[vishnu]

So locksmithing school didn't teach me much, but I know the basics of LV wiring and such now for electric strikes and such.

Low voltage wiring is pretty technical, we use it to control our high voltage systems, our highest voltage system is 22,000 volts. Which, to *real* high voltage engineers, is low voltage wiring! 😆

[Raion]

I am fully licensed now as a locksmith within Virginia and North Carolina. The side effect of this is that getting a DCJS (VA) license requires that you pass a rigorous criminal background check: No DUIs, felonies, vandalism, burglary/trespassing, they interview five people including your boss and confirm that you are not a criminal etc. I had no concerns about passing the tests, but there was one person who I knew who swore up and down that due to my urbex habits I would be considered a liability. Nope, they don't care since I was always careful to never carry any weapons, get caught or any burglary tools. Urbex is cool but as far as I'm concerned my days of doing anything more than jumping a fence or climbing into an abandoned factory without breaking an old padlock are done. I still know plenty of sites I can get into with permission.

[weblacky]

I am fully licensed now as a locksmith within Virginia and North Carolina. The side effect of this is that getting a DCJS (VA) license requires that you pass a rigorous criminal background check: No DUIs, felonies, vandalism, burglary/trespassing, they interview five people including your boss and confirm that you are not a criminal etc. I had no concerns about passing the tests, but there was one person who I knew who swore up and down that due to my urbex habits I would be considered a liability. Nope, they don't care since I was always careful to never carry any weapons, get caught or any burglary tools. Urbex is cool but as far as I'm concerned my days of doing anything more than jumping a fence or climbing into an abandoned factory without breaking an old padlock are done. I still know plenty of sites I can get into with permission.

Congrats!  You're on your way!  Just don't forget about us on your journey to fame and fortune :-)

[Raion]

I plan to use some of my salary to make up for my skill gap and lack of time to do everything I want here.

[Shiunbird]

Congratulations!!! Very very very good for you.

I exchanged a few messages a while back with the guy who runs Doogie Labs and he is now working with cars full time and does very little with computers. It's rare that he updates his webpage now, but got a lot of inspiration over the years. He seems super happy with the change and I bet you will end up very well, too.

I consider following your steps and perhaps doing something else for money would restore a bit of the joy of tinkering with computers. The current tech landscape is a clown show.

You will probably get the joy back as well. You will be able to do only what you want to do how you want to do it.

Today my boss called me for a "brainstorming session" (aka we do it his way) about how to name some cloud resources. Three hours passed, none of the naming convention sees the parameters I actually would need to see and I am still not 100% sure of how to name the bloody resources. And to add to injury, a former colleague from big corp called me asking about where the CSS file that generates the ICS invites is stored, because a specific group needs a different field there (and the vendor doesn't offer this level of granularity anyway), and reactivating those synapses caused me pain.

You are doing something helpful, something physical, I also believe you won't get to sit the whole day and it actually matters! Very proud!

[Gamefan]

This is great to hear and congratulations!

You will do great and go far in anything you wholeheartedly enjoy doing.

[Raion]

So I just passed the 6 months mark officially although I've been considering myself to be 6 months educated since mid-December.

I feel great. Locksmithing is a much more logical form of work than what I previously been used to in a while there are some hard aspects to it there is really just one way to go about something which is a relief compared to what I'm used to. I still don't use the most common method for a lot of people which is Lishi as religiously. I prefer to either go for code stampings or removing cylinders entirely and disassembling them or in some cases simply rekeying vehicles. I don't mind going about things a more difficult way because lock picking is something that takes years to master and it's not as if I'm going to be good at it if I have to constantly spend hours at a time trying to get into someone's vehicle. You have to budget your time versus everything else and that is something that I can say is very important to being in this field. Overall I would say that I am definitely more qualified from my mental and physical skill to be a locksmith then be a devops type person and I'm okay with that. I don't like devops. I don't like being forced into a developer role and I hate the aspects of deadlines and people making their problems out to be more urgent than they actually are.

[Shiunbird]

I don't like devops. I don't like being forced into a developer role and I hate the aspects of deadlines and people making their problems out to be more urgent than they actually are.

This is the most succinct sum up of the situation I've ever read.