Posts made by flaxking

I'm pretty sure there is an NDR Backscatter setting in spam rules

It's hard to go wrong with Network+. Basic networking is a definable set of knowledge that benefits you in any IT role. It's how our world works, so you can easily see it in use in your life and get your hands dirty.

@travisdh1 said in Tutorial Flow:

@flaxking No, this is never a good way to start, and almost always ends in a non working whatsit when done. If you're writing a tutorial, start at the beginning (dependancies). Look at some of @scottalanmiller's things he's written here, it's what I've based all of my tutorials/walk throughs on.

So why do I see many tutorials designed that way? If it's not done intentionally for some kind of learning benefit, what would cause someone to 'naturally' structure it that way?

It's a bad sign when questions about security from your clients have to go through your lawyer every time.

Another reason is ignorance. Thinking that's 'secure enough' without adding additional complexity to deployments.

Whenever I follow a tutorial that starts with a configuration file first and then goes on to setup the dependencies to make that configuration file work, my brain is always telling me it feels backwards. I read the the configuration file and see what I haven't set up and my brain is like, 'you can't use this configuration file yet because you haven't set up the dependencies.' For me, the natural flow seems like it should be to set up things in order of dependencies, and then putting the config file at the end would tie everything together and when you read it for the first time you can check off in your head that you have everything set up.

However, I'm wondering if having the config file at the beginning is actually the proper way to do the tutorial, and I should work on training my brain to accept that. The benefits I see are

1. It becomes the overview of the goal. The config file is the main setup, the other steps are just tasks to accomplish that, putting the config file first means that some trivial part of the setup doesn't get the prime spot, and we get a clear picture of what we are trying to accomplish.

2. It engages the brain. As Don Jones would say, our brains are trained to be collectors. If we read the config file first and see things we don't have yet, that triggers something in the brain and then we are actively looking to collect the information we know we don't have yet.

Should my brain feel this way is backwards, is that intentional to help with the learning process? Or does it say something about the way I think that may actually work against me in some situations?

@scottalanmiller said in Should SodiumSuite Be Open Source:

@IRJ said in Should SodiumSuite Be Open Source:

You probably wont catch a marlin on your first cast, but eventually you will find someone who starts using SS as a daily driver and really starts contributing

Yeah, that's great when it happens. It's boot strapping right now that's the challenge (core team being tied up.)

Hmm maybe you should hire a contractor with both salt and development experience....

@JaredBusch said in Is not bringing PCs in Domain is a sin?:

@dbeato said in Is not bringing PCs in Domain is a sin?:

@coliver Yup, and it is all based on registry settings so it shouldn't be dependent of Microsoft only.

Umm... Microsoft is the only system with a "registry"

Other operating systems have other means of doing things.

I think @dbeato means that GPOs mostly just configures registry settings, so Group Policy is not required for managing Windows systems.

If R2F generally empowers employees, does no R2F only empower bad employees?

If I'm an employee in an environment where jobs are hard to come by and have to maintain a certain level of income to not have my life crashing down. As soon as I'm in this situation where I really want to keep my job, my employer has full control over me.

With labour law fines being a slap on the wrist, and reporting essentially being quitting or being fired, (and suing being challenging in Canada) pretty much the only way I have power is by being a bad enough employee just to ride the waves for a while, and if I get fired I can at least claim unemployment.

@scottalanmiller said in Why Right to Fire (and Hire) May Be in the Employee's Favour:

People have been taught to fear changing jobs, and all humans are naturally averse to change even when it is good for us. This is one of those cases where the increase rate of change feels scary, but actually makes us safer. It's not unlikely flying vs. driving. Driving feels safer, but flying with the pilot in control is actually safer.

Basically the same argument as for CI/CD. Painful experiences cause the reaction of people pushing to do it less and implement things to make it harder for people to do, when the solution is actually doing it more.

Ok, well I might be starting to see a bit.

So with R2F, essentially there are just more job opportunities, even if temporary. And even if an employee jumps from 6 month job to 6 month job, that still means that there is less risk in quitting your job.

The idea that employers and employees can be equals seem laughable to me. Quiting is the only power an employee has, and it can be very risky for the employee.

For example, if I quit my job I lose my health benefits for 3 months until I qualify at the new job. And if I quit in order to take another job, there is no guarantee that the other employer will honor the employment offer.

The problem with seeing it in individual employee's favour is that the view is based on the employee's mobility, while in real life, many people have not structured their lives that way, and career advancement is not their primary goal.

It is possible to be more mobile, put there are many things that tie people down. In some careers it would be guaranteed you would have to move for a job. So you move for a job, and your spouse starts a business. If you get fired, there are no other jobs in your profession there. Now you have to make the decision if your career or your spouse's business is more important.

Even if you do not have things tying you down. I've attended presentations on the affect frequent moves have on your kids (based on studies of families in the military that were moved around the US), so there are considerations other than career here.

@JaredBusch said in How do you guys handle counter offers?:

You are in not in a position of massive importance to the employer. That is only in your head.

^^^ This for sure. Will things not run as smoothly? Likely. Will shit hit the fan? Possibly. But businesses of this size tend to be pretty resilient. And while your way might have been better, typically someone can step in and get them going when something happens, even if it means just swapping out a most of the previous setup.

I definitely miss my 1-man show job. I entered as a junior tech, and left as a intermediate tech. Then I came back and left again as senior tech (though I didn't realize it yet). I'd go back again if I could.

Now I work on a 6 person team and do way more overtime hours. At the 1-man IT job, when I complained about after hours 'emergencies' I was able to get a new design approved that made them not emergencies any more.

A big plus to the 1-man show was having the time to really dive into things and learn them thoroughly.

Sure, it would help you get a job on our customer facing helpdesk

Yeah, I guess I could see if for scheduling less critical stuff. It does seem like their plan is to flesh out Automation with more polished tools, but Runbooks seems pretty lacking in features.

I did look I to Automation DSC, but I kind of doubt that's ever going to be a good idea for Linux. Ubuntu 16.04 is supported but not 18.04. And it sounded like on Linux, you can't have the Azure Monitor agent and the PS DSC agent installed on the same system.

I recently started a project where I needed to develop serverles automation for Azure VMs that have no inbound access.

I started with Azure Automation, but I switched over to Azure DevOps when there were version controlled artifacts I needed to use and it didn't seems like there was a sensible way to deal with that.

So far, everything I had been doing in Azure Automation Runbooks has been doable or even easier and more logically designed in Azure DevOps. So that got me thinking, is there even a use case for Automation Runbooks?

As a side note, Azure DevOps is the only MS product I don't hate at the moment.

That's like calling vCenter a hypervisor

@Dashrender said in Why IT certifications are worth more than you think...:

@flaxking said in Why IT certifications are worth more than you think...:

Many of the sysadmin jobs I've been applying for want repo links. So when you have a family, and a job where sometimes you have to work 100 hour weeks - and that doesn't let you open source your configuration as code, you have to pick your battles.

And then there's the homework assignments, one job had me submit an architecture design even before I had an interview with the recruiter.

huh - did you send them an bill? That does seem unreasonable - you produced work, you should be compensated... who's to say they aren't just using you for free architecture design?

Practical homework assignments are fairly common and to me seems to be a better sign of a company than those links to coding tests where it takes forever to understand the question and that there are study guides for. I've never had a practical assignment before any interview before though.