Why am I here?

So, why am I doing this course?  A few reasons, some vague & long-term, others more immediate.  I suppose it's been in the back of my mind for a while (i.e. a few years!) to do something to update my skill set, to push that dull business degree that I drudged through a few years ago a bit further down the CV.  At work, I had developed a competency in a lot of things (customer service to claims handler to unofficial IT go-to guy), but a mastery in none.  The IT side of things I find rewarding - identifying an issue, isolating the instances, determining the cause, plotting a plan of action, implementing the solution (typically by removing the sheaf of paper that was pressing the Ctrl key down, or plugging back in the network cable that had been inadvertently kicked out by stretching legs).  Being involved in a couple of website projects in my current job drew me in to the field of web development.  Access to the admin area of the site gave me an insight into some of the things that happen behind the scenes of a typical website.  A lack of understanding as to how & why these things were happening caused a woolly idea to form in my head  - I wanted to be a web developer. 


Anyhow, this was all still in the back of my mind up until a couple of months ago.  At the front of my mind was cycling, or more specifically, bike racing.  Last year, 2011, was my first full season racing on the Irish amateur racing scene & having picked up a few results in the lower categories (A4 & A3) I was ready to push on and see how far up the rankings I could get.  My winter training went well, 4 solid months of regular spins, gradually increasing the distances, mixed in with gym work & watching my diet, meant I approached the start of the season with some confidence.  The main target for the year was to be the Rás, the 8-day stage race pitting amateur "county" riders against professionals from the UK, Europe, & beyond.   Three days before what was to be my opening race of the season though, I managed to fall off my bike & break my collarbone into 4 pieces.  The layoff from the bike afforded me the time to check out the options for pursuing a career in web development in more detail & ultimately led me to the Prospective Students page of the NCIRL website.  When my speculative application came through, thoughts of chewing handlebar tape were put on hold for the season.

Broken collarbone - why I'm learning web technologies now instead of next year.

So here I am trying to refocus the energy that goes into 6 hour training spins, leg-wobbling weight sessions, hill-climbing torture & denial of my sweet tooth, and apply it to Ruby, MySQL, Javascript, CSS & much more.  I'm definitely in the A4 category as far as my talent in most of these goes so far, but hopefully as the weeks & months progress, I can push on again, get a few results, get the upgrade to the next level, & then keep it going.

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This blog will be a form of thinking out loud about the course I'm currently doing at the National College of Ireland.  Why I'm doing the course, how I'm finding it, what I hope to do with it once it's done.  We're already a few weeks into it at this stage, so I'll run through the first month or so initially, and then try to keep it updated as the weeks progress.  We'll see how it goes...