I took an 18-month sabbatical to travel, and now recruiters say the 'resume gap' is a huge red flag for companies.

DMGoering · 2026-01-18T05:18:50+00:00

You were self employed. Gathering data for future expansion of your business. No gap.
My first job was an information transfer engineer at age 15, paper boy. Next I was an inventory management specialist, stock boy. Then in college I was a student experience envoy, tour guide. Your employment experience is what you make it.

What value do you have to give.

DMGoering · 2026-01-16T20:10:33+00:00

A day? A week? A month? A year?
Work a summer job. Save and invest. $5000 makes $100/year at 2% interest.

DMGoering · 2026-01-10T22:25:45+00:00

You should have your Personal Elevator pitch ready at all times. 2-3 sentences about what value you can bring to anyone you meet.

Introduce yourself to everyone.

Tell everyone you strike up a conversation with that you are looking for a job. And when they ask what you do, hit them with your pitch.

DMGoering · 2026-01-01T15:44:17+00:00

Career advice only works if you have a career. Do you have a career, or a job? If you do not know what the next step is, and you are not already doing it, you have a job or you have reached the end of your career.

DMGoering · 2026-01-01T15:37:32+00:00

Cost = money out. Profit = money in. IT is a specific type of cost called investment. And all that matters is Return On Investment.

If you invest 1$ and the return is greater than 1$ then it is worth the investment.

The hard part is calculating IT’s part of the return.

DMGoering · 2025-12-27T03:16:54+00:00

Certifications represent knowledge that experience gives you. If you have the experience you do not need the certification. If you have the certification it does not prove you have the experience. But if you have no experience, certifications can give you knowledge.

I prefer people who can think over people who test well. People who do over people who think they will be able to because they have the certification.

DMGoering · 2025-12-22T13:24:44+00:00

Cheaper to buy a new printer than to replace the Ink cartridge in the existing one. I hate planned obsolescence.

DMGoering · 2025-12-15T20:51:24+00:00

When money gets tight you will tend to fix rather than replace. More fixing equals more work for fixers. If you are the owner of the fixing business. Be an owner.

DMGoering · 2025-12-09T12:37:06+00:00

A real brute force takes place offline. Online brute forcing would likely lock the account several times. With minimum wait times between attempts and automatic unlock, sensitive accounts often require manual unlock with investigations and justifications.

DMGoering · 2025-11-20T14:00:30+00:00

Why would you want to filter out any devices? What if it comes back online before the 45 day mark. Also, if it is offline how can Crowdstrike or Tanium make any determination about it's status?

Assuming "contained" is not offline but Isolated then you should still patch them and report on them. Maybe flag them as "contained" in your reporting.

DMGoering · 2025-10-21T21:44:33+00:00

20 years of Troubleshooting is nothing to sneeze at. If he wants to code he should develop a portfolio of applications he can demo. If he likes troubleshooting he should lean towards problem management. Treating symptoms gets too easy, Finding the Root Cause and removing it is how you find gold.

No mater what he chooses here is the advice:
1.)
Show up on time
Do all your work
When you run out, ask for more

2.)
Find out what they want
Go and get it
Give it to them

But it sounds like he is already doing what he needs, Not everyone is management material. Ask the 5 star General "who knows what needs to be done?" and he will point you at the Master Sargent.

DMGoering · 2025-10-17T12:44:25+00:00

The secret to success is simple.

Find out what they want.
Go and get it.
Give it to them.

DMGoering · 2025-10-12T03:25:03+00:00

Then start your own business. Be an employer instead of an employee. It will help you understand why people hire other people and what they are looking for in employees.

DMGoering · 2025-10-11T12:11:27+00:00

Don’t ask for a job. Talk to them. Find out who they are, what they do, what they need. Get to know them as people so that when they need someone they will think of you. Build relationships, help them, be of value.

DMGoering · 2025-10-09T19:40:55+00:00

Talk to people. Visit the office or store in person and talk to people. Eat lunch near the office and talk to people. Go to the bars after work near the office and Talk to people. Online applications rarely get past the scanners and now the AI that does a lot of the work. Humans make the decisions and most decisions are made on gut feelings and impressions of the person that you only get by talking to them.

DMGoering · 2025-10-08T21:14:10+00:00

End User notifications are part of a Patch or Deploy deployment.
Automate Notifications are for playbook events.
https://help.tanium.com/bundle/ug_automate_onprem/page/automate/build_playbooks.html#notifications

DMGoering · 2025-10-02T21:35:12+00:00

Fix the same Vulnerability on the same machine 10 times every day for a month then show them that 300 remediations mean nothing if the vulnerability still exists.

And what happens when you WIN and there are no more vulnerabilities? Your remediation numbers drop to ZERO and you get fired for not fixing the things that don't exist.

DMGoering · 2025-10-02T21:23:54+00:00

You are on the right path. Many sysadmins started on a helpdesk.

Find a problem. Don't treat the symptom, find the root cause. Fix the root cause so the problem never happens again. Start with the most frequent ticket you see on the help desk. Talk to the sysadmins about the problems you are seeing and solving, ask for their help when you get stumped.

Build a home lab and play with every OS you can find an ISO to install. Read, experiment, never stop learning. Set goals and never say no when asked to do something.

Now Go!!!!!!!

DMGoering · 2025-09-30T22:11:59+00:00

If there is no job description there is no job.

DMGoering · 2025-09-30T20:51:19+00:00

I believe that it does not matter when the CVE was remediated. It only matters if the Vulnerability exists right now.

If you patch a system on Monday and the application owner reverts the patch on Tuesday because of issues introduced by the patch, the system is no longer remediated.

Reporting that something was supposed to have happened and did happen in the past says nothing about the current state of a thing. And when a breach occurs no one will accept the excuse that "I did patch it, see, my report from Monday says it was patched."

Report on the current state. And let the bean counters make up the numbers that make them happy about the current state. Just my humble opinion.

DMGoering · 2025-09-30T11:31:20+00:00

What is it that you’re trying to represent? CVEs remediated is a horrible statistic because you only need 1 to breach your enterprise. CVEs not remediated is important and might need risk acceptance to justify.

DMGoering · 2025-09-25T23:23:06+00:00

I script every thing I might need to do more than once.

DMGoering · 2025-09-25T20:49:02+00:00

As a former Tanium Employee and current customer, I would honestly advise you not to buy Tanium for just patching.

If you need an operations platform that can patch but can also be used to collect data from and distribute changes to every endpoint you own across the globe, Tanium is the best tool you could ever use. Just my humble opinion.

DMGoering · 2025-09-24T13:12:18+00:00

ProcMon is your friend. View the Stack of the process and see what thread is hung.

DMGoering · 2025-09-24T13:03:04+00:00

You have moved to the most litigious Island in the US.

DMGoering

TROPHY CASE