IT BS thread

The CCNA boot camp is a cast-iron bitch. It's basically 3 certs in 5 days, and it's around 50 hours of classroom time. That's why I specifically said it was paid by my employer each time. That's key.

I'm lapsed right now because I won't pay the money to Cisco to have it current unless I have to.

I'll say this much...the boot camp class is worth taking once. Once you take it and fully get the contents, keeping it current as needed is pretty easy. But getting the company to pay is the hard part. I was on my third employer before I got one that paid it when I asked. Since then, it's been about a .500 response.

 

Yeah unfortunatly that is NOT an option in anyway. Im trying to get into a IT job, i need the cert to even get a job. Self study i guess for me the hard way lol

 

Again, no cert is absolutely required for a great IT job. Certainly won't hurt, but not required unless you are applying to a big cog-in-the-wheel corp like IBM or Costco etc. The guy who interned with us had every Cisco cert known to man, still couldn't find a job that fit his life choices (geo area, hours, pay) which is why he posted the CL ad. He knew he'd have to become more of a jack of all trades lest he be stuck accepting a job in Podunk Wherever. He had two choices, and he picked the one that paid off in silver dollars. Did he suffer for a few months? You bet.

 

True that.

 

You mean to "even get an interview". HR drones that only look for certs and keywords are what's wrong with the IT field. You either need the certs to get past the first level cuts and make it to a hiring manager OR you need to know someone that can pass your resume directly to the hiring manager.

 

Exactly this....

 

It ain't just IT either. 90% of business nowadays (if not more) is this way.

I'm old enough to remember when these folks were called 'Personnel Dept' and they worked on behalf of the employees in dealing with the business in question. Now they're 'Human Resources' and the opposite is true.

Which is why, I'm happy to say, my company doesn't have one. We all just...go to work and do our jobs. When something comes up that would be the purview of a classical 'HR' department...we talk about it and decide as a unit.

The up-side to having a smaller company is that you can get away with this!

 

We have a Fluke AT-1000. It is a fantastic device. It'll tell you the port you're plugged into in the stack, which is great for jacks that aren't labeled so well. Saves a ton of time over toning it out. Pulls a DHCP address, tells what VLAN you're on, wire maps/lengths, etc.

I know Cisco stuff decently well, but not well enough to pass a CCNA anymore. I've gotten rusty on the stuff I almost never use--mainly routing protocols and ACLs. One of these days I should refresh myself and just take the test.

 

I'm not sure what I'd do without my Fluke LinkRunner....such a great tool!

 

They're a little expensive, but I bet they more than pay for themselves in the amount of time they have saved me.

 

Is it acceptable to patch 250 servers between the hours of 6am and 10am on a Wednesday after Patch Tuesday?

 

Heh

I patched my own machine this morning....and it sat there for 40 minutes doing its thing.

This is why i have two physical boxes that are basically identical. Swap over and work normally, then when done patch the second.

Patches don't go on servers right away period. The FDIC would shit a live pit bull on my ahead if I tried that.

 

I would say no. As an end user that needs to get shit tons of stuff done on deadline with unreasonable clients and I can't even access my server directories and Word keeps crashing and sharepoint isn't working and the printers hate me too.

 

Apparently it is around here. Spent all day looking at this shit and the potential impacts, only to find out it is an acceptable process.

If no one called the help desk, did it really go down?

 

Are you trying to kill Schroedinger's cat?

 

Not sure if this is the correct place to ask but it couldn't hurt.
My pops has an older desktop that he uses some and it's been slow for as long as I can remember, it's an emachines et1831-05.
It has a single core CPU and a few GB of RAM, from what the computer is saying the RAM is rarely used in full, and the CPU usually runs at 80-100%, he complains about his game (Flight simulator X) being slow and choppy, so of course my immediate thoughts are upgrade RAM and CPU.

Working with a $225 budget (What a new dual-core machine from wally world costs) can I do anything?
The cpu options for that motherboard are few and from what I can tell not good, so Probably need to upgrade the motherboard also.
Will how will the machine handle that? I don't think he has any of the recovery discs that were sent with the machine.

On the windows performance rating the cpu scores 4.3, RAM scores 4.8, graphics scores 6.8, and hard drive scores 5.9.

 

With that small a budget I'd go secondhand and get a newer, used box off craigslist or something. Not much you can do to that chassis for that cash to make it worth a shit. For 150 to 200 you can prolly get a serviceable dual or quad core a couple years old

 

That's what I was leaning towards also, the local pawnshop has a tower with windows 7, I-7, 1TB HD, but they want $500 for it.
I'll check around and see what I find.

 

This looks decent for the price, but it's refurbished and 3rd part seller.
I'd put another HDD in it for actual storage, and keep the 250GB HDD for the OS.
http://www.amazon.com/Dell-Optiplex...system_browse-bin:2232493011,p_36:12000-32500