Terry,
How do I learn everything I know? My answers to that are as follows:
* Read up on something. Use your local libraries, the internet, Tek-Tips FAQ's/forums. With MS technologies, the MSDN library and website is a brilliant resource.
If you have friends/relatives who work in IT, ask them what they think of it.
* Never be afraid to ask your boss/friends/colleagues how and why something works if you don't understand rather than just how to fix a problem.
Try things out and if they don't work, tinker with them until they do (especially if there is no tight time constraint). The self esteem and confidence boost you will get from sorting this is far greater than getting your boss to do it for you.
* I read the trade press. This keeps me up to date with the latest goings on. I subscribe to 2 different magazines and get another (I borrow my dad's). By having 3 different opinions on similar products at roughly the same time I get a more rounded viewpoint.
Remember: Computers can only count to 1, starting at 0 and without electricity, they are nothing more than an oversized doorstop. They should never be able to get the better of anybody.
How did I get into authoring? I wrote to some of those publications when I had a viewpoint that differed from theirs, and much to my surprise they printed it. Why? I justified my opinion and backed it up with appropriate references, something that is essential to getting any sort of degree these days.
I have written technical documents and published them on my website for the benefit of others, mainly to just prove to myself that I can do it. (BTW my website is
this in itself was just done by me to prove to myself I knew HTML and could produce a reasonable site, certainly not going to win style awards but fairly quick) and it gets updated fairly frequently.
I hope this gives you some insight into how I got going, without needing to write my autobiography.
John