I finally completed my Master’s degree last week. It only took less than 2 years, quite a bit quicker than the 7 years it took to finish my BS degree (being deployed on submarines and dealing with the aftermath of 9/11 didn’t help). > more <

You’ll notice a sidebar badge listing me as a member of the Techdirt Insight Community. This is just a little plug for people who might be curious about it.

Techdirt is a company that provides valuable, targeted news to various companies. The Insight Community was created to gather information from knowledgable people from around the world. We provide our opinions and knowledge about various subjects based on the questions companies post to the community. In return, we get paid based on the quality of our comments; sort of like a bounty system for good ideas.

If you’re part of a company that wants alternative ideas to consider or are interested in providing your opinion, knowledge, and insight to a variety of topics, then consider taking a look at what the Techdirt Insight Community has to offer.

On Slashdot today there was an article from Computer World entitled 10 Things We Hate About Laptops. As I was reading it, I couldn’t believe some of the things being said. I’ve used laptops for a while, though I’ve never had to support them for other people. However, I found much of what was said to either be fallacious or misleading. > more <

Found an article this morning discussing 10 dirty secrets of the IT industry. It’s quite interesting and enlightening. Not to mention pretty truthful, at least in my experience. The comments are also interesting.

If you work in IT or are planning on it, I recommend taking a read. One of my favorites (mainly because I see it far too much in the military/government sector):

3.) Veteran IT professionals are often the biggest roadblock to implementing new technologies

A lot of companies could implement more cutting edge stuff than they do. There are plenty of times when upgrading or replacing software or infrastructure can potentially save money and/or increase productivity and profitability. However, it’s often the case that one of the largest roadblocks to migrating to new technologies is not budget constraints or management objections; it’s the veteran techies in the IT department. Once they have something up and running, they are reluctant to change it. This can be a good thing because their jobs depend on keeping the infrastructure stable, but they also use that as an excuse to not spend the time to learn new things or stretch themselves in new directions. They get lazy, complacent, and self-satisfied.

I finally got a chance to upload my MS degree papers to Google Docs. Below are the links to the new papers. As before, if you want to use them somehow please let me know. Thanks. > more <

In the course of pursuing my Master’s degree, I’ve written many papers (with more yet to come). In the interest of helping out others (and to toot my own horn) I’m going to be adding them to my Google Docs account and “publish” the links here.

Please be aware that, even though I wrote them originally for school, they are still copyrighted. If you wish to use them outside of normal “fair use”, please contact me. Heck, even if you link to them, quote them, or whatever, please let me know. I would like to know who’s benefiting from them.

The first couple of papers that I’ve uploaded are listed below: > more <