The first couple of decades of life are usually spent view college as the "finish line" of the academic path. Elementary, Intermediate, then high school, followed by the hallowed finish line of college. The reality is that business is changing so quickly, that you'd better be, as well.

Read more »

Ever used a Sony product? I have too and can’t say I had any complaints until I encountered my first hardware issue. It seemed like a bullet-proof setup: I’d take the Sony DVD+RW mini-DVD out of my Sony camcorder and put it in my Sony DVD burner and pull off the VOB files. A simple enough process that I had performed many times, but I noticed that I started getting corrupted MPG’s. Perfectly watchable on a forgiving DVD player, but any sort of editting or viewing software would stutter every 13 seconds when viewing the original VOB’s, which are nothing more than MPG2-compressed files. So, not knowing the sheer stupidity I was in for, I called Sony support…

Read more »

Though it grates against the geek side of an engineer, you'll only do yourself (and your company a favor by embracing it. When it comes time to plan the budget for next year, figure out how much to bill a department, or calculate cost savings, you may be asked to calculate the dollar impact of provisioning and reclaiming switch ports. Odds are, the group that handles your data center facilities will know exactly how much it costs per square foot in terms of cooling, floor space, and electricity, so you'd better be able to come up with some dollar amounts as well.

Read more »