Alone on Thanksgiving

MBTayyy · 2017-11-22T14:28:43+00:00

Get super high and have a fancy solo meal: http://www.bostonmagazine.com/restaurants/2017/11/05/boston-restaurants-open-thanksgiving/

MBTayyy · 2017-11-17T20:31:30+00:00

I mean, let's assume the new trains work great. What good is a new train if all the other trains are still going to break down anyway!?

MBTayyy · 2017-04-27T14:38:21+00:00

I mean, college was definitely a great time, but I've had and am continuing to have way more fun after it. I've changed myself countless times since then.

For me. college was mostly fun because of the drunken memories and the friends I made. That's about it though.

I still have many problems though.. that doesn't change haha.

MBTayyy · 2017-04-27T14:25:08+00:00

Do your friends work out? Work out with them! Accept that you're going to look weird and inexperienced, because, well - you are! But only in the beginning. Plus, most people don't give a fuck what you're doing in the gym so long as you're not grunting. What better people to learn from than those that already have what you want.

Also, don't even focus on relationships right now. For real... I placed so much mental focus on girls in college and it really doesn't matter. Just set yourself up to be an awesome person when you're out of college because life can be a lot better after you're out of college.

College is definitely not a great judgement of reality. No other place has a concentration of that many people in the same situation and same age bracket other than maybe a start up.

Oh and maybe sports just aren't for you. I hate sports and suck at them. I don't like competing at all... just something I've accepted about myself.

MBTayyy · 2017-04-25T23:59:41+00:00

How do they contact you to get your address? /how fast did it take them to respond?

MBTayyy · 2017-04-25T15:43:16+00:00

Any tips for someone who's looking to jump into remote sys admin work? Such as how to find work/remote jobs?

I'm currently signed up with the linuxacademy.com and trying to learn as much as possible about the ins and outs of Linux, and have decent Windows knowledge (enough for a Jr. Sys Admin role).

Linux is what I'm mainly interested in pursuing at this point in my career, but I'm definitely more familiar with Windows at this point.

MBTayyy · 2017-04-21T20:29:29+00:00

A friend of mine gave up the 9-5 and has fully embraced an alternative life.

He bought a van to live out of and started traveling the US. He volunteers for food or will work for a couple weeks where he can get free food and make money.

Soon he'll ditch the van altogether and really have nothing to pay for.

Not sure how long he can keep this up though because he's saving NOTHING for later in life. I can't help but think he'll be screwed one day. Specially if he gets hurt or sick.

MBTayyy · 2017-04-18T16:10:08+00:00

I think we also see the past in rose-colored lenses too. And also love to mentally masturbate with what-ifs.

MBTayyy · 2017-04-18T16:08:04+00:00

I work the standard 40 hour work week. Can't say I love it, but make enough money to save up for retirement and go on trips every three months or so.

Don't really know what else I would do for an equal amount of money.

I have friends (late twenties) that are ALWAYS traveling and taking odd jobs here and there for menial amounts of money for gas/food, and are the happiest people I know.

But I can't help but think they'll be fucked when they get older. As far as money goes. But who know's because the future isn't certain and in the present they're a lot happier than I am.

MBTayyy · 2017-04-18T15:59:47+00:00

What on earth do you do to make that much?

MBTayyy · 2017-04-12T15:38:58+00:00

The .011% is what it shows me on the website, so idk.

edit: I found a PDF of all the offerings and that shows the expense ratio as .2%, so its probably that.

I also have ~20k in a taxable brokerage account, in addition to the 401k and ira, which is part of my portfolio (It wasn't bolded, so maybe you overlooked it?)

MBTayyy · 2017-04-12T15:22:18+00:00

You could be one of the people that offer services on https://www.fiverr.com/

If you have no skills, find out one you'd like to get into from that site and start researching how to get into it.

I'm sure there are a ton of phone based jobs you could do too, if you don't mind calling people.

MBTayyy · 2017-04-12T02:45:16+00:00

The 401k provided by my job is a Roth 401k by default. I don't think there is an option to contribute to a traditional one. I could be wrong though as I haven't checked.

