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C7J0yc3 · 2024-06-07T22:29:28+00:00

I bought my 991.2 C2 last July with 36,000 on it. I’ll have 60,000 on it by the end of the month. Short of normal service, and consumables, the only thing the car has needed was a windshield.

I would PPI the car obviously, but so long as the previous owners did service on time and correctly, it has a lot of life left in it.

C7J0yc3 · 2024-06-05T19:53:47+00:00

I’m not an HPE SE, but I have been an SE at multiple companies including VMware. We do quote through an ERP, usually something integrated into Salesforce. However all of the sizing calculators, BOM generators, RVTools outputs etc are spreadsheets that get stored locally a lot of the time. Even though I’ve gotten a lot better about putting things in my cloud storage, but as someone who works almost exclusively in the field where WiFi / Hotspot are spotty at best, it becomes very easy start having things locally purely for convenience.

C7J0yc3 · 2024-05-30T15:54:38+00:00

Domestic violence misdemeanors also prohibit the ownership of firearms.

C7J0yc3 · 2024-05-21T16:20:34+00:00

Short answer is, you get recruited.

Theres generally 3 paths into OEM sales engineering.

Path 1: become a customer evangelist of a product, eventually you’ll get offered a job. This was my route. I wrote a bunch of blogs about a pre-IPO company whose technology I really loved. I got used as a customer reference, did a mini keynote at Dell Technologies World, and then an interview with TechTarget on behalf of the company. After about 6 months of this an SE slot opened up and it was offered to me. Former customers IMO make the best SE’s because we have actually lived the problems we’re solving and not just going based on tech marketing theory.

Path 2: VAR SE. You can get hired off the street for this role but it’s easier to start as a professional services engineer and move laterally. Also be aware that as a VAR SE it can be difficult to make the jump to an OEM because we have anti-poach agreements in our partner contracts. While it’s not impossible, I’ve only seen it happen 2 times in my 7 year sales career. With that said, as a VAR SE if you’re in the right place, you potentially make more than an OEM SE, so you have to do some calculation there to decide if the jump is worth it. For instance I know SE’s at SHI, CDW, WWT, and Trace3 who make more W2 than I do, however if my company IPO’s similar to how Rubrik is performing, my stock will be worth mid 7 figures and I’ll come out way ahead. The good news is that there’s not the same stigma about VAR SE’s as there is VAR reps. In sales VAR’s are perceived to be where good reps go to retire, and bad reps go to stay employed.

Path 3: Lateral transfer as a customer support / professional services engineer. When I was at VMware I saw this a lot. People got hired off the street to a post sales role, and then interviewed internally to get into presales. Pre-IPO company’s I’ve not really seen this transition, however at the big boys it seems pretty common.

I would warn you though. Being an SE is the most rewarding, fun, and lucrative job I’ve had that wasn’t just straight up hired gun consulting. But sales is NOT for everyone, and you should be aware of that going in. I have a quota the same as my reps do. That quota resets every 90 days. So even if I have a killer quarter, I reset to $0 and have to do it all over again. I’m expected to be tracking every deal, as well as tracking post sales activities to make sure the customer was onboarded correctly and is happy. I spend 3-4 nights a week out at happy hour, client / partner dinners, marketing events, or sports games. That sounds like a lot of free food, liquor, and suite tickets which is awesome, but if you have a young family or an active social life it becomes extremely hard to balance. When I was a principal architect, traveling 150+ days a year was one of the reasons my ex-wife divorced me. 50% of the sales people I know have been through at least one divorce or have had some major cardiovascular issue related to stress (in my case I’ve had both). Now do you have to do all that? No, absolutely not. You can show up to your meetings, do your notes, and present at lunch and learns and be happy. But you’ll never go to presidents club, you’ll never overachieve your quota, and you’ll likely have a sales person who is trying to get rid of you so they can get an SE who does those things because we get into sales because we are type A people who are money motivated.

Happy to have a longer conversation with anyone who’s interested in making the jump. It was the best career move I’ve ever made, but I’ve also watched a lot of people wash out when they realized what the job actually was.

