Mental Health Feeling Helpless For a while, what transpired in the aftermath of that night, left me feeling betrayed by some people that I thought I could trust, and feeling helpless. Like so many times in life before, I was told by those who had the power to
Mental Health Gigacast Appearance I was recently a guest on Gigacast, along with Cody de Cody De Arkland and Al Rasheed, to discuss mental health and my recent Kernel Panic post. Being lifted onto the shoulders of giants, thanks @eric_shanks @ericblee6 @aaronbuley @al_rasheed @reillyusa @Codydearkland for
Mental Health Kernel Panic I’ve been thinking for over two years about how to talk about this, how to talk about the day I couldn’t process anymore. The day where my bullshit buffers overflowed. The day of my internal kernel panic. When starved for resources, my
Apple Excess Battery I recently picked up an iPhone XS Smart Battery Case, for my iPhone X. I’ve previously owned the 6S battery case for my iPhone 6, and the iPhone 7 case. Let me first say that even though Apple has designed the case for
Apple Revisting Essential Back in July 2017, I wrote about my 10 essential iOS applications. I thought now that we’re reaching the end of 2018, it might be a good time to revisit that list. As I mentioned at the time: I find it helpful to
Certification Certified Expert I’m pleased to announce that yesterday I passed the VCAP6.5-DCD exam, thus earning the VMware Certified Implementation Engineer – Data Center Virtulization “milestone” after elevating the VCAP5-DCA exam that I earned back in 2014. The DCD exam has been on my list of
Career VMware TAM I have accepted a job with VMware, as a Technical Account Manager (TAM). To say I’m excited about this would be a gross understatement. VMware has been the company I’ve spent the majority of my technical focus on up to this point,
Certification Blueberry Lover Occasionally I’ll wear my “blueberry” VMware certification shirt to work. Some people in the community love these shirts, some people don’t. I, do. Blue also happens to be my favorite color. Occasionally someone I work with in my current workplace will comment
Review Doorbell Tweets I received a lot of feedback from my tweet about ditching a new Ring for Nest Hello. I think my Nest Hello preorder has shipped, or is shipping soon. Credit card has been billed. Ditching the Ring 2 that I picked up last month.
Apple Define Essential Two weeks ago, after regretfully trying to use the iOS 11 developer betas on my primary devices, I was forced by general instability to roll back to iOS 10. Unfortunately, there’s no great way to do this without doing a restore and fresh
Career Reasonable Salary The process of looking for a new job is stressful. If you already have one, you’re a bit like a secret agent, sneaking around town trying to complete the mission of getting someone new to agree to sign your paychecks, without the old
Career Beginnings End This morning I gave two weeks notice to my current employer, a Kansas City based VAR, where I have been a senior data center engineer for the last six years. I’ve enjoyed many aspects of my current role; becoming certified in new technologies,
Community Choosing Electives I’m going to start this by saying something that might seem strange for a post like this, but is no surprise to my closest friends: The last two months, and especially the last two weeks, have been very stressful and mentally draining. Without
Community Neowin Retrospective Most of the people who know and interact with me professionally, or on social media know me as “vmstan” — and if you asked most of those people they’d tell you I only pay attention to two things when it comes to technology: VMware
Review Enough Windows I’ve not been a true “Windows user” on a daily basis since the glorious afternoon my first MacBook Pro arrived in 2011. That didn’t exactly mean I quit using Windows on that day, but over time I’ve continued to slim down
Apple Leather Wrapped I have an on-again, off-again relationship with iPhone cases. I put them on. I take them off. I generally don’t like cases. I’ve only broken my iPhone one time and that was when my 6 Plus came out of my pocket attached
Review Pant Lover I have some strict requirements around work pants. My wife hates the “I can see your socks while you’re standing up” hipster look, so they have to be full length. Honestly it’d be a great look since I’m 6’4” but
Career Securely Obscure A couple of years ago, one of our network security architects at work told me that I was in the wrong business. Storage, virtualization, data centers, it’s all going to the cloud. I’d soon be out of a job. I barely knew
VMware VCSA Migration Last night I did my first customer migration from a Windows based vCenter to the VMware vCenter Server Appliance (VCSA) using the new 6.0 U2M utility. The customer was previously running vCenter 5.1 GA on a Windows Server 2008 R2 based physical
VMware RAID Crash Recently I had two VMware Horizon View proof of concept setups for work, where we designed an all in one Cisco UCS C240 M4 box, full of local SSD and spindles, in various RAID sets. This lets the customer kick the tires on View
Politics Stronger Together I wasn’t going to get sucked into the 2016 election, then Donald Trump ran for President I’ve struggled with what to write about this election for months. I’m not shy about my opinions on social media but when it came down
Apple 16GB Problems For many years, 16GB devices have been an issue for Apple and its users. However Apple fixed this in September, bumping up to 32GB of storage as the new minimum capacity in the iPhone 7, and then going as far as to rev-up the
Review Mobile Advantaged You know you have a problem when you get excited about plan changes on your cellular provider. Yesterday, AT&T gave me a problem. Initially, no more data overages, higher caps, and reduced pricing tiers looks like good news all around, but is
Apple Blue Harvest I’ve long been annoyed with copying files to a USB stick, and then handing them to a Windows user (typically a customer) and then telling them to ignore all the .whatever files that are created. Recently I found BlueHarvest, which runs $15 and
Apple Apple TV When the 4th generation Apple TV was announced a few weeks back, my initial response was basically “take my money!” But then, I had second thoughts, and I didn’t order one at the start of the week when they were first available. I
