Best posts made by Kelly

It turns out that the outlet that I had the switched plugged into via a powerstrip had one always on outlet and the other was switched. So whenever they would leave they would turn off the lamp connected to the switched outlet...and their network switch. Good times. I moved some things around and the switch is now on a UPS and off that switched outlet.

@DustinB3403
Shepard - saves the galaxy from the Reapers
Shepherd - gets a beat-down from a sheep

The problem with public WiFi is not the attacks that your device is subjected to, but the vulnerability of the packets as they traverse the unknown AP. Aside from the basics I spend more time and energy securing that traffic because the modern OS with no public services is fairly secure. Most attackers will go after the low hanging fruit, and that is the internet bound traffic.

@RojoLoco said in Non-IT News Thread:

@DustinB3403 said in Non-IT News Thread:

@RojoLoco said in Non-IT News Thread:

@DustinB3403 said in Non-IT News Thread:

@art_of_shred said in Non-IT News Thread:

@scottalanmiller said in Non-IT News Thread:

@Son-of-Jor-El said in Non-IT News Thread:

I know Amazon is big, but when I read this, I was like "woah!".

http://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-to-create-100000-full-time-jobs-in-the-us-2017-1

At the cost of 100,000 small businesses closing. It's a good thing, but those jobs generally come at a cost, too.

I doubt it's nearly that drastic. What we buy from Amazon was previously bought from big box stores. The things I can and do buy from small local businesses will change very little if there is a local branch of Amazon to purchase from.

If amazon sold Kobe beef, would you buy it? Or would you go to your local butcher and purchase from them?

I wouldn't give 2 shits about Kobe beef... but if they carried Wagyu, I might be interested (because it's so hard to find in a store).

Way to be behind on the topic!

I need beer and a nap... I'm tired as all hell today

I was busy yesterday... I'm almost caught up now. And anyone in the US who claims to have "Kobe" beef is a liar... if it were real you would need a second mortgage to buy a steak.

<valleygirl> Yeah, there's like totally only one basketball player named Kobe, and it might even be totally illegal to eat people, even if they're famous. </valleygirl>

So I've been playing around with gamification for years, and I ran across a mobile app called Habitica (you can access it via website too). It makes your to-do lists into quests that you complete for xp and gold. You then buy gear and cosmetic items with the gold. It is not incredibly unique, but it is one more aid in the process of "getting things done". It is helping me so far, so I figured I'd pass it on.

@mlnews said in Non-IT News Thread:

Police claim that six coeds beating an eighteen year old Egytptian girl to death in Nottingham is "not hate related?" Apparently it's just friendly gang violence like normal?

Attaching the "hate" moniker to violence has been a bad idea from the word go. To imply that one motivation for deliberately killing someone is worse than another is an underlying reason why our justice system is messed up. There is a reason that Lady Justice is depicted as blindfolded. The law was intended to assign guilt based on the crime, not on the status of the harmed or harm-er. When we attach the "hate" flag to a crime we also get the opposite end of judgments like Brock Turner. Murder should be wrong and the punishment applied evenhandedly regardless.

I created this thread because of something that @WrCombs said in the What Are You Doing Right Now thread (https://mangolassi.it/post/481231).

There are quite a few unhealthy perspectives that I have seen that stop IT Pros in their tracks when it comes to developing themselves professionally. Here are a few of them that I have seen:

• IT jobs are hard to find and land

• I am not as good as <person> at <task>

• I should just be loyal/grateful for what I already have because this small business has been good to me

• I can't decide what I want to do

Several of these have been covered at length in other threads, so I am only going to cover the last one (I am sure others will be willing to chime in on those again).

You've all heard the aphorism, Do something you love, and you'll never work another day in your life. There is some truth in this, but, as with all expressions like this, what it doesn't address is far larger than what it does.

Personally, I have found a good way for me to think about work/tasks and whether I want to keep doing them or not. What I do right now is consider, at the end of investing time in a given task, whether or not I have more, the same, or less energy following that time investment. It has been hard for me to figure out whether or not I "liked" a task because every one of them are so mixed, particularly as an IT Generalist. Putting it into the context of energy levels has made it more objective for me. It has also allowed me to abstract a specific task into categories rather than focusing on technologies or maybes.

Another layer of this is to follow up the energy question with a why. For example, if I just spent an hour configuring a switch and I feel drained (more than is appropriate), I would ask myself why do I feel more drained. Was it configuring the switch and fighting with the config? Was it because I don't really feel confident in what I'm doing, but I liked it in general? Was it because I kept getting interrupted by users?

If you can filter through these questions it can allow you to start to see a path forward in your career. You don't have to do <task> to know whether or not you will like that specific thing (insert caveats). You can have an idea by extrapolating from the categories of things that have changed your energy.

