It has been stated that beginnings are times to show caution, so that the balances are correct. Lately, I have been thinking through what I might do in the future after my corporate career is over. I have no interest in staying in the corporate world to normal retirement age, yet, while anticipating being comfortable, I still feel the need to protect against monetary upsets.
Start with Why…
Recently, I have begun to contemplate switching from Apple back to Microsoft computing products. Though Apple has a reputation for streamlined user experience, I found that spending the majority of my day working with Microsoft, I would not easily be able to make the shift fully toward Apple. This was compounded with my wife’s need to dig photos and such out of the computer and not being savvy at Apple either. Frustration.
I took the first step this week by purchasing the Surface Pro 4 that I’m using to compose this post. It too will require some learning, but already feels more comfortable. The main challenge now is migrating everything back toward a Microsoft environment. Given the limited on-board disc space of the Surface Pro, I started meandering in my mind about creation of a local cloud that both my wife and I could use. Through some simple web research, several options seem to exist;
- Synology based DiskStation – through reading online reviews, several talk about a Linux driven home cloud setup. A series of links lead to reviews of The Linux Academy.
- Microsoft based RAID farm – though I haven’t read much about the end state, I perused the Microsoft Virtual Academy setup and even designed an initial learning plan dealing with Cloud based topics.
I know that there are more options available out there, but those were the first two that caught my cyber-eye.
Why is That Important, You Ask…
So, back to the original problem. What to do after I’m retired from my current job? There needs to be both opportunity and some amount of passion involved. Something that will coax me out of bed in the morning. What kind of market exists for small business or individual cloud maintenance? Where to find trustworthy and knowledgeable resources to flesh out the ideas generated in these salad days of the idea? When to commit fully to the enterprise? All of these are fodder for a future post as I enjoy this holiday season.