I had a job interview Monday. I have at least one observation from it–the things on my resume that impress recruiters don’t necessarily impress a good hiring manager. Not on their own, at least.
Let’s do some post-mortem.
Value Village and Affton could be very good for one another
There’s a Value Village thrift store in Shrewsbury that’s being displaced because the plaza it’s in–the same place I used to go to buy Commodore gear–is going to be demolished to make way for a Wal-Mart Supercenter. Whether Shrewsbury needs a Wal-Mart Supercenter when there’s one six miles away is another question for another day.
Value Village needs someplace to go, and Affton has an available retail space that’s been empty since the hardware store previously occupying it went out of business more than a year ago. County councilman Steve Stenger (D-Affton) wants to block the move, essentially saying that Affton is too good for a place like Value Village. Read more
PC Magazine’s tips for buying your own cable modem
PC Magazine published a few tips for people looking to buy their own cable modems and ditch the monthly rental fee It’s also helpful if your existing modem quit working and you need a new one. Modems don’t last forever. It also contains a reminder: Make sure you know whether your modem is just a modem, or a combination device that routes as well.
Lenovo’s phone is ringing again. And it’s IBM. Again.
When IBM sold its desktop and laptop PC business to Lenovo nine years ago, it held on to its x86-based server business. But now, IBM doesn’t see the x86 server business as a growth area anymore, and now they’re interested in selling that to Lenovo, too. Read more
Questions to ask before taking a job
I found this infographic from Avidcareerist via Lifehacker that lists 12 questions to ask before accepting a job offer. There is good information on it, though I have mixed feelings on some of them.
The ACLU has a point about smartphone security
The ACLU complained to the FTC that carriers aren’t patching vulnerable Android phones. They have a point.
Phones are profitable, and the carriers are trying to have it both ways. Read more
Linksys isn’t the only company building insecure routers
I warned a few days ago about Linksys routers being trivially easy to hack; unfortunately many other popular routers have security vulnerabilities too.
The experts cited in the article have a few recommendations, which I will repeat and elaborate on. Read more
Don’t read too much into the PC sales drop just yet
If you’ve been paying any attention at all, you probably know that new PC sales are in the toilet–out of the five biggest vendors, the only one whose sales managed to hold steady in Q1 2013 was Lenovo, while the other four saw a sales decline. So now Slashdot linked to a ZDNet piece stating that Windows is over, and said it must be true because ZDNet always sides with Microsoft.
Let’s not read too much into that. The author of the piece is a longtime open-source advocate. The points he raises are completely valid, but if there’s one person who’s going to take Microsoft to task, it’s Steven Vaughan-Nichols.
Microsoft has a long road ahead, but there is precedent for salvaging the boondoggle known as Windows 8. And I don’t think Windows 8 is the only factor here. Read more
A treasure trove of training material
Need to improve your security skills? Need a refresher course to brush up on some skills you haven’t used in a while? Or are you just looking for some CPEs or CEUs to keep your certification valid?
The United States Department of Defense offers a great deal of security training, much of which is freely available to all comers. Your tax dollars paid for it, so don’t feel bad about using it. Besides, if you use it to improve your networks, then your networks are less likely to become a source of attack on government networks, so they’re happy for you to use most of it.
Here’s a hint: Anything that isn’t viewable by the general public is marked ” *(DoD PKI Cert req’d).” If you don’t see that marking, then it’s free for you to view. Just click the link marked “Launch Training.” Read more
Troubleshooting at all layers of the OSI model
I saw this phrase in a job description last week: Troubleshooting at all layers of the OSI model. That sounds a bit intimidating, right?
Maybe at first. But let’s not overcomplicate it. Once you get past the terminology, it’s a logical way to locate and fix problems. Chances are you already do most of this whether you realize it or not. I was already troubleshooting at at least four of the seven layers when I was working as a part-time desktop support technician in college in 1995.