Robert Davis passed away yesterday. He was very active in the SQL community and exceptionally helpful. I never had the opportunity to be helped by him, but I saw his brilliance and serving manner many times in online communities.
https://littlekendra.com/2018/04/03/remembering-robert-davis-aka-sqlsoldier/

@nerdydad said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

Just got my laptop back from Dell repair. Having to rebuild it back to its glory. This is going to take a while.

The six stages of workstation reinstall:

1. The OS install went faster than I expected.
2. There are a ton of patches
3. How can it take 14 hours to download one version upgrade
4. Finally ready to install software
5. I know I'm missing something

Steps 6-429: Oh yeah, that is what I forgot to install.

@travisdh1 said in What Are You Currently Reading Outside of Tech:

@Kelly said in What Are You Currently Reading Outside of Tech:

@scotth said in What Are You Currently Reading Outside of Tech:

@Kelly said in What Are You Currently Reading Outside of Tech:

I'm hoping to fit a reread of the Stormlight Archive in over Christmas along with Sanderson's Skyward (going to have to fight for time with that one with my 14 year old).

I just started book 2. Book 4 is due out this coming year along with the last Wax and Wayne near in time.

Yeah, I'm pretty excited about what he posted yesterday. Knowing that Stormlight Archive is only 4 of 10 kind of put things into perspective. Sanderson probably has a large group of people hoping for his continued health and well being.

Sanderson's Stormlight Archive, I'll have to check it out.

If (author == sanderson)
{
read(author.book)
}

Well, already got a callback on one of the phone interviews for an in person next week. Amazingly, the HR person read an article that I wrote in 2015 and complimented me on it.

https://www.alienvault.com/blogs/security-essentials/selling-security-to-the-boss

@scottalanmiller said in Gaming - What's everyone playing / hosting / looking to play:

Trying to get @valentina to install Steam.

Carpal tunnel can include arm and elbow issues, not just the wrist and hand. I use a thumb trackball for this reason: https://www.amazon.com/Logitech-Wireless-Trackball-Computer-Mouse/dp/B0043T7FXE. Too much baseball and tennis when I was too young.

@anonymous said:

To phish your users. Then you have a sit down and talk with them about opening emails from unknown sources.

Or you could just use KnowBe4's free (for fewer than 100 employees) phishing test.

Very interesting take on current polarization of ideologies in western society, and how it plays out in social media. It is a longish article, but I found it worth the time.

https://medium.com/@SeanBlanda/the-other-side-is-not-dumb-2670c1294063#.3xzf8igwo

I'm curious what y'all think.

Windows 10 Assistive Technologies upgrade "loophole" closing on December 31st: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/accessibility/windows10upgrade.

Basically masks are what define your range. If you have a 255.255.255.0 mask you're stating that the entire last octet is devoted to your subnet. To go further than this is not really possible in a post. You're going to have to do some reading about CIDR and learn binary (to an extent).

@momurda said in What Are You Watching Now:

Watched Logan(great), XXX 3(dont expect much but great action), The Flash season 3 and Green Arrow season 5 recently. For some reason i really like these DC/Marvel shows on netflix.

Relevant:

@IRJ said:

My Samsung Note Edge got water damage over the weekend so I have been using a Nokia Lumina 521. I understand that it is a cheap Windows Phone so I am not dinging it on performance. The OS itself is what sucks. I am running Windows 8.1 on it.

1. The tiles suck. There is a reason people like icons vs. tiles. Microsoft should know better since people are obsessed with desktop icons and icons are the mainstream on Android and iOS. You might think the tiles look pretty, but they suck and just cause you to do more scrolling.

2. No apps. I knew this before i even tried the Windows Phone, but I didn't expect the app selection to be so poor. I am lucky to find 10% of my android apps. It makes everything more difficult when it comes to managing VPS servers, various email accounts, cloudflare, and alot of other apps that make administration easy.

3. Internet Explorer... No explanation needed. I am sure there are other browsers, but IE is terrible.

4. Ineffecient scrolling. When I go through a list of apps, I get a vertical list of A-Z apps. I can scroll through Android and iOS much faster because I may have A-D on the same screen, and if I want to get to R, I only have to quickly scroll 3 or 4 pages. On Windows I have to scroll pretty far down. It only takes an extra second, but that matters in the long term.

1 - Tiles do something for many apps. You can stack and folder the non live tiles to create more room. My home screen doesn't scroll because I've organized it this way.
2 - Pretty much
3 - I've not had much issue with IE on the phone
4 - You can tap a letter header to jump to a particular section of your apps list.