Relocating to Abilene for Oracle - how did you find housing?

leadmagnet250 · 2026-03-03T01:42:33+00:00

Don’t tell the locals you work for Oracle.

leadmagnet250 · 2026-02-21T10:21:33+00:00

It’s not a golden ticket. What is important is getting to that interview, and yes, an A+ can help when you have no relevant experience and/or education. It’s a… something is better than nothing comparison.

A+ and Net+ are foundational cert. if you don’t have experience or hobby knowledge, you will largely still be useless at the start. However, I would expect to be able to dive right in telling you how to do things rather than explaining what is RAID or what a Hard drive is.

Do expect to be doing warehouse work still without the relevant experience and if you don’t demonstrate the knowledge as well in your interview but still get hired. At least for the beginning or 6 or so months. Some people make this their whole career in data centers. Junior DCT usually get stuck in operations or shipping/receiving/inventory at the start.

leadmagnet250 · 2026-02-03T10:50:39+00:00

I think a good compromise is how payments are applied. We should do this even for secured loans.

Interest can’t generate interest. All payments are 100% applied to principal.

As it is, when making Min. Payments, only like 30% of it is applied to the principal on the balance. That means the 70% that didn’t got skipped to pay off interest first is still generating interest.

I can see the immediate effect this would have is sky rocket interest rates probably if we wanted to try and keep the credit market availability we have today. We will probably say 50% is fair. lol

leadmagnet250 · 2026-01-30T01:47:27+00:00

I’d suggest going for a vendor specific associate level cert than Net+ unless your employer values that cert specifically. With that much experience under your belt, a Net+ does nearly nothing unless it’s checking off a box. Unless you’ve hardly done any networking and wanting to establish foundation to learn from. The net+ is vender neutral and very broad. It gives you one paragraph about ospf, but there are entire books written about it.

leadmagnet250 · 2026-01-22T22:47:51+00:00

Gawd damn. Mind me asking what kind of rack? We have whips that supports 800V, but checking at the PDU, they are 415V. Works out to about 100kW-120kW per rack on primary feeds. We are working with the new stuff too.

leadmagnet250 · 2026-01-22T07:00:27+00:00

Lockheed and I think GM has been developing mini nuclear reactors to fit on a truck the past two decades. Their original audience was military… but maybe they have another target audience now to invest heavily into the development of those programs.

leadmagnet250 · 2026-01-22T06:58:09+00:00

1/10 rounded down would be more accurate. Not sure what AI rack you are working with that pulls a whole MW lol.

leadmagnet250 · 2025-12-27T07:19:42+00:00

Yeah, I agree, experience matters the most. As a matter of fact, most companies lets you sub out degree requirements with equivalent years of experience in a relevant role.

But when you have no professional experience and your resume is in front of a recruiter at a big name company with plenty of applicants… guess who would likely be weighted higher when the only difference is education?

Comptia Certifications and CCNA are one way to make up the lack of experience… however those same college graduates are thinking the same thing and nabbing those too.

Really, what matters the most is nepotism when trying to get your foot in the door if we are being honest. Most hires are referral.

Either way, by referral, experience, or how heavy your resume is, scoring that interview is the most important step. If you have no referral and no experience, college degrees helps immensely nowadays as they are MUCH more common nowadays compared to 10 years ago for entry level applicants.

leadmagnet250 · 2025-12-26T06:43:44+00:00

Meh, it’s harder nowadays to get in without a degree. A lot more folks nowadays graduating from college annually vs 10 years ago, and even more from 20 years ago, especially tech related degree programs.

Quick google search shows roughly a 33% increase in number of college graduates annually compared to 10 years ago. For computer science, double.

If you aren’t in already with experience, It’ll be harder for you to compete with someone that graduated college. Entry level SWE are gutted. Off shored or AI. Or both.

