How-to – Paul's Tech Talk

Beyond Bits and Bytes: The Art of Pivoting Away from Tech

PaulFebruary 23, 2024

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Is it time to Pivot to another Industry?

First question we must ask what do when pivoting in another industry? The short answer is choicing to leave the an industry because of no success or too many people are trying to get for the same types of jobs. It is sometimes even scary and uncertain to most people because it is something that you have never done. This is where it can be challenging and new to most people. The other questions I usually get from people and from myself when asking this question is “Where do I start at and what areas am I good at that would get me a job?” These are the questions that I would be asking myself while thinking about pivoting away from the current Technology industry and I am sure I am not the only one when it comes to this idea or thoughts.

Have you recognized the Signs?

The real question is, why has it been so hard to find a job in the tech industry that you want to find a new job that might work for you to bring in the money that you might need to keep paying those bills. The underlying questions is usually how many applications have you applied for and got turned down? Has this been something that seems to be a repeatively being turned down for getting those interviews. The ultimate signs you could need to pivot is burnout of applying for jobs to a lack of passion to keep applying for those types that seem to not even be interested in your skill set. We may need to acknowledge that we may not have enough experience or that there are too many people trying to get the same job to even have a chance to land a job to bring in the money we may need to pay bills.

What is the Motiviation behind this?

Ultimately the main motivation is probably to keep food on the table and be able to pay the bills that much is what everyone is wanting to do in the end. We need to identify other motiviations that you might been considering as you are considering changing directions. Is because you like People, or are you looking for new challenges that may interest you. Knowing what your motivation might be will help you know how well you will do when you pivot. Clarifying your strong motiviations and knowing what you are good at will help you to identify which industries you might be able to pivot to help you get those jobs that might be interested in applying for. While you consider your motivations, go ahead and consider your transferrable skills that you might also have to use in other industries and that might help you identify where you might be good at. Write these skills down and start considering who might need them and you will be better off finding area’s to apply for. Leverage those skills while you modify your resume to help show the potential employer that you are good fit can bring even more jobs and job offers. I am sure that knowing these skills will help you get that job you probably are wanting and needing in this uncertain time.

Can you Embrace the Journey?

You should embrace the journey as you transistion from Technology industry to another industry where you can learn new talents and learn things to bring you on your journey to better you. Nothing is set in stone and that much is where we need to learn from the life. Resiliencey is key to this journey you might be considering and you should have a support system available to help encourage you and show you even mroe skills you might be able to bring to any jobs. Seek people who might have gotten jobs like the ones you are looking to apply for and have them mentor you in what it might be like to learn even more about if this would be a good fit for you. You will need to learn new skills but while learning them you might find that the job is more enjoyable than you thought it would be.

Finally, I could talk even more about this but I thought we should at least consider the idea of maybe people needing to move away from the technology sector and find other jobs to help support their needs to pay off bills while they can still use the time to look for jobs in the industry. It is much easier to have a job to find a job then to be unemployed and looking for a job. Either way you can be sure whatever you decide to do will help guide you. You should sit down with friends and family and discuss this as much as possible to help you understand the potential pro’s and con’s of the industry and be open to listening to their thoughts on the subject. They might be able to help identify where you should apply to get that job. You aren’t alone in this like everyone else this is a journey for sure.

Job Hunting 101: Mastering the Art of Applying for Positions

PaulFebruary 19, 20244 Replies

Photo by kaushik26795 from PxHere

Importance of Effective Job Applications

The importance of applying for jobs is more important than ever due to more people applying for the same job. If you haven’t been watching more and more people are getting laid off and that is causing employers to get swamped with people applying for same job that everyone else is applying for. It’s a real struggle to find a job for most and all, I am one of those that have been looking for a job for the past few weeks and I have come to understand just how hard it is to get that interview.

The overview of apply for jobs can be quite daunting and challenging for most because you really don’t know where to begin with or where to start looking. Each person is just a little different and that can be a strength or a weakness, depending on your talents. Now it is one thing to know you are looking for a job but that doesn’t mean you are can’t at least start figuring out how you will do it.