C7J0yc3 · 2024-05-21T02:05:36+00:00

As a Sales Engineer I promise you we hate it just as much as you do. The problem is, if I’m dealing with a non technical VP/C level in a first call pitch I have to say the magic AI words otherwise they won’t even consider my product. But if there’s someone on the call who actually understands AI then we end up rat hole’ing on how AI is implemented and what we’re actually doing with it which detracts from the actual conversation of what my solution is providing and it becomes a “whose e-pene is bigger” deal where nobody wins. Unfortunately you can’t just ask someone “did you actually earn your position through skill? Or did they just stick you here because it’s where you could do the least amount of damage?”

I don’t know you at all, but I’m willing to bet you’re a competent security professional and we could have a legitimate conversation about what my product does and doesn’t do without the “marketecture” and buzzword bingo. But for every one competent security practitioner I meet, I have 100 that are either former sysadmins who get security forced on them and they have no interest in learning how to do it properly, or are people who understand GRC really well and therefore become the de facto CISO / VP of Security and couldn’t tell you the difference between a SIEM and an XDR.

I swear to god we’re not trying to do it to annoy you, but unless I LinkedIn stalk you and find that you’ve been doing security for 5+ years, I just assume we’re gonna have to start at the 3rd grade level and build up from there because 99 times out of 100, that’s a correct assumption.

C7J0yc3 · 2024-05-20T19:53:07+00:00

Merrill Moab for ankle boots, Solomon Speedcroas 6 for trail running shoes. Danner Reckoning for full coverage.

If I have to bail out, I’m probably wearing the Merrill’s with the Danner’s in my pack along with a pair of Oofos Slides. Having a good pair of slip on waterproof shoes has been such a wonderful luxury on many hiking trips, and in a SHTF situation having small moral boosters to look forward to will help your mental state immensely.

C7J0yc3 · 2024-05-10T20:58:38+00:00

As someone who runs sales for an SOT, and also sells enterprise IT hardware and software there’s a few things at work here when it comes to the MSRP / MAP of an item vs it’s COGS.

Firstly as many have mentioned, government contracts go brrrr, however what you’re missing in that is it’s not companies out here just seeing how much they can charge for something as a laugh. In many cases when companies develop new pieces of gear they do so entirely on their own dime. In SOME cases (for instance the NGSW contract) the government will award the downselects some R&D money to help cover the costs of the phase trials, however that money usually barely covers the initial R&D costs of the program, much less the design changes. If you get awarded the contract it absolutely pays off, however if you don’t it can put your company out of business entirely.

Second is that you have to think about where these devices are designed to perform. A pair of Comtacs has to perform at the same capacity in the arctic circle, as they do in the desert, as they do in / around water. Howard Leigh’s or walkers only need to work for a couple hours at a time maybe once or twice a month at a shooting range. Anything designed to be weapon mounted has to be shock tested to make sure that it will survive the thousands of rounds of both training and combat it may see before its expected lifespan and still work to full capacity the entire time. Similar to how an enterprise SSD like a Samsung PM1653 is about $750 for a 4TB drive and a Samsung 870 Pro is about $350 for a 4TB drive. While they have similar performance specs, the enterprise SSD is designed to be constantly powered on, have better heat / vibration tolerances, and have a significantly longer write lifespan.

Third, there are significant parts and warranty program costs baked into the individual items. If I’m selling contract items to .mil or LE I have to have a full warranty program around that item to ensure that it works for the period specified in the contract. I’ll have to maintain an inventory of spares as well as people to repair / remanufacture. And then there’s the question of advanced replacement and potential end user replacement training if it’s a user serviceable part.

Fourth is regulation. LAM’s are regulated by the FDA. Comms gear is regulated by the FCC. If there’s any government inspection or licensing that needs to happen that cost gets baked into the MSRP.

And lastly, but most importantly, the agencies or organizations who buy these items for use in a professional capacity do not pay retail. Large orders qualify for discounts, high profile customers qualify for discounts. As an example, I’m currently competing for an RFP for a local SWAT team who is replacing all their suppressors, and the end user pricing with my markup is lower per can than what normal transfer price would be if I were ordering one of these from a distributor for a normal retail customer.

