Resume letter (Last Post)

[lions-tambua.livejournal.com]

Have to agree to a LOT of parts of that letter....

I dont know (but iam very interested!) in how things work in the USA
Here in Europe, the IT gives more about the QUALIFICATION of an Person, than about his RESUME, Degrees or certificates.

You can easily make an ECDL, MSCE, RHCT, etc... (Btw, i have NONE of them because i didnt bothered making them. Most of the stuff you have to learn for it is to recite some written things you'll forget in any way 2 months later. Skills like LOGICAL CONCLUTIONS, abstract thinking, handling customers (helpdesk), handling co-worker (IT-Dep.), understanding the reasons of problem (why did the harddrive went offline ? it doesnt always have to be a defective harddrive!) these are things you dont learn ANYWHERE. Thats where EXPERIENCE comes in handy.

I have no degrees
i have no programmer-skills
but iam 25 years and have 20 years of computer experience. (believe it or not :)
With 5 years i got my first PC (80286) with MS-DOS 3.1
i spent a lot of time bugging around with problems like memory-allocation (the known 1mb-problem) and games that might need more than 1mb.
thats when i started writing .bat files with 6 years.
in the meanwhile i write whole backup-jobs, compilation jobs, cronjob-started system checks, log-job, etc (under linux) with such scripts. but i've never got an exam for that. why should i ?

If an Employer feels like you might know more than you can proof with certificates, an good employer is the one who checks that himself. 1:1 talk is the primary source of finding out who is REALLY educated and the right one for the job.

1)
My cousin f.e. made the ECDL and MSCE once. She doesnt even know how to replace an harddrive or how to configure a BIOS. also she has NO clue what an DHCP or DNS is. She mixes Programs up with Operating Systems.
well, why ? because thats not part of the MSCE!

2)
I have an good friend who is RHCT, he knows nearly every command the bash provides, but he has NO CLUE whats the difference between an Hub and an Switch

3)
my mother (she's 55 now) has worked with computers since she's 20
she finished one of the first IT-Schools in Europe. she spent 25 years as programmer and the last 10 years self-employed. she knows EVERYTHING about BASIC, PASCAL, Asambler-Code-Programming, Unix, Networks, Windows, PCs.... well.. everything... at least everything you could know 10 years ago.
she's missing all the NEW stuff. which programms will work with XP SP2 ? which hardware can be used under Windows 2003 or Linux. What is IPv6 ? the basic Linux commands. (her unix skills are BEFORE the comands where inverted) etc...

She also dont have an MSCE or ECDL... but she TEACHES those who are about to make these certifications.
So who of those persons would you want to employ ?


think about it before saying, "Certifications are Mendatory!" :)

scariest. question. ever.

[samwize.livejournal.com]

Boss's beautifull, intelligent daughter who's taking over my job when I leave in three days just came up and asked me the following:

"Hi. Two quick questions." *shows a piece of paper with "c;\windows\smartdrv uninstallEXE" [sic] written on it* "First, is this how you uninstall Windows?"

"..."

"..."

"..."

"..."

"No. And why do you want to know?"

the rest of the conversation cut to preserve sanity.

x-posted to <samwize and techsupport

ARGH

[kizayaen.livejournal.com]

Dear meme/poll writers:

For GOD'S SAKE PEOPLE. If you are going to explicity define a background colour, then EXPLICITY DEFINE A FOREGROUND COLOUR.

Clearly you understand that the majority of people do not have baby blue backgrounds in $BROWSER. It is evident that you understand this since you explicitly define the background for your meme results as being this colour, thus overriding what anyone else has. That's fine. I don't particularly care for baby blue, but it's okay. It's just a matter of personal preference.

So since you understand that most people do not have blue backgrounds, is it such a huge logical leap to think that perhaps they also don't have black text foregrounds?

I sorta like white text on a charcoal grey background. This white-on-pastel-blue shit however does not work.

Very truly yours,
Kiz
Graphic/Web Design Snob

Ranty McRantpants

[ladynisa.livejournal.com]

Dear Soon to be Extremely Annoying Coworker,


1. Nobosy's impressed witht he fact that you will be graduating from Ye-Crappy-Technical-School in 3 weeks with an AA that took you twice as long to get as it should have. So stop talking about it as loudly as you can.

2. When you sit in a room full of WoW-heads, don't proclaim that you *hate* WoW and think its stupid, especially if you haven't tried it before. It does NOT score you points, especially when the person leading the discussion is the Head Trainer. So shut up before the class descends upon you like a pack of wolves.

3. The louder you talk, the more people ignore you. And STOP trying to talk over everyone else when the trainer asks a question, ESPECIALLY when you DON'T know the damned answer!!!

4. You sure as hell have better not choose a desk near my friends and I, as I know most of the call center already. Because if you try this annoying shit after training is over, we will very kindly rip you a new one. And if you sit near me and hover around my desk as you did earlier today, I will duct tape your ass to the window!!!!

5. I may be a girl and a geek, but a snowball has a better chance of staying cool in hell than you do of ever getting near me, especailly since my FIANCEE works IN THE SAME DAMNED CENTER. My guild leader and my big brother also work in the same department. Try anything, and if you somehow manage to survive my feminine wrath, I'm quite positive you won't survive them. In fact, I detest you so much, that if we were the alst people on Earth, I would rather attempt to create some sort of centaur-esque being to continue a new race of humanity than even gaze upon you. /WITH/ clothes on. Its hard enough at work as it is.

Now if only I could email this to him without worrying about getting fired, as my Supervisor is one of the few that I /don't/ already know.

xposted to my own LJ

You know what really pisses me off today?

[ranting-asshole.livejournal.com]

Fucking helpdesk techs.

Not us, of course. I'm talking about the other techs your clients consult. Let me explain.

I had a rep call today complaining that he couldn't access the VPN from his hotel. He was aware that you have to load a hotel website, fill out their form agreeing with their use policies, and then submit it before you could get on their network. His problem is that when he clicked on the 'submit' button, it'd loop him back to the first page of the agreement. He called the hotel helpdesk to see if he was doing something wrong and was told that the issue is because of either a hardware issue on his end, or that he has a firewall installed.

WTF?

If he had a firewall blocking shit, he wouldn't have been able to access the website at all. Never mind the fact that these laptops have standardized builds and the reps do not have the access permissions to install a firewall. Short of reinstalling the OS from scratch, he could not possibly have a firewall on his machine.

Hardware failure? If it was hardware failure he wouldn't be able to connect to shit at all.

So the guy calls me, and what can I tell him? "Sorry dude, the first guy you talked to was just a lazy little shit who didn't want to perform proper troubleshooting. Your end is perfectly fine."

I walked him through some basic troubleshooting anyway to make sure he had everything configured correctly... which he did. Pulling an IP from his in-room modem just fine. Connectivity seemed to work great, if the only site he wanted to visit was the hotel's signup page.

Fucking helpdesk techs.

(x-post: ranting_asshole, techsupport

Bored at 11:15pm

[darkblade1.livejournal.com]

How do you know that you've been working with the same company too long?

You can navigate the IVR in Spanish when you only know choice phrases in spanish!

I did that for a customer tonight. I hope they didn't get a spanish speaking tech.

Man, I need another job. I'm only 20 and putting up with 40hrs/week of BS.

I miss college already (it was the final day of the semester). :)

I think I actually liked school and work on the plate all at once! School gave me something to look forward to!