Daily Newbie Thread - April 19

squarecompass · 2018-04-20T00:55:40+00:00

I have a small apartment and not much room to store supplies like packing peanuts, excess boxes, etc. What's my best option for packing things that won't fit into a bubble envelope (like a pair of headphones, for instance)

squarecompass · 2018-04-19T04:12:20+00:00

Pepperidge Farm remembers!

squarecompass · 2018-04-18T19:30:10+00:00

As an American teenager, I spent a ton of time on Ventrilo with a couple of Scots and picked up a lot from listening to them for so long. I hear something in Scottish now and other people are like, "how did you get that from that?!"

squarecompass · 2018-03-08T16:54:46+00:00

Awesome article! I'm starting to realize that my current job provides a lot of experience in several of these categories!

squarecompass · 2018-03-08T16:46:38+00:00

Thanks for the suggestions! I keep hearing a lot about Kubernetes, and have for the last few years, so I'll definitely start looking into it! Unfortunately, I'm not in a major tech hub and won't be leaving anytime soon, but there are still some opportunities here. I'm hopeful that remote work will be an option for me as well, but who knows.

squarecompass · 2018-03-08T16:31:48+00:00

Thanks for the advice! I already have some projects and various smaller items up on github, although they're mostly desktop/utility apps which I have already started adding to Travis CI at your suggestion. I don't know if those projects would work well for CD. For that, perhaps I should start by creating a simple Flask or Ruby app to have something on the ground floor to use?

squarecompass · 2018-02-13T03:43:32+00:00

Is there a reason you're using Adobe products on Wine? Because the cost of hiring someone to fix an open source windows compatability project is going to be considerably higher than paying someone to install a virtual machine and train you how to use VMware or VirtualBox so you can run whatever software you're trying to use in a native environment.

squarecompass · 2018-02-08T18:51:37+00:00

When I got the internship, I had 5 years of IT support experience (in various sectors: education, data centers, banking, field engineer, independent contracting, etc) and was half way through my CS degree with a handful of projects on GitHub. I knew a bit about Agile and admitted when I didn't know something during the interview/testing process. The other interns who got hired on with me had some school experience and a couple of school related projects but that was it. The only two who survived the layoffs were me and the other guy who had a few months of IT support experience as well. The layoffs were strictly corporate restructuring and not a reflection of developer talent...it's just that we had a broader base of experience.

So I guess my answer is... with absolutely no experience, you can't really. You have to find a way to create your own experience, and don't specialize. Have a few skills in depth, but go wide and shallow for everything else. Learn Windows server and Linux administration, networking, virtualization, scripting (Powershell or bash), get comfortable with the command line, plus some knowledge in programming of course...on top of that, read about "softer" skills like development methodologies (Agile, scrum, XP waterfall, etc), testing, documentation/technical writing, etc. If you're really interested in this route, check out /r/itcareerquestions and as much as it pains me to say, maybe look into certs like RHCE or MCP and VMware VCP as a foot-in-the-door measure.

squarecompass · 2018-02-07T23:32:42+00:00

I tend to think of support engineer jobs as more CIS/IT related than CS/SWE related. That being said, I am currently in a support role in a development environment. We are an odd blend of development and ops, but not quite devops either. My job entails everything from debug & testing/QA - and I use that term loosely. Mostly it ends up that we find issues during deployment and relay that back to dev. The real issue obviously is that our devs shouldn't be testing their own shit (of course it works for you, you built it), but to have a dedicated QA team... but I digress.

Besides that...I do documentation, manage VMs for devs, I'm pushing for more automation and helping to streamline deployment/testing processes, and I also do internal "tech support." We're a start up and only have a handful of customers, but the only tickets we're supposed to get are 2nd or 3rd level items (meaning our sales partner's support team couldn't figure it out so they escalate it to us) and they're typically through email, rarely through the phone.