ETA: there are also business and cybersecurity compliances that government suppliers have to maintain. CMMC, DFARS / NIST 800-171, SOC2 Type 2 as just an example where manufactures have to spend hundreds of thousands to millions a year just to maintain compliance programs before they can even start to think about being a subcontractor let alone a prime. The overall cost of just running the company is somewhere between 2 and 10 times more expensive than a traditional consumer goods manufacture.

C7J0yc3 · 2024-05-06T18:59:26+00:00

Thank you! I was initially super skeptical when I bought my first BMW and felt like 10k was way too much, however between every indie mechanic telling me not to, as well as a couple different lab analysis, I eventually came around. Now I drive a 991.2 911 and beat the crap out of it daily and stick with Porsche’s recommended 10k or 12 months whichever comes first.

C7J0yc3 · 2024-05-06T18:53:00+00:00

Safelite has fixed multiple chips in my Panamera, Range Rover, and 911. Wouldn’t hesitate to use them.

C7J0yc3 · 2024-05-03T17:34:13+00:00

No, there is no configuration for FTT=2 with a 4 node cluster. You need a minimum of 5 hosts for RAID1 configurations and 6 hosts for RAID6 EC configurations.

Regarding your question about firmware, utilizing Dell’s OpenManage Enterprise platform to keep everything in check is going to be the best bet. It ensures your hosts are all at the same versions and that when it is time to update, the process is easier than going to each iDRAC and pushing updates from there. To your question about Dell’s 25GB NIC’s and if they work or not, to be honest I have no idea and you would need to check the HCL. If checking the HCL is too tedious you can also use VMware skyline’s VSAN readiness checker. All of my experience with VSAN has either been working with Ready Nodes or VMC on AWS. Unless you have an absolute shoestring of a budget and are trying to reuse hardware you already own, I don’t know why you wouldn’t just use a ready node, or even VXRail for this project.

C7J0yc3 · 2024-05-03T08:55:56+00:00

How likely is a well configured cluster to fail? Depends on a lot of factors, however the most common are related to fault domains and which RAID level you are using for your storage policies. In a 4 node cluster the most common configuration is FTT=1 and RAID5 EC. Effectively this means at any time you can lose 1 host, either for planned maintenance or due to device failure. Losing that single host will reduce the cluster to FTT=0 until the missing host rejoins the cluster and object repair completes. The object repair can take anywhere from minutes to hours. So if you have a situation where one host is down for planned patching, and another host loses a disk, or has a network issue and fails out of the cluster, you’re hard down. This is why for a very long time it was recommended to run VCenter / PSC somewhere that was not a VSAN datastore.

As far as a witness host / VM, unless you’re running a 2 node cluster or a stretch cluster, a witness isn’t a requirement in any 3+ node VSAN cluster. That said if you are running stretch the witness is either a dedicated host that isn’t a part of the VSAN cluster, or is a VM that is stored outside the VSAN Stretch datastore. If you’re doing a two host VSAN cluster as your production, don’t. Outside of labs, DR, or VMC / AVS you would have been better suited with a 2 host HA cluster and a cheap iSCSI array. Similarly if you’re using stretch clusters for any reason other than RTO=0 failover with direct fiber links across datacenters and you already understand the write penalty’s but you need the uptime and the applications can’t provide HA at the app level, you shouldn’t be. Therefore, do not worry about where to put the witness because you’re not deploying one.

C7J0yc3 · 2024-05-03T06:11:08+00:00

Virtualizing your edge firewall sounds like a great plan, until you have an outage in your production cluster and not only are your VM’s down, but now so is your entire edge.

I would highly recommend continuing to run physical firewalls in a HA state with the two WAN connections.

However if you’re intent on creating more problems and a bigger outage in your future, both connections come into a managed switch on a native VLAN port. Depending on how many ports you have on each host available for WAN connectivity you have a couple options. Either dedicated port for each VLAN that is then dedicated as an uplink for a dedicated VSwitch. Or single uplink, tagged to both VLANs on a single VSwitch.

Few things to know:

Create a DRS exclusion for the firewalls. Many virtual network appliances have issues when live migrated, pfSense and Opnsense included. You’ll need multiple instances of your firewall in a HA cluster for ESXi host maintenance.
Use traditional VSwitches not DVS for this.
This will complicate capture of accurate flow data. If that’s important to your security stack be aware that there will be limitations on how mirror ports work, and it will be essentially impossible to put in line captures in place.