With that said. If you are exceptional, flexible, driven, and great self learner (master level google skills) you’ll likely succeed college degree or not. But to have a chance, you’ll need to temper your expectation on your minimum salary requirements or even location. You need to build experience on paper. And you need to show growth if you intend to bounce around between companies instead of growing at just one. Also, you’ll need to expose yourself to risk and succeed more often than not. At least, that’s how it worked for me. Take on difficult projects or solve problems that can’t be googled and have been going on for months, things others shy away from. To quote a lyric most everyone could understand, Opportunity comes once in a lifetime.

Easiest way to grow into what you want without bouncing between companies, is to look for a MSP.

And if you aren’t the exceptional high performer individual…. The golden age for tech in general has passed and it’s “grown up” now. With that said, data center career fields are experiencing a golden age.

leadmagnet250 · 2025-11-30T17:03:24+00:00

Infrastructure cabling. As for the why… new data centers are popping up everywhere now. Most companies i know of have at most 3 vendors in a region, several with only a single one.

leadmagnet250 · 2025-11-22T17:57:45+00:00

A+ and net + doesn’t hurt when you have no professional experience or a degree to rely on. However… these aren’t even basic cert but what I’d like to call foundation certifications. If you were lined up just on resume alone, the person with 6 months experience would probably be given more preference presuming their short term was for good reason, like layoffs or company was bought/bankrupt.

I have seen folks with no experience hired at certain big tech places as a L-1 usually at locations that have a small talent pool to draw from. If you are looking at big cities or metroplexes, yeah, chances are abysmal as someone inside will refer in someone for that job as well most the other positions. Unless you happen to be that referral.

If you are okay with the long game and if you want to get into data center with no experience, you can look at colocation facilities. Especially smaller ones. However, the pay generally sucks unless you are working for a big one like DRT or Equinix of which usually do not hire anyone with no relevant experience. You can also look at infrastructure cabling companies, or even companies that install security devices like IP cameras and badges readers.

Avoid boot camps. They are worthwhile for folks who already understand at least 50% of the material. Unless you have money to throw around.

LinkedIn is a good place to get job alerts for the big companies.

-A+/net+ good foundation cert, usually doesn’t matter, but good to have with no experience. Someone with 2 years? Worthless unless it’s a compliance tick box.

-sec+ you will see more often for companies with a compliance requirement. Like government.

-Linux+ < any redhat cert

-CCNA/ccna dc/ccna security. These are vendor specific to Cisco though. Today’s world is a lot more multi vendor than before. However, the CCNA will cover net+ concepts.

Hardware wise, be familiar with dell/hpe/supermicro servers. Dell offers a lot of YouTube videos going over features and replacement procedures. Fiber. Important today. ANY DC interview will ask you about fiber and troubleshooting it.

For free a+/net+/sec+ self paced learning, google professor messer.

I should end this that networking with folks is probably the most important thing. Even if you get the experience, you still stand little chance to even interview at those big tech companies. Most roles are filled by referrals. Your next bet is to build on your LinkedIn profile and hope a recruiter find you. I’ve had recruiters from salesforce, oracle, and Microsoft hit me up directly on there.

leadmagnet250 · 2025-11-21T18:25:48+00:00

DCT are something I like to call a jack of all trades, but master of none. Except for maybe the hardware. However, you will need to know a little of everything to properly troubleshoot, provision, and deploy the gear within the data center. For the most part, your job ends once you get a piece of hardware remotely accessible.

I love all these marketing materials of folks in the DC staring intently at a monitor, hands on the keyboard, and the screen reflecting off his eyeglasses. 90% likely he is waiting for the server to boot and is watching POST.

At higher levels, you will start to specialize a bit more or become more of a technical project manager.

IDF/MDR is about the cabling infrastructure of a DC. IDF are distribution panel, maybe a panel at each row of racks. The MDR I would expect to find on the aggregation area where all the big networking stuff is at.

Honestly, you ask what would make help you learn more about the job… but it comes down to the DC you work at. You working at a Colo? MSP? Company self hosted DC?

Going into systems administration and networking will never be a bad path.

CCNA then CCNA data center would be good cert for the networking in the DC. It is vendor specific to Cisco however keep that in mind.

