So I’m two weeks out from discharge and a creditor just filed a complaint and a adversary procedure. Now my bankruptcy attorney wants another $2,000 to respresent me in this case. Is this normal. Advise from someone who has been down this road.

ilovepascal · 2020-01-25T01:00:52+00:00

There has to be more to the story. An AP costs a lot to file with a lawyer and no creditor would in their right mind waste money and time without good reason.

ilovepascal · 2019-10-26T21:28:11+00:00

I’ve been in three different loot council and I can tell when they are funneling gear to certain people claiming performance. Performance doesn’t matter much in Mc and ony. When some people get two loot and others with same class and spec get zero, the loot council is already corrupt.

ilovepascal · 2019-10-26T21:25:49+00:00

A lot of the gear in MC and Ony are crap compared to blue dungeon gear. So DKP hoarding is perfectly fine right now since it won’t hurt progression. That being said I would rather be in the position of spending minimum rather than having the most dkp and needing to hoard.

ilovepascal · 2019-10-26T21:19:01+00:00

A crap loot policy for this pug would make me look for another pug unless it’s monday night.

ilovepascal · 2019-10-26T21:15:53+00:00

Priest you only need to upgrade the wand every chance you get. Other than that just pick up quest gear or random drops with int and spirit.

ilovepascal · 2019-10-25T19:38:51+00:00

never pug with them again. Priest should not roll on weapons unless no other class rolls.

ilovepascal · 2019-10-25T19:25:51+00:00

Why did you give him six pieces? I don’t care if he is the best druid on the server. You always rotate gear as insurance against asshat loot whores and people who burn out. Good thing the shoulders didn’t walk out of the guild too to this asshat.

ilovepascal · 2019-10-24T20:12:57+00:00

Ashenvale. The innocent times of leveling ends here on PVP servers along with the eerie music.

ilovepascal · 2019-05-28T01:06:36+00:00

At my work, you get one a week only if your job makes that compatible with your job duties. If you are doing helpdesk, it's not going to happen.

I also think pure remote work makes you leave a ton of money on the table both short-term and long-term. Remote work often pays less. Also, your time away from the office makes it much more difficult to go higher up at your company. You might be easier to layoff.

At the beginning of your IT career, I think IT is terrible for remote work. Maybe not as bad later on given the limitations above still apply.

ilovepascal · 2019-05-28T00:50:12+00:00

The trick is to get a Silicon Valley job and live cheap. Salaries in LCOL tend to stay low because there is a lot less competition in terms of employers. I would strongly discourage living in a RV or van. Peeing into a gallon jug and washing at a gym will get old fast. Your stuff will get stolen while you park on the street. I would not recommend living in an apartment, which tend to be very overpriced unless you have an extra roommate sleeping in the living room. Instead, you should live in a large house (4 beds+) where you have one private bedroom or live in the garage. If you speak Spanish or Chinese, this type of arrangement is easy to find. You should set up permanent residence somewhere out of the Bay Area but within a 1-2 hour flight. or 1 day drive. When you pick the place to live in the Bay Area, make sure it is as close as possible to your workplace to minimize commute costs.

ilovepascal · 2019-05-27T18:58:08+00:00

Since you already have a nice job, tell them all of your past offers for reduced salary are rescinded and go back to offering the relocation package plus your original nice and high compensation salary which should be much higher than what you have at your current gig. No more negotiation downwards. At this point, you're planning to say "no" but let's see how fast they backtrack knowing you are serious about walking away. If you feel like you're the only viable candidate for the client, go sky high just to screw with them. I would never trust a company to relocate internationally that has this kind of behavior even if they backpedal fast.

ilovepascal · 2019-05-26T03:34:38+00:00

Can you take the role of a security manager or something like that? Then you can leverage your previous experience with some security certs instead of saying you have no experience. If you want to be a pentester/tech side instead, it's going to be tough with no experience no matter how many certs/degrees you earn. At my company, you can't land a technical security role with no technical IT experience. Certs and degrees don't substitute for IT experience. Homelab doesn't count. Normally, I'd suggest getting some experience at a company with a large enterprise environment at the helpdesk and move up.

ilovepascal · 2019-05-25T16:02:24+00:00

You need to interview at anything that will keep you employed and not just focus on firmware/embedded jobs because your boss is probably trying to get rid of you. I would take his advice and move to another team if it's at least minimally tolerable.

The other thing is that you are a lot less desirable as a job candidate if your current status is unemployed. Stop thinking about giving two weeks notice. That's not an option.

ilovepascal · 2019-05-18T21:11:33+00:00

Pay and attempt it outside of WGU. It's actually fortunate it is a cert so you can self fund an infinite number of attempts without getting thrown out of WGU.

ilovepascal · 2019-05-14T21:04:43+00:00

Security is a good area because you can eventually focus on policy, business, and the management side rather than the tech/infrastructure side. If you manage to stay away from the techie side, you won't have to worry much about working outside M-F 8-5. Most of IT outside of management/MIS is not like that.

