DigitalManiak
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Posts posted by DigitalManiak
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Well, it's not as cool as the rest, but this is my old rig from work that I just pulled out to rebuild into a dedicated linux box.
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Yeah, I think certs are worth it, as long as you are not trying to go on those alone (which is not the case with you since you do have a BS degree) IMO they prove your knowledge, or at least look good on a resume. I mean yeah, you can go to Pass4sure and pick up just about any question pool, take it until you get to 100% then go take the test and bam ya have it, but you're going to be competing with people who did that with everything to build their resume. For instance, I was talking with a guy at school who did that with his Net+, Linux+, MCSE, and Cisco certs. Tell me how someone who has those couldn't test out of "intro to computers" and be failing it.
I also know a guy who has 11 years in the field including two years managing a shop, has several brand certs, has three CompTIA certs, and still cant get a job b/c he didn't get at least an associates degree (oh wait, that's me)
It's all about marketing yourself, the more things like that you have, the more appealing you may be to a prospective employer.
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Lenovo sent me out to replace many cracked LCDs that you could clearly tell had impact damage. I suppose I shouldn't have replaced those and called it in as potential impact damage, but I figured why not just replace it. They never said a word about it, and I made a lot of customers happy. I also neglected to report every "drink-spill" situation too and just replaced keyboards & system boards whenever necessary. As far as my company was concerned, my satisfaction numbers were high and they didn't care why :P
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I figure cost is the issue, in that case I'd recommend picking up a smart phone that has WiFi built in, so you could use all of its features when you are in range of a hotspot. I go to school with a girl who has an iPhone 3g like mine on a prepaid plan. I know other people who have blackberries w/o a data plan on a standard rate plan. I myself took the data plan off my curve when I moved it to my 2nd line after I got my iPhone and for a while I had to take the data plan off that too b/c of financial reasons.
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Did the desktop last month, the notebook's this month (I don't change my background often, my server will be next month lol)
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kitteh's FTW!
Here's mine (seriously, that is my cat)
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I always choose Intel, I'm a former die-hard AMD guy, the athlon XP series is what let me down and so has every other series afterward (up to the AMD 64x2) When I started my PC shop I sold AMD products, I had to replace every processor at cost (because they wouldn't honor the warranty) and in some, I wound up just switching them to celeron CPU's on 775 mobo's, and those are still in service today. When I worked as a IBM/Lenovo FSR, every Lenovo with an AMD processor I was sent to, needed a new proc (notebook or desktop). When debating price vs. performance, my last Core2 Duo 2.8ghz system (MSI board, 4gb ram, 9600GT 512mb pcie vid) cost $360... a guy I know just built a new PC out of an AMD barebones kit and he's on his 3rd proc, not even overclocking either and like me, he's not a gamer.
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Well, independent tech shops are closing right and left around here, nobody is using them and I'm not the only tech with over 10yrs exp out of work even ones with MS & Cisco certs. The only shops willing to pay on the books only offer $10/hr. I'm already in enough trouble with the IRS over someone paying me contract labor and not telling me.
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if I still had a job I would have picked one up months ago, or honestly, I would have just bought a pre-modded pineapple. I just lucked out that a few classmates needed some PC help and were not only willing to pay for it, but did. I saw that movie as a good omen, and am pleased to report that all went smooth with my Fon :) now as soon as some more people screw up their PCs at school, I'll be able to get the hak pack and get my pineapple sticker for the top LMAO
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Well, perhaps they changed their policy, but when they went from "Best Buy Tech Services" to the "Geek Squad" my former co-workers were told they had 90 days to get A+ certified or they would be transferred to another dept because PC manufacturers required that certification to do warranty work. By that time I'd gone to work at an independent shop and when that place closed I tried to get my job back at Best Buy and they told me I would have to get A+ certified or work the sales floor. Then 9mo ago when I was working as an IBM/Lenovo on-site field service tech I had to replace a mobo in a Geek Squad repair center in a BBY and thats when I had a GS "agent" tell me about them taking the Pass4Sure tests and they were all A+ certified, yet they thought I was performing voo-doo when I flashed the BIOS on the board to imprint the model/serial number. That's the information I'm going on.
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I used to work for BestBuy in the tech department, before the geek squad, I was the last tech hired at our store w/o A+ cert (which I got a few years later, I'd been a tech 8 years before getting it) so I'm sure they technically have it, but they just don't know how to do anything. I also got a lot of business from their screw-ups when I had my shop. Anyone can get certified, Pass4Sure makes it easy, just take that practice test until you pass it 100% then go take the real test. I had several GS employees tell me that's how they got their certs.
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Just got home from school and had some stuff waiting on me, one thing was my fon router that I finally ordered after wanting one for months, and the other was NetFlix, well I'm not sure about you other NetFlix users but I'll go in and run up a huge que and I never pay attention to whats on its way so its a surprise every week, when I opened the DVD I nearly busted a gut laughing...
I just think its ironic both came on the same day.