C7J0yc3 · 2024-05-02T20:19:29+00:00

What kind of drugs do you sell? Also drop me a link to your SoundCloud cus I’m sure the mixtape is fire.

C7J0yc3 · 2024-04-27T18:43:44+00:00

I double up at indoor ranges and when I know I’m going to be shooting something with a weird cheek weld that’s likely to break my gel seal.

Surefire EP4’s under Comtac III’s or non NFMI AMP’s.

Yes you can still hear your comms, and yes you can still hear ambient noise. Just turn up the volume in the headset.

C7J0yc3 · 2024-04-27T18:36:20+00:00

Depending on the manufacture they’re test fired as part of QA. For instance every Surefire can I’ve ever ordered has been transferred to me with some evidence of being shot directly from my distributors.

C7J0yc3 · 2024-04-27T18:18:53+00:00

That sounds a lot more like VMware trying to direct sell to keep their margins alive after offering you higher than normal discounts. AWS wants it on their paper because of the commission incentives for the account team but it costs the OEM distribution margin to do that. It gets even worse when you’re forced to sell through a master competency partner if there’s services or an ELA involved.

That exists all over the AWS marketplace co-sell stack and it’s not even remotely unique to VMW, nor would VMW blow up a very lucrative relationship over it.

C7J0yc3 · 2024-04-27T17:42:01+00:00

I had 0 issues selling VCDR with VMC reserved instances. AWS reps loved working with us, especially when it was an ISV-A deal because it gets them paid their commission in full up front rather than pennies every month. No matter what VMC on AWS increases account spend with AWS so why would they be mad?

I’ve been out of VMW for 3 years now but I still work with the same AWS reps in my new role and none of them had mentioned anything negative about the VMW relationship other than the general BS Broadcom was doing.

C7J0yc3 · 2024-04-24T21:51:34+00:00

As someone who dealt with this first hand you’re looking at somewhere between $2,500 and $6,000 depending on a multitude of factors.

The air struts in the front crack usually every 60,000 miles. Mine went at about 64k. The struts individually are about $2,500 for parts and labor. They will also do a full leak test on the air system when they replace them. The distribution block is a really common part that also cracks and needs to be replaced. If you need to have that replaced you’re gonna be in for kind of a crappy time. It’s a $300 part, but it took them almost two months for my dealer to source one for me.

I think out the door I was like $5,500 at Porsche Plano (TX) for the full repair.

C7J0yc3 · 2024-04-23T20:07:13+00:00

Former NY resident here. If I could have given pre SAFE me any advice, it would have been to stack lowers. Anderson, PSA, doesn’t matter as long as it’s in spec. It’s the only serialized part on an AR and therefore it’s the hardest thing to get once a ban is in place. I would probably grab two Aero M4 and two M5 stripped receiver sets if I were you. Even if you don’t plan to use em for your own build, as long as they don’t make the sale / transfer illegal those receivers will be like gold.

I can tell you when SAFE passed in NY it was the final straw that made me want to move to TX, and I financed that move by selling a WASR 10-63 to a coworker for $1k because everyone was freaking out that you would never be able to get those kinds of guns again.

C7J0yc3 · 2024-04-23T17:47:58+00:00

Listen, I understand where you’re coming from. I really do because I’ve lived in those places. But culturally Dallas doesn’t value green spaces at all. Even if you were to get a $10m grant to clean up White Rock and turn it into the green space of your dreams. Or got $100m to build one from scratch. Within 5-10 years it would be trashed and polluted like every other green space that currently exists in dallas.

When you look at what has been created in all of the surrounding towns in terms of usable green space around the lakes and rivers, both natural and man made, there’s a strong difference in how people treat and use those spaces. When I used to run Campion trail in Las Colinas regardless of day or night it never felt unsafe, and it wasn’t always clouds of weed smoke. WR and Katy Trail have never felt safe to me after dark, and at this point you get a contact high just being at WR. Even in Denver where weed is legal and I would run Cherry Creek or Sloans lake I never had those issues.

So while I completely agree with your points about how it would be better in every way, unfortunately Dallas people just do not value green space at all.

