days and nights

Not sure if all of you remember, but I was working to get my record clean. I thought I was good to go, but alas, I received a letter recently telling me that I was denied. I am officially ticked off still. Regardless, I have been turned down for something near 20 jobs because of something that happened 8 years ago. Does anyone else smell a slight case of dickishness coming from all these companies and people.

Bah, just an update. I update The Story as well. Go ahead and check it out. There is at least another page or three there to work with.

I have been working to get some pictures up in the gallery and it seems that I was successful. I have a couple hundred up there, and am adding more every day. Go check it out. http://gallery.alienspeed.com

Well, my last post was laced with a bit of angst as I am sure my 3 readers could tell. Actually on that subject, I am up to 11 readers now. Return readers, not just come once and leave types. Regardless, my last post was rather pissy. I am now jobless as of the 30th of this month. I put in my two week notice yesterday, and began working on replacing my current workplace with something more tuned to my IT career goals. I think it is a great move.

I have mentioned in the past that I have been working on my LPIC-1 as well as my CEH and CHFI. I have made some significant strides forward in studying for my LPIC-1, and expect to take both the 101 and 102 exams next week. It will be a grand occasion when I pass them. My education has been lacking recently due to a downturn in my job duties, and I have decided that I won’t be allowing that of myself anymore. Once my LPIC-1 is finished, I will move on to my CEH to finish that and turn around to finish my CHFI directly after. I could probably finish my CEH sooner, but the LPI certifications have been a goal for a while, and I intend to complete that goal before setting any others.

I have applied for more than a dozen jobs in the last day or two all over the world. Most of them have been either in Dallas or Salt Lake City. There are a few in California and spread all over the world at various United States Air Force bases. I feel that working for the government might not be as great as it should be, so I have put those ones on the back burner unless a real spectacular offer comes across. I want to stay in the private sector and keep getting my name out there. I feel that name recognition is more valuable than any job experience will ever be. It is quite hard to get in this industry, but marketing myself correctly will help that.

If anyone is in need of a System Administrator or Technical Requirements Analyst, please let me know. I am looking actively right now, and will be accepting an offer in the very near future if all goes well.

Microsoft claimed that Windows Vista would be the most security operating system on the planet. Moving forward, they integrated a load of bad ideas into a barely usable chunk of “software” that looks more like a load of rancid bloatware every day. Regardless of the overall hatred of Vista that has taken hold over the last 18 months or so, Microsoft still claims that Vista is a secure operating system.

The question is though, why the hell is it that you would need additional security for the operating system if it is the most secure operating system ever? Most secure ever makes me think that I won’t have to worry about viruses anymore. It makes me think that I won’t need to go out and pay Kaspersky or AVG $50 for them to protect me further. It seems that my way of thinking doesn’t jive with the Microsoft method.

On top of everything else that has been problematic in Vista, they have made programming for it extremely difficult. Drivers were the first big issue. When Vista released, it seemed that getting your printer or camera to work with it was a mess. Vendors were having serious issues with making their hardware work with this new mess that Microsoft released.

Now it seems that these problems have advanced to the Antivirus and Security markets. Vista has been proven time and again to be one of the less secure operating systems, so we are all forced into getting a security suite to keep ourselves safe. Well, we might not be the right word. The right way to say that is, all of you that have not had the foresight to move to Linux.

Regardless, the security companies can’t program for this abomination of an operating system either it appears. Many of the big players in the Antivirus market failed the VB100% tests at the start of April. These are all companies that could pass the same tests on Windows XP without a thought. So what changed between XP and Vista? Everything. Security was dropped on its head. In changing everything they did in a certain way before, they opened more holes. Considering XP looked like a block of Swiss, Vista makes XP look like a religious experience (super sharp cheddar?). 

The fact is, Microsoft tried to get their security right, and in doing so, made the problem worse. It is sad to think that a company that commands so much of the OS market can be so instrumental in the spread of Malware. In fact, while we know that a Mac got the first PC designed virus, I would have to say that Microsoft is nearly single handedly responsible for the spread of modern viruses because they refuse to secure their products and stick to the established standard. Just another reason to switch to a real operating system.

I have never been one to slam any sort of Linux. Hell, I seldom slam anything that works; one of the reason I am still a fan of Windows XP. I do however have a problem with Ubuntu. Again.

There is a bit of a buzz because someone decided to put Ubuntu on a Sharp Zaurus. A PDA that is widely known in the *NIX community because it was one of the first to actually come with Linux installed. On top of the fact that it came with a decent OS, it also sported some pretty good hardware. Double win for anyone lucky enough to have gotten one.

The problem I have with the recent buzz though is that it is Ubuntu that was ported. They couldn’t have used clean operating system. They went to the jumble of hacks that makes up Ubuntu. They decided that instead of starting from the ground up and making something that is REALLY ported for the specific hardware you are running, they would go ahead and just grab some vanilla version of Ubuntu and hope for the best…

I am not trying to take away the fact that they put Linux on a box that came pre-installed with Linux. It does take some smarts and some tweaking to get that to happen without failure. Good for them. I am however stating that regardless of how great that little goal turns out to be, it will still be Ubuntu. A sub par OS that is barely good for Grandma, and certainly isn’t good for much else.

In closing, I guess this is really a rant against all the Ubuntu people out there that think that Ubuntu is the end all be all of Linux when it is just an epic failure for anything requiring more than pretty menus and overly simple operation.

Oh, and another thing, I can build a Fedora or BSD box that works just as well for running Thunderbird and Firefox for Grandma. And I can assure you that I won’t be quite so pissed off when I am done with either of those.

The link to the article I read about this is: http://www.engadget.com/2008/05/08/ubuntu-gets-ported-to-sharp-zaurus-pdas/

So when I started Days and Nights, I figured that I would keep everything anonymous… Names would be changed and all that crap they do in really bad spy movies. It was mostly a ploy to keep this a bastion of pissing and moaning for me. I have decided to change this. I am starting to get big enough that using fake names is getting to be problematic. Not to mention, the new pictures for the rotating header are going to be of me and friends and such, so faking the names doesn’t make much sense.

My want for pissing and moaning has changed to a need to grow Days and Nights into something worth reading, so in the next week or so, expect to see some changes here and there. You will see the names change on the Cast and Crew page as well as a change in the writing on The Story. There will of course be some things left out that may cause problems as far as identity theft and such go, but in the overall scheme of things, it will be mostly correct.

To start this off, I am Brad. No more crappy three part name. Just Brad. Good times.

If you have ideas or things you would like on the site, please let me know. Ciao.