Defining Your Career Objectives

Each person has a career objective whether you admit it or not. You have some reason why you are looking for a job in area or industry because you want to accomplish something such as more money, more seniority, or even prestige. You could be trying to get all three or just thinking you could be a better person and that would be only one area where you want to accomplish. There are several different accomplishments people will want when they are applying for a job.

First thing you’ll need to do is a self assess what is your strengths and identify your talents. What are you good at? Are you good at talking to people? Are you good with your Hands? These are the questions you should be asking yourself before you start to even consider applying for a job. You’ll need to take a deep dive into what you are good at and what you where you’re strengths are. Monster has some great career tests for you to use to figure help you figure out what you are good at and your strengths and weaknesses. Even if you want to go deeper than that, you should check out Yale’s Self-Assessment and career exploration pages, where they will give you even more enlightened out look of who you are and what you might be good at. There are to many websites to put in this blog but these are just a few that you can check out to learn who you are and what you are good at.

After you’ve done all that and know what you might be good at, the next step is to research industries and companies that might be good fit for your talents and strengths. Each company can be different but if you know what you are good at then that’s at least the first part of the battle. Knowing that you are good at typing or that you are better at your hands can be a big help with where you should look in the company whether it be in productions, office work, driving a car, or calling clients to do check up on what needs to be done to keep them. The one way I research the companies is use Indeed to research the company and they even have great article on how to do it. It just depends on how you tailor searching for jobs in certain industry and know that is where you want to pursue your career with. It’s not going to be as black and white but it should at least keep you on the right path.

Creating an Outstanding Resume

Effective resume writing techniques for job applications can be quite challenging due to the fact that you have to know what the company is wanting. They may want some specific soft skills, and they will most likely want even more hard skills or you having an education that is a requirement to get the job. So you should create an resume and then change it when you apply for a job to better help you get that chance for the interview.

Craft a compelling summary and objectives is something else you will need to do to stand out from each and every other applications. Each application is going to be different so each resume should be slightly different from the others. Although this isn’t the always going to work it however is going help you get that proverbial foot in the door as I would say. Highlighting your achievements and skills are the first part of creating a good resume. You should make sure to have those in your resume to show them how unique you are and what you are good at. Formatting the resume will help with hiring manager being able to a glance to see what you are are, so you should have bulleted lists or number lists to show them you qualifications and you’re experiences. This sets the tone of the resume to better make your application stand out.

These are just a few ways for you to learning how to job hunt effectively and this is just the tip of the iceberg because I will be writing about even more of this in the future so you should bookmark my site or better yet sign up for my newsletter and keep watch on those other articles to come in the future. If you liked this article how about sharing with your friends and family to help support my blog and my efforts.

The Real Struggle to Finding a Job in 2024

PaulFebruary 13, 20243 Replies

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Why is Finding a Job in the US Really Hard?

I don’t say this lightly because I’ve come across so many people talking about this that isn’t even funny. Most of these people are just trying to find a job and it seems that they aren’t even able to land any real interviews. I’ve had that same problem as of late, no one wants to interview they just go to another qualified applicant and either Ghost me or tell me that I wasn’t selected for the interview.

I’ve personally been dealing with the Stress of looking for a job for over 2 weeks. It can be quite hard not to worry and think about what may come but this is just another example of what it is like to find a job in the year 2024. Even if the US Government says we have all these Jobs that were created, I seriously doubt this is going to help those who have been laid off and the one that may be lay off in the future.

Few Examples:

Linkedin Layoffs Trends By Nicole Roundy

Why Can’t People find a job?

More and More people are asking the same thing. “Why can’t I find a Job?” on Google. That seems more than plausible, if the US economy was so robust and we had all these jobs than it should be easy for everyone who was laid off to find a new job. It however isn’t that way and I hate to say it doesn’t look promising for the future. As I have been doing my research more and more people are having the same issues as I am and if people are not finding jobs and they have more qualifications than me then It just can’t be how I am applying and that I am applying. It has to be deeper than that and I believe it is.

