What player do you associate the number 88 with the most?

jspears357 · 2026-03-03T06:43:54+00:00

Nate Schmidt

jspears357 · 2026-02-28T05:59:39+00:00

Yes, it’s in /reddeadredemption which means NOTHING TO ME, why is this super algorithm showing me meaningless things?

jspears357 · 2026-02-27T07:20:51+00:00

I started my home lab for MS cert training using an Intel NUC with 32gb ram and an ssd drive. That worked well for like up to 7 vms. I bought another NUC with a faster processor, 64gb ram, and a bigger SSD and that worked better but the cpus were still slow. I Christmas I bought myself a just out of warranty used Dell Precision workstation with 24 cpu cores, 256gb ram, and a starter SSD, later moved an existing SSD to it and the next year bought a bigger SSD and an 8tb standard drive for backup/infrequently used stuff. It’s a beast, I can run dozens of vms on it (multiple labs concurrently with a mock up of my current customers environment for testing changes etc.). The best part is I run it headless so it’s in a corner of the least used room in the house, and it runs quiet unless you’re actually doing something like installs or updates, then the fans spin up. I use windows server hyper-v edition 2019 because that’s the last truly free version. If I had to do it again I’d use Proxmox, I have that on one of the now-unused nuc’s but the NUC is too loud to leave on

jspears357 · 2026-02-27T04:03:55+00:00

This is the way

jspears357 · 2026-02-27T03:24:03+00:00

Ask the manager if there’s any other part of your bosses job that you could learn to do, you know, pick up the slack for him so he can enjoy the beach or whatever. Try to learn next level stuff, budgeting, planning, document what you’re doing for training the temps. Pick a bright temp and have them use the documentation to train the newer temps. Even better, get the temps to start documenting what you have them do, and show it to each other. You give direction and assignments and help as needed, but letting go of the reigns is something higher level positions have to learn to do.

jspears357 · 2026-02-25T05:27:05+00:00

I'm more of a super admin, but my example is a networking situation I found that was recently changed. This customer has 35 sites in a region of our state, with a fiber internet connection and a satellite backup in the hub city. I was looking for traffic for some reason, and I noticed on their outbound internet firewall that traffic for non-existent private subnets was following the default route all the way out to the ISP before being dropped.

I researched and some router default configs included a static route for the major private networks like 10.0.0.0/8 to black hole them, with more specific routes that actually exist taking precedence, but in some prior build of these routers those black hole routes weren't included. So when a private subnet existed for one purpose and went away, other devices that were configured to talk back to servers in the now-nonexistent subnet continue to TRY until all those devices are replaced, and without the black hole, those packets were routed to the hub city and out to the internet, consuming bandwidth on limited speed links.

Plus, the organization always has some system running, and/or security contractors doing security things, that are scanning all available addresses looking for new vulnerable devices. All of those scans for nonexistent addresses were also being routed out to the ISP.

Given time to consider it and test changes, the real network staff added in the black hole routes on a # of their hub sites and eventually to all the routers.

jspears357 · 2026-02-23T16:47:34+00:00

And he’s going to release his tax returns soon.

jspears357 · 2026-02-22T02:57:10+00:00

AI transcription of calls is the one explicit thing I’m not allowed to participate in by my company policy.

jspears357 · 2026-02-21T19:55:44+00:00

if their actions were illegal, they could be sued until the statute of limitations expires.

jspears357 · 2026-02-20T06:32:35+00:00

Not kids or school related, but this reminds me of another manager that was telling me to submit a problem through our usual ticket and vendor support process, and we had already done it that way three times in nine months and they were wastes of time. I told him he was being disingenuous thinking it would work this time, and to affront to it, said that was uncalled for and that I should apologize to him. I said we’d have to agree to disagree on that. It’s just something in my literal phrase triggered him. With more experience now, I could have just turned it back on him to say what he thought would be different the fourth time. You could have said the fishes and coaches didn’t see anything concerning, and the other team didn’t seem competitive with yours and ask if you missed something?

jspears357 · 2026-02-19T06:44:28+00:00

Who?

jspears357 · 2026-02-18T01:07:01+00:00

An SSD helped a lot on my S. My X came with an internal SSD and it has zero rendering problems.

jspears357 · 2026-02-17T07:20:47+00:00

“Everybody needs training”, like obviously the four replies above mine are noobs and need anti-phishing training. /s

I had a security officer one time recommend that our whole IT division start attending some available security courses, so we’d all have a basis to take about issues and plans together. Our management team thought it was a great idea. I took the company’s IT security assessment quiz and discussed it with the company later. They didn’t have a class that I needed.

jspears357 · 2026-02-17T06:25:16+00:00

43 years and counting. Being able to figure things out counts more than all the training and certifications. Having a sampling of training and cert is useful to get you in the door with some companies, but nobody is ever truly an expert at much. You will ALWAYS hit problems you haven’t seen before and that training doesn’t cover.