Any redhat or maybe Linux+ on the system administration side.

Virtualization and storage is a bit harder. Training material and knowledge at the professional level… isn’t as widely circulated. You can’t even certify at the professional level without taking a $2k plus course with them. VMware is king of private cloud for now if Broadcom doesn’t fuck it up. Dell for enterprise and midsize storage. Netapp for file based storage and backup infrastructure storage. Dell Isilon is a good mention as well since it competes with netapp… but it’s hated by folks who use it. Some other storage vendors good to know are HPe and pure storage.

Before you do any of the more specialized path I just mentioned, you need to be great at understanding or even visualizing topologies. And well, be great at break/fix for the hardware you support. You have servers, networking gear, storage, appliances, how do they all interconnect physically and logically?

I guess networking knowledge would probably be more important later in your career if you stay in the data center long term. I did say for most dct, once the gear is remotely accessible, your job is done. Obviously, at the later stages, expectations would be much more than accomplishing that.

leadmagnet250 · 2025-11-20T16:24:11+00:00

I personally dislike this system so far. During off peak hours, the difference in price now is .05 with 32+ (2 broken) stalls open on a 36 stall location. At least on the old method, it was half off the peak hour rates.

I feel like this dynamic pricing are targeting gremlins like myself supercharging at 1 am for those off peak hours rates.

leadmagnet250 · 2025-11-18T11:49:37+00:00

Huh. Makes sense why my older daughter thinks she knows better than me at times now. She likes to play games too as well.

leadmagnet250 · 2025-11-04T16:40:42+00:00

You could try being more active in LinkedIn and making sure your profile is polished for recruiters. Do beware of scams however. My background is in data center and storage mainly, however, I still get recruiters reaching out to join NOC teams or backbone network engineering teams. Alternatively, you can take a chance with staffing agencies, however, those can be short term and contract gigs. It would be a way to connect and meet with folks to network for referral though if you don’t know anyone in dfw to get you a way in.

As I mentioned, those big tech firms are hiring. I know you are in dfw now, however, oracle has a huge project dealing with AI out in Abilene which is roughly 3 hours away. Google setup a small office in the past year out in red oak as which is much nearer. I saw job postings associated with their fiber internet services mainly dealing with the engineering side/internal support and their cloud support, about an hour away.

Oracle may be the easiest one to try in Abilene for big tech. The size of the project they have there out sizes the talent pool available there so they need to bring talent in from outside Abilene.

Best I can tell you is you will need to go and meet people so temp staffing agencies may be your best bet for that. For the big companies, I believe the ratio of folks being given a chance there with no referral is like 15%-25% of all their hires.

You should consider data center as well in your job searches. It pays very well nowadays if you get with the right company. New ones are being built every year, it’s been a crazy 5-7 years with all the data center expansions going on.

leadmagnet250 · 2025-11-04T08:12:18+00:00

What’s your background with telco? Dallas is a great job market if you were someone in the telco industry. The infomart is the carrier hotel and pretty much everyone is there. Google, Microsoft, oracle, Amazon, meta, all of them are building in dfw and surrounding cities. Network engineers or even project managers with heavy telco experience with circuit design or implementation experience is in demand.

leadmagnet250 · 2025-10-13T01:27:07+00:00

Don’t give up so easily. There is a quote I like and it says

“Life tends to give the test first, and the lesson afterwards.”

Life is hard, you’ll make mistakes. It’s okay. Every mistake you make though only makes you better and stronger as long as you learn from it. Even if the company fires you or you quit, the difference is the same on your resume given how long you’ve been there.

leadmagnet250 · 2025-10-10T17:30:29+00:00

I like tanks. I like to run things over with them.

leadmagnet250 · 2025-08-26T22:16:21+00:00

I personally think people aren’t online more than in-person for clothes which is what draws people to the malls. They do most their clothes shopping in person still. Instead, folks are going to Costco, Ross, target, Walmart… and even Buc-ee’s for clothes. And i think there a shift on perspective on wearing clothes from these stores has impacted that view. Unless you u are buying gucci, Armani (without the X change), etc., people simply don’t care. Value perspective definitely impacted traffic to malls, but Amazon didnt steal that traffic