Even now it isn’t clear on what people should do, because more and more people are asking the same thing. Even more “experts” try to give advice. I put quotations around the word to make sure you know that I don’t know if they are right or wrong or if they are actually experts or just people who know how to get a job easier.

I’m not here to tell you who I believe is or isn’t a expert in this field but to at least tell you that even if you do some of the things these people tell you to do to get a job may or may not work in your situation. I’m going to at least talk about what I am doing to try to get a job that may help you in your job search.

My Job Search Activities

What I am about to tell you is what I’ve been going through trying to do to hunt for a Job. However, This doesn’t that this is how you should do it but it is something to consider while you are looking for a job.

Setup Email Alerts on Job openings — This can be quite helpful. I’ve done this for sites like Indeed, Monster, Linkedin, Google, and even Bing to find new jobs around me that I can apply for it and it helps to keep me from spending to much time each day to look for jobs. Each of these are easy to do and you can have each site email you daily or when there is a new job that pops up that you are looking for.
Spend a Maximum of 2 or 3 hours and No more looking for Jobs — I say this because I’ve heard people say they were looking for job as if they have a job Full time and that can’t be good or healthy to the individual. There is no way you can find jobs and apply to them all day. You should spend only a limited amount of time finding jobs. That is the best approach.
Get Resume Help — This can be quite easy for some of you but others might need to search their local community to see if you can get someone to help you write your resume even better. It never hurts to get someone to check it out and give you some advice on how to get the employer to see your resume.
Apply for Jobs that you have excellent Soft Skills for — This is something that seems to be overlooked but you should always apply to jobs that match your soft skills even more. This will get employers more interested in your application. If you can show them you have the soft skills they are searching for they may want to get an interview with you.
Don’t be afraid to ask for help with Friends And Family — This can be really helpful to be able to talk to your friends and family. It can help with your stress also but they may know of jobs that may be able to get your foot in the door. It’s what they call networking which has helped me in the past and this is something I am constantly doing now but still haven’t gotten past the interview stage.

As you can see these are just a few tips that I can give you to better keep you in the know of new jobs and how to deal with the rejections you may get. I’ve seen more and more of those rejections come my way but with all this it helps to keep me from getting depressed and discouraged. You should consider how you can better help yourself from getting that way too.

Are you looking for a Job? If so, we are both in the same boat but you can always subscribe and find out even more tips on Job hunting and just technology industry in general. Remember you’re not alone in this and we are all in this together.

Windows Batch Scripting for Beginners and how to use it.

PaulFebruary 5, 2024

What is a Batch file?

Most people will never really understanding what the extension .bat is in Windows or even DOS. However it is something that is native to programmers around the world because it is the first thing most people who make programs or works with scripting start to use way before they do anything else. It should be considered the first linguistic languages that is very powerful. It is designed to be used in DOS but can also be used in Windows as a DOS command easily and effectively through Windows OS. Some of these are what you should explore even more to learn how to program and create scripts even more. However this blog post is just a introduction into doing it and how you can use this in your everyday IT Job.

According to Wikipedia:

A batch file is a script file in DOS, OS/2 and Microsoft Windows. It consists of a series of commands to be executed by the command-line interpreter, stored in a plain text file. A batch file may contain any command the interpreter accepts interactively and use constructs that enable conditional branching.

Understanding scripting is the first part in creating powerful scripts for everyday use. However, I am one of the few to use the help command in DOS:

HELP [command]

This is a good tool for those who might want to explore the power of using a Batch to get your job done or to creating a batch file because you will need to know what you can use in the batch file.

Here are a few commands you might want to use in a batch file:

SET /P variable=[promptString]
Start of the batch file ECHO OFF and ECHO ON after the batch file is complete.
If and THEN (Wikipedia)
CALL filename.bat

Creating Batch files

I’m not going to go into much details about creating the batch in the way you might need but I will be talking about this in general about ways you can create a batch and which programs are good at helping you create a batch file.

