to go back and erase half my code because something I did created an error that I couldn't figure out how to fix. The erasing, rebuilding, and trying again and again is helping to cement things in my mind in regards to how things work - all this and the project technically hasn't even opened up yet (opens up tomorrow). Do I think I'm competent in coding? No. But I'm getting better. I can look at what I've done and understand it. I can look at it and see it's missing something. When it's throwing a compilation error I'm getting better at identifying the error and (hopefully) correcting it. I've realized that my original outline was inefficient and found a way to improve it doing multiple nesting and if statements.