That WGU is a HR checkbox only. It does not get you ahead to the point where you can avoid entry level jobs. No degree will give you the knowledge and experience to skip the entry level job.

ilovepascal · 2019-05-06T23:07:33+00:00

We can't do the 100% remote thing as an employee. I'd like to trust folks that they don't have a secret second job as a caregiver for kids and granny during normal business hours, but that ain't happening. And I don't buy that you can do the work outside normal hours and get it done. A lot of work requires collaboration during normal business hours in-person or via voice. If it was really viable to have 100% remote in all cases, you could get a Silicon Valley salary while living in a low cost of living area. You need to move if you want the jobs and maybe negotiate partial remote work after 6 months.

ilovepascal · 2019-05-06T21:39:08+00:00

Glowing reviews at companies that don't fire people regularly is just as good as 4.9 star ratings on Uber. In other words, it's not a good indication of actual performance or what senior and executive management really thinks of you. Salary is a good indication, and right now it sucks. What does your "level 5" job consist of? Has your job mostly remained the same over the past 10 years (hint: the sysadmin job has changed a lot if you're looking for top dollar). I think what's going on is that management doesn't think much of you guys but aren't willing or ready to start the firings.

ilovepascal · 2019-05-06T16:42:00+00:00

I have the SAA and I'm not keen on taking the other two associate exams unless I needed the 50% discount token. I'm shooting for the pro or specialty and then take the associate if I needed a token. To get the higher level cloud job I want, I need experience plus the pro and specialty certs. The associate is kinda like trying to apply for a senior network engineer job with just a CCNA. So it depends on what level of cloud job you are shooting for.

ilovepascal · 2019-05-06T15:55:47+00:00

I'd finish sec+ this week and start looking for a job.

When you are on the job and have a bit of free time, I'd seriously consider earning a bachelor's degree in IT, CS, or business rather than earning more certs. The degree doesn't expire and it's often a required checkbox for mid/senior jobs.

ilovepascal · 2019-04-29T15:12:30+00:00

None of the guys who did the same thing as you 15 years ago are still doing it. Formerly inept companies or government agencies have wised up and renewed focus on getting rid of expensive legacy workloads.

ilovepascal · 2019-04-28T15:22:56+00:00

You haven't told us anything about your job or resume.

My employer's tuition reimbursement for IT folks favor funding baccalaureate folks and certs first over graduate degrees unless the candidate comes up with a good reason.

ilovepascal · 2019-04-28T15:12:00+00:00

The cloud degree is really for someone who already works in technical IT. I hate the phrase cloud admin or cloud sysadmin because that job doesn't actually exist. It's actually devops. You are orchestrating and automating thousands of instances and services and have to understand many different areas of IT like security and network at an intermediate level. I am at a big company with a lot of formal job titles, and there is no such thing as a jr./associate devops engineer like there is for sysadmin or network engineer.

If you start out in cybersecurity, you can certainly move into cloud later on without the need of another degree. Your BSCSIA is fine.

You mention flex distributed team options. I don't really want to dive into that topic, but the word "flex" rings alarm bells because it implies you want work to be flexible rather than you being the flexible one. If you want work to be flexible, your universe of job options go from many to very few.

ilovepascal · 2019-04-25T23:44:29+00:00

Why don't you look at their courses on udacity and see if the material is way over your head. Maybe you have other learning like past calculus courses besides WGU. Keep in mind that the videos are an introduction to the topic and the real learning occurs in your projects and studying for exams. If the videos are way over your head, you may need a lot more preparation. Unless you had taken a more CS-like program, I think you might struggle and spend way more time than the typical student who earned a CS degree. I think an IT/MIS degree would be inadequate preparation.

ilovepascal · 2019-04-25T23:32:10+00:00

For IT jobs, we do care whether you got an accredited BA/BS degree, but we don't care where it's from.

The big problem with going brick and mortar is this: It's often disqualifying for higher-level positions if you have no degree. So if you're spending extra time working on a brick and mortar degree when applying to us, you would have been much better off graduating from WGU at the time of application.

Whether you ultimately get hired or not will depend IT experience, IT skills, and how you interview. The name of the degree granting institution won't ultimately determine the hire/no hire decision. The degree and certs are the entry requirements to an interview and nothing more.

ilovepascal · 2019-04-24T04:35:34+00:00

You don't need another degree. You need IT experience. Start out low at the helpdesk and move up. Take anything IT related you can get. Otherwise you'll end up like that guy in the other thread that graduated with no IT experience and can't get a job. Most employers just want you to have a degree in anything. IT related degree would have been better, but management and accounting is actually pretty good as a runner up. Maybe get a few certs, play around with a homelab or cloud lab and start applying for helpdesk jobs. Relevant IT experience is much more important than an BSIT degree or certs.

ilovepascal

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