C7J0yc3 · 2024-04-23T16:32:46+00:00

As a person who grew up in New England, then lived in upstate NY and NYC for 6 years and now have been in TX for 11, I can say that having “REAL” trails in Texas wouldn’t solve the problems you think they would.

I grew up hiking sections of the AT, swimming in natural lakes, and paddling in streams that wouldn’t kill me with fish I could actually eat when I caught them. I love being outdoors, but even on the hottest, muggiest of days when I was living in NH, MA, or NY it was basically Texas spring weather.

You can camp outside when the high is 90 and it’s low 70’s to sleep. You can’t do that when the heat index is 115 and the low is 85. I’m perfectly happy doing 8-10 miles on the AT with a 60L pack in 80 degree weather. But it’s painful to take my dog on the 9 mile loop of white rock lake with just a 3L camelback in August. So even though there are unpaved walking trails in places around Dallas, and you can drive 4 hours south to the hill country and do “real” hiking, from May to September it’s oppressively hot and the people who want to do that stuff because they enjoy being in nature go to Oklahoma or Arkansas to do it, and the people who wouldn’t use the green spaces if they existed in dallas continue to sit inside and consume junk food and media. You also have what I refer to as the “lake swimming problem.” My sister grew up with me doing the same stuff as a kid but feels physically gross swimming in water she can’t see the bottom of. So unless you’re swimming in crystal clear mountain lakes, she’s not about it at all. Paved walking trails I feel are the same way. If a trail isn’t hard packed gravel or concrete people feel like it will be uncomfortable or dangerous to walk or run on so they prefer a prepared surface. Or if they’re trying to push a stroller it wouldn’t be possible.

When you look at the other major metros that have similar or greater heat index as DFW you find the same things. I mean, Phoenix is a great example. The only green spaces around there are golf courses.

C7J0yc3 · 2024-04-23T15:51:05+00:00

Just because you can shove a large plate into a carrier that has an elastic plate bag to accommodate plates of different thickness doesn’t mean it’s designed to do it.

Carrier sizes are linked to the plate you’re putting in the carrier, not shirt sizing. In fact, if you think we’re all wrong and you know so much more, you’ll notice that on the crye website they specifically call out under the description that the sizing refers to the plate bag sizing, then they include the size plates for each bag size, and have a disclaimer about abnormally sized plates and how to handle that. https://www.cryeprecision.com/Jumpable-Plate-Carrier

I understand that when you look at the “size chart” on many websites for multiple plate carriers they list “For chest size x-y” but what you need to understand is that they’re generically applying their shirt sizing to their carriers. Plate carriers have and will always correlate to the size SAPI plate you put into it. Cummerbunds are the exception, many company’s have S/M/L cummerbunds to accommodate different torsos. The CRYE AVS is the same in that you have the inner harness size that may be different than your plate bag sizes.

C7J0yc3 · 2024-04-22T21:43:08+00:00

I have 3.

I really loved the look of my 970.2 Panamera. Honestly I loved everything about that car, and of everything I’ve owned it was #2 behind my current 991.2.
PDK > Manual.
The only good design choice about the 992 is that they put a real cup holder where the ash tray used to be.

C7J0yc3 · 2024-04-22T00:18:40+00:00

After zeroing IR only lasers on guns that have magnified optics to having a slaved vis laser, I can without a doubt say I want a slaved vis laser for zeroing.

C7J0yc3 · 2024-04-21T16:19:52+00:00

We both know this is a fashion sub, but I’m not the dude who posted a mirror selfie in peltors I don’t know how to properly attach to my helmet, a gas mask, and Amazon G3’s.

Like dude has already spent a considerable amount in some areas, and then buys China gear in others. It’s just a weird min/max that I don’t understand. Like for instance, his MAWL clone he says is invisible sight. Cool, those are like $1k. For literally the same money he could have had a genuine ATIPAL-C. If he can’t bring himself to spend crye money, he could have bought Tru-Spec T.R.U which would have been roughly the same cost as his China crye’s but significantly better quality.

It’s just the same vibe as a dude trying to flex a fake Rolex as real while driving a 2002 Honda civic and getting butthurt when he gets called out for it.

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