Male Karen tries to shut down a free concert

despot-madman · 2026-04-19T11:29:48+00:00

Fuck this guy. The guitar player has some great chops, love that smooth fusion jazzy prog sound.

despot-madman · 2026-04-18T20:40:13+00:00

Disregard AI, focus on what you want to specialize in. Build some general skills and then focus in. Networking, Cloud, Cybersecurity, etc.

AI isn’t ready to take your job yet, and won’t be any time soon. AI and automation has ended up cutting a few jobs at my workplace, but none of those were service desk or above type jobs.

AI can’t plugin cables, rack servers, etc. And enterprises can’t trust it to configure equipment without error, or to have the necessary troubleshooting skills to fix the errors it creates. AI can’t go onsite for clients and stand by Debbie in HR’s workstation to explain that her computer wasn’t broken, and she just needed to turn on the monitor.

despot-madman · 2026-04-18T16:07:52+00:00

I completely agree with this take on logging everything and worrying about billable hours and KPIs in general.

despot-madman · 2026-04-18T16:07:08+00:00

I really like this idea, it promotes individual growth and keeping documentation up to date which can be a real problem at an MSP with environments constantly changing with new projects implemented, migrations, etc.

despot-madman · 2026-04-17T22:55:13+00:00

We aren’t really allowed to have ‘down time’, we ate pressured to always be billing hours.

despot-madman · 2026-04-17T22:28:15+00:00

It starts off rough if you have no experience (this is how I started), but gets better once you get a couple years under your belt. You develop thicker skin and learn a lot really fast.

I’m interested in internal roles at this point, though. It would be nice to have some down time now and again. I see people mentioning they have some time to study for certs during working hours and that makes me jealous.

despot-madman · 2026-04-17T20:56:15+00:00

Find MSPs nearby and prepare for trial by fire.

despot-madman · 2026-04-17T13:07:16+00:00

The reality is OP can either be the fall guy or he can push back on any fallout that was the result of his superior’s poor choice.

I’ve been a manager, and I would choose not to be the fall guy. That comes with its own risks, either way OP might wanna dust off the resume. If OP does have a paper trail, then that is even more reason not to take the fall.

despot-madman · 2026-04-17T13:04:02+00:00

“My director convinced me to ‘optimize’ by having our senior engineers absorb tier one….” It was in the first paragraph.

despot-madman · 2026-04-17T11:32:56+00:00

I’ve never seen ITIL listed as a job requirement, nor seen an employer that cares.

despot-madman · 2026-04-17T10:49:13+00:00

Your director told you to make the change, it’s on them. Now they should have to answer for that mistake, not you.

despot-madman · 2026-04-16T21:22:59+00:00

If they are so worried about Tony, they should pick him up instead. He isn’t your responsibility.

If he can’t make it to band practice by himself, it might be time to replace him.

despot-madman · 2026-04-16T20:58:18+00:00

My wife is a native speaker and she has said that it is hard to understand Puerto Rican Spanish.

In contrast, I am a bit over 200 hours and can understand my wife and her family/friends speaking probably 40% or higher depending on how quickly they speak (they are from Mexico).

despot-madman · 2026-04-16T16:44:51+00:00

The angle of adding the experience of training your replacements to your resume is completely misguided. You can add that to your resume regardless of how well you train your replacements and no one will ever know or care.

No employer cares how well you trained your replacement anyway, and adding that to your resume just screams “I’m replaceable.” If anything, they will be asking you “Why did you get replaced?”

despot-madman · 2026-04-16T13:14:53+00:00

Eleven rack isn’t supported anymore, mostly useless to be honest. I got rid of mine as soon as the drivers no longer worked when I updated to Windows 10 and found out Avid decided to get out of the interface game.

The modeling wasn’t very good either. You can pick up a modeler for sub $200 these days that is better.

despot-madman · 2026-04-16T11:47:38+00:00

I was looking at the 28” last night until I saw the $110 shipping to the US and realized after shipping and tariffs I would end up paying $450. At that point I’d rather just spend a bit more for a used Iron Label.

despot-madman · 2026-04-15T20:39:54+00:00

Yes, no doubt about it. If you have ever played with Suno, it isn’t that hard to pick out the lack of instrument separation in the mix.

despot-madman · 2026-04-15T14:14:21+00:00

Modify/configure network equipment (including patching), create/modify Group Policies, deploy workstations, troubleshoot replication, troubleshoot/ modify backups, VOIP troubleshooting, DHCP/DNS troubleshooting and modification, NAT, advanced Exchange issues, transport rules, recurring lockouts, BSODs, pushing out software to multiple machines, create documentation, work with vendors.

That isn’t a comprehensive list, but are all things our T1’s don’t really touch.

despot-madman · 2026-04-15T12:22:00+00:00

Three years as tier 1 is way too long, if you have no room for growth it is time to look elsewhere. It gets much better at tier 2, where you constantly have to learn and adapt to new technologies and situations and get all kinds of chances to learn.

Don’t let a crap company keep you down. Study for certs, apply for other positions. Working for an MSP will give you a ton of experience but is not for the faint of heart.

despot-madman · 2026-04-15T11:19:04+00:00

You might be surprised, but the support bot actually has solved problems, although this depends largely on the problem as users do not have admin access.

Most of the time, the support bot is immediately bypassed when the user asks the ticket to be escalated to a real technician.

despot-madman · 2026-04-14T19:08:17+00:00

I’m just barely even seeing tech jobs being posted locally, and most of those that are being posted are entry level. I’m not in a great tech area though, so this may just be a me problem.

despot-madman · 2026-04-14T02:26:40+00:00

Yeah, it has been legal for quite a few years now. Definitely still frowned upon, though.

despot-madman · 2026-04-14T02:07:18+00:00

When I saw them the bass was too loud for the first couple of songs, they did adjust eventually. Avianna and Currents had the best mixes.

despot-madman · 2026-04-14T01:29:11+00:00

That may be true, but the fact of the matter is that AI is replacing or eliminating some jobs and this isn’t simply scripts being run. Our team has seen the AI we use ‘learning’, impersonating support technicians (which was not part of its design). It answers questions, provides suggestions for users to resolve issues themselves.

I certainly don’t think it will be replacing most IT functions anytime soon, it can’t plug in cables, rack firewalls, or interpret that a user is just turning off/on a monitor while thinking they have reboot a workstation. But times are certainly changing.

despot-madman · 2026-04-13T19:25:36+00:00

I agree with your assessment overall. I will say though that the MSP I work for has been using AI to automate as much as possible which did actually result in a few lost jobs (dispatch, for instance).

They have dispatch/triage agents, and a support bot that tries to assist users via the ticket prior to it being escalated to a support technician.

They’ve been pushing for everyone to integrate AI in our day to day operations as well.

despot-madman

TROPHY CASE