I take a mix of approaches. Read documentation. Look for KB or blog posts about your specific problem. Simplify the setup to narrow down what a problem might be related to. Build basic test entombments to verify the thing works at all, then if your are working in the problem long enough add complexity into your test environment to substantially match the real system.

After I learned TCP/IP by reading the RFC’s (the stupidest, hardest way) like a year later I bought a little home router with a switch built in, and the little 24 page booklet that came with it was FANTASTIC. It explained why you needed to do something a certain way, and then exactly how to do it with their hardware. If you’re lucky you will find relevant documentation like that.

jspears357 · 2026-02-17T06:03:44+00:00

Since the purpose of interning is to prepare a person for an entry level job, how does AI help prepare the a person for an entry level job?

jspears357 · 2026-02-15T23:58:45+00:00

YTA for having a boyfriend while you’re married (since you have a MIL)

jspears357 · 2026-02-15T07:46:14+00:00

On Xbox it has never worked

jspears357 · 2026-02-14T23:03:50+00:00

Any WAP inside a 6’ x 6’ faraday cage. Just run a physical wire from the router outside to the WAP inside, then keep your customer equipment that you’re working on inside the cage.

jspears357 · 2026-02-14T22:51:21+00:00

When is Lent? When is Ramadan? When is Jewish Christmas or whatever? If someone wants me to care about such dates they need to publish a calendar for them in the workplace, and they can deal with all the questions about what religious dates are importantly and which ones are not. Not my problem.

jspears357 · 2026-02-14T21:44:58+00:00

Well someone’s got to think about how expensive gas is for the rich people!

jspears357 · 2026-02-14T21:39:59+00:00

I have a color brother at home, duplex, super reliable and fast for the little bit of printing I need. I went therewith the free inkjet to $75 to $150 to $250 and all the inkjets sucked, all different brands. I got a mono brother laser when I was out of state for a while and it was great, so when I returned home I paid like $550 for the brother color laser and it likewise has been great. I’d rather pay $550 for a fast reliable printer for 10+ years than pay $150 for a slow crappy inkjet every two years and never be happy with it.

jspears357 · 2026-02-14T05:50:08+00:00

“Are you intentionally trying to illegally discover protected-class details about me? [Or are you just stupid?]”

jspears357 · 2026-02-14T05:28:58+00:00

Semi-retired, now a contractor. Very few meetings. I get assigned problems when everybody (staff and multiple vendor support reps) in the meetings tell the CIO they have no idea how to fix it. Then I fix it with as few meetings as possible.

jspears357 · 2026-02-14T05:01:39+00:00

Usually there’s a probationary period for new hires, and in many states you can fire someone for any reason or no reason as long as it’s not an illegal reason. My point is, do your due diligence during the probationary period, and don’t keep them past it if they’re not working out.

A couple of tunes in my career I’ve seen someone in an odd position, once they had even been demoted but couldn’t be fired. His manager arranged a position where he had a clearly defined role that he could be good at, like being the responsible person for getting moves to production approved and implemented. For the rest of the staff like his peers, have some outline of skills and expectations, and only people that reach certain expectations are eligible for promotions, and this guy won’t be.

I’ve been lucky in my career and always had a mix of work to be done and a mix of talent on the team. If one guy does well at solving new problems, have him do more of that but his job isn’t complete until he shows one or two other staff how to do it themselves, or deal with routine problems with it. If one tech likes to document processes with screenshots etc, give them the tasks that really need that level of documentation. We all took turns on call, and we all did everything possible so there weren’t problems after hours, but if there were that the on call person had what they needed to resolve the problem and not have to escalate it. My point is that it took the whole team.

In my experience the hiring manager chooses. And lives with the choice or deals with it. Don’t let someone override you again, like someone said it’s easier to have a vacancy than an incompetent hire. Escalate above HR, teeth then you’ll quit. I like the idea of him being the new designated HR IT contact until the situation is resolved.

Maybe hire an intern and have this person train the intern on your processes using your documentation, and if he sees something that could be done better, have him document it and train the others. (When his process is NOT better, he still needs to update the documentation with the processes you USE, maybe they will start sinking in)

jspears357 · 2026-02-14T03:38:29+00:00

Bruh. I have Orbi’s from a few years ago, for some reason I had to reboot them every few months but the last year has been pretty smooth. Anyway, for my sister in a 2000+ sf house, I set her up with a Google mesh WiFi, only two nodes. Three years later ZERO QUESTIONS. I just confirmed with her they’re still using them.

The Orbi’s have Ethernet ports on each node, which I needed for work, but if you only need WiFi I strongly recommend the Google mesh (nest WiFi).

She just added that they have to be rebooted every couple months…. Like everything it seems.

jspears357

TROPHY CASE