The next step in Project Antartica is CompTIA A+ certification. Ugh. The cost for this is going to be $530 unless I can find some discounts. There’s a ton of free resources for learning the content, so that’s nice. There are a ton of widely available discount codes for the exams that give you 10% off. There are also student discounts (which don’t apply to me) and possibly some state’s or even counties offer discounts. I will have to look into this more. Given that I’ve done IT work for pay since I was in high school, I’m not overly worried about the content of the exam. I’m sure a good bit of my knowledge is out of date - especially when it comes to Windows Domain work which I haven’t done since college. My Linux skills are more than I need for this test and I’m guessing that my networking, security, and troubleshooting skills are also going to be fine. I think most of it is going to be learning the A+ lingo and the various gotchas. I don’t want to have to take the test multiple times!

The plan of record here is to start with the Professor Messer videos on YouTube. There are 63 videos. Wow! Audio has never been a great learning strategy for me, it’s too easy to get distracted. So as a backup, the local library has some books as well that I will borrow, in particular I am looking into getting some practice question books if I can. I’ll post those once I actually know what I’ll be able to get.