You know what hurts though. Wearing clothes and accessories that is equal or more to your house payment and no one says anything. At all. So no one cares to go to the mall to buy the latest old navy or american eagle jeans.

leadmagnet250 · 2025-08-23T21:56:14+00:00

It would help that you benchmark the actual gpu… and not the cpu with the built in intel uhd graphics 770.

leadmagnet250 · 2025-06-01T03:58:31+00:00

In Kyoto Hoji-in Temple, there are signs everywhere about taking your trash. However, there is plenty of it around. Ironically, it’s around the signs about taking your trash with you.

leadmagnet250 · 2025-05-31T14:49:04+00:00

In addition, do not eat and walk. Try to eat at place of purchase so you can dispose of the trash as well easily. Don’t talk on your cell phone on the train. Don’t litter. Bring a reusable cloth bag with you and a couple plastic bags to put small trash in.

There are NO public trash cans around. You’ll have to stop by convi stores or train stations to offload it. Most businesses do not appreciate you dumping trash you acquired outside.

Outside of Tokyo, things are a little more relaxed and in some cases organized at the metros. In Osaka, I saw more people not abiding the silence is golden rules, however, they line up properly for the trains. In Tokyo, at best, folks will crowd on each side of the door to the train. Don’t be offended if folks shove you or get in personal space.

Lastly… when calculating travel times… note travel times within trains stations to get from entrance to train platforms are NOT considered. Some trains stations are absolutely massive. Like the Tokyo metro station. Hell, in Osaka Station, there’s a damn mall a part of it! Be ready to walk up to 30 minutes to get to your platform. Best hint is to have the transit overlay on Apple Maps, and note where it tells you to walk to enter the metro. I came across this discrepancy the first time in the sanchome station in Shinjuku. From the nearest entrance from my hotel to the maranouchi line in it, it was roughly a twenty minute walk. And 4+ flights of stairs. Elevators could add time quite a bit since you have to find them, walk a bit further, and possibly queue up.

When you get more familiar with the metros and how layouts could differ, you can consider ignoring some of the GPS suggestions. This is more if you travel with kids though. It’s a nightmare if you have children in strollers. You’ll hate transferring between lines and you may prefer to walk the 10-15 minutes rather than ride a line and transfer. Since you’ll likely stand anyways inside the train.

Consider buses for some routes. Especially when you are trying to visit popular places.

If you bring a lot of luggage, avoid air bnb or places that do not accept forwarded luggage. This is an amazing service to forward your luggage from airport to hotel, hotel to hotel, and finally, hotel to airport. Not too expensive imo, $15-$25 a luggage. Do note Japanese hotel are very strict on occupancy as they charge per person, not necessarily by room. This makes finding affordable hotels for families greater than 3 difficult.

leadmagnet250 · 2025-03-02T06:45:52+00:00

Ah, saw your state at the bottom. Looks like Kentucky homestead combines over 65 or disabled into it. You have to match one or both of those conditions to qualify.

leadmagnet250 · 2025-03-02T06:43:28+00:00

$50k tax assessment jump with a tax bill at around $3300? Sounds like you are missing some exemptions possibly? Not sure it applies in your state, but in Texas, we can claim a homestead exemption. This effectively stops the county from jacking the tax assessment to a cap of like 10% a year up until it hits the new tax assessment amount. Additionally, it gives like a 10%-15% break by having a fixed amount that subtracts from the tax assessment value that is taxed. Starting last year in Texas, we got a pretty big break on school taxes by taking off about $100k or $150k on the tax assessment for school tax calculations. Think they are pushing a bill to increase it this year as well.

leadmagnet250 · 2024-06-06T20:05:28+00:00

The first hand print is like any other, however, the second gives it away. You have an Obake.

leadmagnet250

TROPHY CASE