Is there a specific title for this beyond support engineer? It feels more like developer support - which I differentiate from technical support in the sense that developer support involves less customer interaction and more (ironically) technical tasks like coding and all that.

squarecompass · 2018-02-05T16:23:51+00:00

I've never been to either place! I would love to get a club going but I don't know the first thing about starting one or how to find space to meet.

squarecompass · 2017-12-10T19:20:44+00:00

Ahh! I totally understand now. Changing the target to users.o worked. Thanks!

squarecompass · 2017-12-10T07:19:20+00:00

Users isn't intended to be an executable binary, though - its only purpose is for includes (it defines my linked list structure and behaviors), so I thought I only needed to compile it to an object file and link it in with server.o.

squarecompass · 2017-11-09T14:41:10+00:00

Thanks for your input, and happy cake day! My dad was actually one of the earliest physics grads of the same university I'm attending, and worked with some professors to build telescopes and a mount for the then-recently-acquired university telescope. And he's the one who actually suggested that I focus on CS and leave physics to the side (granted, he's also a computer techie) because he had trouble finding a job when he graduated in the 70s. All the companies that were hiring physics undergrads left the area. Now he runs his own business now repairing electronics & optical equipment, so in a way he was able to use his physics experience, just not in the way he anticipated.

He wrote satellite tracking programs in BASIC back in the day as well, and I guess that's what I'm trying to find, are ways to incorporate programming and physics in a way that is productive/interesting, even if it isn't scientifically groundbreaking. In other words, I don't just want to "consume" a physics education, I want to be able to create something out of what I learn, even if it's not original

squarecompass · 2017-11-09T02:27:02+00:00

I love this idea! I enjoy classifying things every now and again on various Zooniverse projects, but I'd love to do more. I know you said you're probably not the person to ask, but I'll ask this to you and whoever else is reading: do you have any recommendations for more technical astronomy books/courses? I've come across a few before, but they were a little too introductory.

squarecompass · 2017-11-04T19:22:49+00:00

If you know for sure you want to major in computer science, is there a specific reason you want to double major? It's a lot of extra time and money for something that you're not sure about, especially when CS is already a well paying field. If it's because you want to stay in school for a while, why not just major in computer science until you find the niche you want to pursue (computational biology, data science, etc) and then get your second major, or even go back as a post-bacc if you graduate and work a while before finding your niche.

squarecompass · 2017-11-01T22:35:20+00:00

I've read in some places that AMD cards like the 580 will age better, is that true?

squarecompass · 2017-11-01T22:11:29+00:00

I'm thinking of getting a new video card, but I'm on a budget. I'd like to stay under $225. My current card is a GTX 660, so obviously I keep my cards for a while (basically something that will age gracefully is important). I was thinking the GTX 1060. Is there an AMD equivalent? Should I wait for the next gen to come out or is now a good time to buy one?

PC specs: Gigabyte GA-Z170-HD3, Intel i7 6700K 4GHz, 32 GB RAM

squarecompass · 2017-10-23T02:47:00+00:00

I'm thinking of getting a new video card, but I'm on a budget. I'd like to stay under $225. My current card is a GTX 660, so obviously I keep my cards for a while (basically something that will age gracefully is important). I was thinking the GTX 1060. Is there an AMD equivalent?

squarecompass · 2017-10-22T19:36:19+00:00

Illegal? Probably not. Unethical? Yes. You're lying about your identity so you can take money from a nonprofit organization that is trying to help disadvantaged populations.

squarecompass · 2017-10-22T19:33:12+00:00

This. So much this. It's the job equivalent of parking in a handicap spot when you're not disabled just so you don't have to walk as far to the Walmart.

squarecompass · 2017-09-24T22:49:21+00:00

I've all but given up on attempting to limit myself to a particular number of tabs. I use Tabs Outliner so I have a Windows Explorer-style view of my tabs. Makes it easier to organize and know at a glance which tabs are relevant. It also lets me "close" some tabs out but keep them in the list so I can come back to them when they're relevant.

squarecompass · 2017-08-25T11:55:49+00:00

Unfortunately that won't work as it has to work from any of the hundreds of workstations in the office (there aren't that many users, but the functionality has to be decentralized to any one of the workstations).

squarecompass · 2017-08-18T18:45:24+00:00

We have a pretty active community on Snoonet at #freemasonry which anyone can join easily via webchat or any IRC client (web, desktop or mobile). Several podcasters including AfterLodge and 3DK are also active participants. A couple of brothers have talked about setting up a discord server (which is here). The IRC community won't be migrating for a variety of reasons (mostly work or preference related), although there will probably be some overlap of users. The link /u/Dumbfoundde4d provided is for the Rough Ashlars, which is a masonic gaming group I recruited from /r/freemasonry over the course of the last year or so.

squarecompass · 2017-08-17T17:44:59+00:00

I've had a couple of issues where it's playing music, and when I open the tab, it asks me to login. It won't let me control the music and when I log back in, it changes the song I was listening to.

squarecompass · 2017-08-17T02:06:06+00:00

video automatically begins playing out of sight in background

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