As 2018 draws near, companies go into hiring mode, and people come and go, which often leaves a lot of open positions. If you qualify to fill one of the more in-demand positions, you can often negotiate a higher salary. My biggest salary jumps have always come in the first quarter of the year. To increase your chances …

Security usually requires sacrificing convenience (or money). So naturally, we tend to get away with as little security as possible. But if you’re a glutton for punishment, here are 4 very inconvenient but highly effective measures you can take right now to protect yourself from the evils lurking on the interwebs. …

Whenever a tech fad comes to an end, it becomes so obvious why it failed. Yet during the hype, it’s easy to miss the problems lurking just below the surface. I want to explore some of the problems I see with public blockchain and why I think it’s not going to live up to the hype. Blockchain can’t track real things …

Certifications are often lambasted as “worthless pieces of paper” and “experience is more important.” But for some people, certifications are more important than experience. A substitute for experience Newcomers to the IT world face the classic problem: how do you get experience without a job? Sure, you can tinker …

Many a nerd has thrown punches over the question of whether containers (e.g. Docker, LXC, etc.) are actually virtual machines. The conventional wisdom is that although containers are similar to virtual machines, they’re fundamentally different. I beg to differ. Are containers virtual machines or not? There’s a common …

I’m trying out different services to import an AWS environment and turn it into a technically correct and aesthetically pleasing diagram. Surprisingly, although most of the services can correctly identify the resources, none of them are able to identify network connections. If you’re hoping for something to …

I think it’s time to stop using the term “network function virtualization”. Why? Because it doesn’t exist, at least not in the way the term suggests. The term is a category error, and when people try to make sense of the term, confusion and frustration ensue. Think of it like this: what’s the difference between a …

I know what you’re thinking. “Why use Visual Studio Code instead of the PowerShell ISE?” Well, if you’re using Mac OS or Linux, you don’t have the option to use the PowerShell ISE natively. And that’s a problem if you want to take advantage of the cross-platform capabilities of PowerShell Core. In this article, I’ll …