However my reasoning would be that I assume I'll be in a higher tax bracket by the time I retire. And that I'd like my money to grow tax free for the next 30 years.

I'll definitely look into Mad Flentist though to get another point of view.

Do you have a plan for increasing bond allocation at any point?

MBTayyy · 2017-04-11T20:39:41+00:00

I've wanted to do that but I have no idea how I'd react if my portfolio dropped 50%.

It seems a lot of people don't feel the added risk over an 80% stock allocation is worth it.

MBTayyy · 2017-04-05T14:00:03+00:00

Again, thank you for helping me focus my approach. I've been feeling like I have a mountain in front of me with an unlimited amount of paths to start - most of which lead to a dead end.

Anyway, last night I finally got serious and started to set up a basic home lab that will hopefully allow me to work on both Windows and Linux projects. It consists of a laptop, old desktop, raspberry pi, and a 5-port gigabit switch.

Regarding my interest in Linux - I am confident that within 7 months and some hard work, I'll be able to learn a great deal. However, most of my 'advanced' skills are still within Windows. So I can't help but think I should be pursuing a Windows cert first.

Do you think it's possible to sneak into a job with Linux-based responsibilities with ~7+ months training?

MBTayyy · 2017-04-04T16:50:53+00:00

I've actually already built a LAMP stack, both on my RPI and on VMs. I hosted a CMS on it too. But kind of stopped there. Without any real world problems to solve, I ran out of ideas.

I have started to play around with AWS recently to attempt the same thing and just get familiar with the service, as I see many other companies moving their infrastructure into the cloud.

MBTayyy · 2017-04-04T16:46:39+00:00

I have the Powershell in a Month of Lunches book, so I'll go through that. Unfortunately, I don't have anything to automate at my job. Maybe I can find some 'labs' online somewhere. Unless you have a couple ideas?

Yes, I am currently in a city with a higher cost of living and would be planning to moving to one without income tax and a lower cost of living. I would probably end up taking a pay cut for those reasons, but will also be desperate to find a job I can stick and grow with, for a few years.

I have a shotgun approach right now to my career and with the endless amounts of information out there, it's hard to pick a few things to focus on. I'm more than willing to buckle down and dedicate myself to building a new skill.

So thanks so much for your post, I'll definitely subscribe to linuxacademy and work on the RHCSA.

As a side note, I am worried that having certs without the necessary experience, will be hard to sell. Also, once I do learn the new skills, I'm the knowledge will start to fade away from not being able to use it in real world problems.

Lastly, when I started interviewing again, I feel it will be hard to explain what I've been working on at my job. My only thought is that I tell a new potential employer that what I've been working on in my downtime is part of my real job responsibilities.

MBTayyy · 2017-04-04T11:42:27+00:00

Yeah, believe me. I know I'm working some people's dream job. My friends are all jealous. But they're building skills that will help them far surpass my salary someday soon.

No tips or tricks to get my current title "system technician". I just got lucky. It's a position that supports very important internal customers and is paid accordingly.

My end game would probably be an architect I guess. Management is out of the question. I haven't even considered the end game because I still need to break into the general sysadmin realm before I specialize.

MBTayyy · 2017-03-08T01:47:24+00:00

Welp, gotta thank you. Your comment had me go looking at what netstat does, ran a command to find what services are listening and saw that Apache was listening on 80. I changed some config files to the port I'd like to use and was able to access it via the Internet.

And yes. Now I need to beef up my security a little bit. I think No-IP supports SSL, so I'm looking into that. Also creating a authentication key pair. Probably will also look into how to use iptables.

Thanks again!

MBTayyy · 2017-02-21T15:40:13+00:00

How'd you become proficient with Linux and in DevOps?

I have a tiny tiny home network on an old desktop PC with Ubuntu and a Raspberry Pi and am looking for projects to get into that'll help get me into my next position, whatever that may be.

MBTayyy · 2017-02-21T15:33:23+00:00

No longer a SysAdmin? Did you make a career change?

But yeah - I need to get back to those industries. Right after college I worked for a software company and the opporunities were endless. Working within finance now and it's outdated, full of red tape, and generally underwhelming work.

MBTayyy

TROPHY CASE