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MAY go for my A+ but.. does anyone even look at that anymore? if they do I'll just cram for two days and go take it (hell may not even have to do that).
well, the A+ cert is kinda the most basic repair cert, although I know people who are A+ certified and still call me to do basic hardware repairs (drive upgrades, lcd replacement, new mobo transplanting, etc), I walked in, took the tests in two sessions and got my A+ IT cert, pretty much did the same with the other two I have as well. I also know that a lot of place won't even bother with ya unless you have A+, for instance, you cant even get a job at the geek squad w/o one or the promise to get one within like 90 days IIRC. I technically could go to work there if I didn't have mobility problems, that's all the last place I worked for required and that was a subcontractor for IBM/Lenovo & Dell doing their on-site warranty work. I guess it really depends on what type of job you are going for. While I was working there I got to see the inside of large IT dept's and asked around to find out what it took to get in those places, most everyone said the same thing, degree, comptia certs, mcse... oh and having a relative on the inside helps too LMAO
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You've uninstalled Norton but what have you replaced it with? From experience the only AV I recommend is ESET's NOD32.
I agree, I like NOD32 too, however if money's tight Avast isn't too bad either. But like I said earlier and everyone else has, upgrade your ram B)
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never heard of it, but wth I'll give it a shot, if it supports more codecs than TVersity then I'd be a happy camper, I have some media files that I've "obtained" that wont play well on TVersity (if at all) but they play fine if I copy them to a flash drive and play them on my WDTV box.
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if you have less than 1gb ram, its no wonder the things running slow. I figure you're running XP w/ SP3 (if you're running vista on that little ram... well I'm not wanting to make enemies here so I'll leave that alone) Not everyone agrees with me on this but it's experience from dealing with end-users, XP SP3 needs 1gb to work right, 1.5 if you want to do anything 2gb if you want to do anything at any rate of speed. I worked for a guy who never put any more than 256mb ram in his machines, and people were always complaining they were slow, when I opened my shop in '05 I put 1gb in everything and in '07 when I closed it to take a steady (or so I thought) job nothing left with less than 2gb and not once did I have anyone complain their computers were slow unless of course it had a malware infection, which btw I wouldn't rule out if you had Norton. Memory's dirt cheap these days, up that, run ccleaner, run malwarebytes to check for anything Norton missed and disable as much junk in your system tray as possible (when mine boots, its only the HP digital imaging monitor and LogMeIn in my tray)
there's my .02
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I've known a few people that have graduated from there, if you know what you're doing going in, you may do alright. They didn't and when they came out they had a nice shiny degree but kept getting fired b/c they didn't know what they were doing. Currently I'm having to go through a traditional school to get a degree b/c around here if you don't have a bachelors degree, you wont even get an interview for an entry-level IT position, even with A+, N+, Sec+, and 11yrs field experience. I also know some companies wont even look at someone with a trade-school degree. Now I'm not saying all companies are like that, and everyone that comes out of ITT, Devry, ECPI, etc are idiots, this is just my experience from this area.
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eh, the a/c barely works in this house, and it's about 5' from the actual register anyway so I don't think that'll be a problem, never has been in the past even with bigger servers, like the old dual PIII monster that used to be there lol.
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thx for the input guys, I think I may swap laptops and use the latitude for my TVersity server and my Inspiron for a NAS b/c it has an express card slot. I'm gonna order a eSATA express card & two eSATA drive bays. I have a couple of small matching SATA drives to experiment with. I don't believe cooling will be too much of an issue, I use a wire rack to hold my equpment and it's directly below an a/c vent and both notebooks have new fans in them with fresh thermal grease. However if there's something else I could do to improve the cooling, I'm open to suggestions.
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my interest in putting RAID on this was for data protection, not speed, so I'm not concerned if its slow, I may look into getting a eSata Cardbus card then.
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Okay, like I said it was an idea, I have a similar setup with an Inspiron that has a shattered LCD using it as a TVersity Server for my Xbox360. I could just upgrade my Ubuntu box to something a little faster and use that mobo, it has SATA, it's 1.5 but still it should see 1tb drives.
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I was thinking the other day, I have an old Dell notebook (PM 1.4ghz/1gb ram) and had an idea to turn it into a NAS server, I've heard about FreeNAS but I've never played with it. If I picked up a couple of cheap 1tb HDD's and USB enclosures wouldn't that make a pretty lightweight NAS server? Could FreeNAS do soft RAID over USB? Is there something better than FreeNAS? or am I just wasting my time and I should just build a NAS server out of my old P4 1.7?
thx in advance
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after seeing the pix and vids it looks like you guys had a blast... wish I could have been there.
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hi, name is Blair AKA DigitalManiak
Favorite game: Halo
Favorite OS: WinXP & OSX
Favorite console: Xbox 360
Nationality: American
Accent: people up north say I have a southern accent, people down here say I "talk funny"
Sex: Male
Age: 27
Race: very white
Height: 6'
Status: Single
Build: let's just say I have the body of a Geek God LOL
Favorite Band: too many to list.
Favorite Book: iWoz, The Art of Deception
Favorite Movie: Sneakers
Favorite TV Show(s): Big Bang Theory, Doctor Who, Torchwood, Leverage, and of course Hak5 on the big screen
Other Hobbies: modifying cars, camping, golf
Car: '97 Mercury Grand Marquis
Occupation: Student, Major: Computer Science (cant get a decent IT job around here w/o a BA or BS degree, even after a decade in the field as a tech)
Usb Ethernet Adapter For Linux
in Questions
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hi guys, I need a recommendation for a good USB ethernet adapter that has drivers that will work under linux (ubuntu, backtrack, etc)
thx in advance