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Skills USA

Written 2007-07-01

Danger

This blog post contains large amounts of nerd.

So let me tell you about my great week!

One of the great things about being the state champion in computer repair, is the chance to compete to be the national champion of computer repair. This week was that week!

Monday, we flew down to the great city of Kansas (but it's in Missouri).

Tuesday, had the opening ceremonies in the great Kemper Arena.

So basically this organization, SkillsUSA, organizes this "National Skills and Leadership Conference" every year, where people compete in their skills. You could compete in basically anything that you get a job in. There are about 90 different competitions ranging from Nail Care to Welding to Auto Maintenance and Computer Repair. So every state champion is there for their respective competitions. Then everyone has an advisor there, so basically its like an extra 40,000 people in Kansas City.

• Wednesday
  • The first day of competition. Bad motherboards, invalid CMOS parameters, missing swap files, legacy DOS systems, and SOHO routing were all some of the problems that I came across. Whoo! What a doozy!
• Thursday -The second day of competition. Took a written test, and got certified as an IT Professional.
• Friday
  • Awards day. We went back to Kemper Arena. You have to wear these stupid red nerd suit jackets. Anyways, we were the 34th contest to be called. 1st place whoo!!!! Then i went to watch the White Sox get shellacked by the Royals. But it was a good day! So I won free IT certifications for a year, a couple flat screen monitors, a laptop, an ipod, and a bag full of tools!

Whoo!