First you need a program to create it. You can always use Wordpad or Notepad but you could find it isnt’ a good as Notepad ++. I have used it in the past for programming in many different programming languages such as Pascal, C++, COBOL, and SHELL Scripting. I’ve talked about SHELL scripting in past for LINUX which you can use Notepad++ for it also to create Linux shell scripting. I will say you can do a lot with the open-sourced program that is free to use. So I always want to use this with anything I am doing because it shows you where you might have a problem in your scripting language and helps you identify how to fix it. You’re best advice is to just try to think about what you want to accomplish with a batch file and start thinking logically about how you would do that.

You will need to make sure the .batextension is on the file name. Make the filename something that you can easily run in DOS because you don’t want to make the batch file anything complicated because that might not work properly if you use a call command in another batch file. So consider the naming convention of your batch file(s).

Trial and Error

After creating the batch file you will need to do some trial and error test to make sure it will work with what you need to use it for and also make sure there isn’t something unexpected. This is what programmers do all the time by compiling the program and running it on different systems to see what it will do in different Windows environments.

Finally, You will see that you can do so much more with a batch that you previously did and it can be a great asset in doing repetitive stuff at work or at home. If you do this right it can even help speed up your life. Here are a few Blog posts that I have talked about previous:

As you can see these will help you understanding scripting but also help you to figure out what you might want to do with a Batch and why you might need to create a batch file. Even I know this is only a few blog post that will at least hopefully give you even more ideas on what will help you to create batch files.

Don’t forget to like and subscribe to my blog page for even more updates. Do you have a favorite DOS command? why not share it with others so they can learn even more.

My Upgrade experience with Steam Deck

PaulOctober 24, 20221 Reply

Upgrading the 399$ Steam deck!

I won’t say that anyone can do this if you don’t know how to do it in the first place. It however was realatively quick and easy. So let’s start from the beginning, I did talk about which storage hard drive cards would work with the Steam Deck, they call them NVME’s. I got mine off of Amazon and it works really well, I installed it in under 20 minutes. The problem I had was having to redownload all my Games. That took like 3 hours with it be connected to the dock, and that is no small feet. I play Elden Rings, Spider-Man Remaster, Halo, Subnautica, Subnautica Below Zero and also Half-Life series. Althought that was over 180 gigabytes, that is still really fast in my opinion, unlike downloading over wifi, connecting to a wired connection will always by my way to install games on the Steam Deck.

Some Caveats

Let’s talk about some of these small warnings. If you haven’t backed up anything on the SSD than you will most likely loose them. You can easily move files that you want to save to your sdcard, which also is very helpful in keeping backups. You’ll also want to make sure to remove the sdcard before you try to open up the Steam Deck, or you will break the Sdcard. I’ve done that at least one and it isn’t a fun experience buying a new one. You’ll also want to install the recovery disk onto a USB-C drive if all possible unless you have a dock and then you can use the dock to reinstall the Steam OS. The app that comes with installing the Steam OS didn’t require much from me other than making sure I knew it would delete all files on the NVME. It was a new one so I wasn’t worried about loosing any data. Also if you moved any files from the SDcard, unless I missed a step, you’ll most likely need to reformat the SD card to move files back to the SDcard. I honestly think I missed a step because I should of been able to verify my integratity of the files and not have to download all these big games back, it however didn’t cause me too much grief.

Some Take Away

Knowing that if I had to replace the SSD it wouldn’t be much problems. I did buy a 256gb NVME just because I found some for 30$ on amazon. You can however install 1tb or 2tb when they become more availabe and cheaper. It was way cheaper than buying a 512 on the Steam Deck website and I still can replace any part I might need to in the coming years. One day I’ll buy a newer model of the Steam Deck with better hardware or updated hardware. It however is going to be an interesting time to see what they come up with on the Steam Deck. I simply love it and even use it at a desktop whenever I need to. It will be a great international Travel accessorie instead of taking my laptop to browse the web or do what I might need to do on the go. I’m in the process of looking for a good Mouse and keyboard setup that might be small and portable so I can do what I might need to do on the go. Very Powerful and great little gaming device. Have you upgraded yoru Steam Deck yet, if so what did you do with yours more storage or change the display to a better dislpay? i’d like to hear what you might did to yours and let’s compare notes.