Job Hunting 101: Mastering the Art of Applying for Positions

PaulFebruary 19, 20244 Replies

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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.

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.

PolyMC no longer working on any Platform

PaulOctober 20, 2022

“The account has expried and needs to be logged in manually again.”

No More PolyMC for Steam!

According to sources Lenny, the owner of the polymc program, decided to remove all contributators for the GitHub depository due to a political Mess. Everyone thought he got hacked and I am going to guess it was something he didn’t think to entirely about when he decided to all this. He’s has his reasons, and I will not debate those reasons or even try to comprehend them. I’ve tried PolyMC on my desktop Windows 10 Computer and I get this same error. You can’t even link your account back to polymc, this seems like Microsoft is serious about keeping some of their younger users safe. They blocked the app from being used and now no one can use it anymore. I don’t know how long Microsoft will ban or if there is even a chance to get this game unbanned by Microsoft. Due to that issue we will need to find another game launcher to play on Steam and others platforms. Many people are urging players to go to other launchers and I really can’t blame bloggers from saying this. You just don’t know what is in the code and why the author did what he did. Now my tutorial will not work and we should focus on a new Minecraft launcher.

Other Minecraft launchers on Steam Deck

There are several good launchers on steam deck, if you are using JAVA. You can always get them either through the Discovery App or through Pacman in Console. Here are a few that I have seen that might work just fine with a few tweaks:

The Official Minecraft Launcher— You Will need to install gnome-keyring with a few strings to keep yoru minecraft creditials from having to be entered everytime it launches.
ATLauncher — Is best know for me as least with Sky Factory and other mods for a serious good time in Minecraft. It however may not work as well as we hope. I’ve seen comments where this doesn’t work, so only time will tell.
Minecraft Bedrock Launcher — If you like play the bedrock version this is the luancher for you on Steam or even Arch. I haven’t tested this one out either. It however looks to not be working on arch.

There are several other launchers on Arch but they seemed dubious and I don’t want to recommend them until we get more comments and more people trying them out.

Minecraft Launcher

I will be using the Minecraft official, until I can find a better one and hope I can figure out how to get it to save my profile for offline and online use. I’d hate to have to keep putting in my when I want to use it and have to be online all the time to do it. Other than that, I am not sure what else to try to play Minecraft on Steam. I know I’ll be looking for ways to play Minecraft on Steam again without have to do much hacking or doing anything that might be too difficult. I’ll probably even post a tutorial on how to install a good Minecraft launcher once I find one that will work with my Steam Deck.

What’s your Plans on playing minecraft on steam? Do you know any good ways to do it now? or are you like me just searching for another way to play on the Steam Deck? Let me know your thoughts, I’d love to hear them.

Is streaming feasible on the Steam Deck or to the computer?

PaulOctober 17, 20221 Reply

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The Preface of this post

Let’s begin with that what I am about to talk about is probably not even going to work for most of you because it would require way to much money to upgrade your home networking. This however is going to be something to understand and consider in your future upgrade plans for your home networking. Nothing here right now will stop you from streaming or make it useful but it will be a chance to educate you on how you might want to proceed in the future and make the experience a little more enjoyable. You also have the options of downloading games and installing onto your steam deck but someone games won’t work with the Steam as well as streaming them. This topic will at least maybe make it more enjoyable for you and make it so you can stream and not be pulling your hair out in the process.

Bandwidth will be the issue

Depending on what your computer you are using that you want to stream to your Steam Deck, the issue will be for the time being the amount of information that is sent to the Steam Deck. Most games are playing at the Highest possible settings and that requires the information to be transmittable to the Steam Deck. Something like 1440p or really good RTX graphics card will want to send all this information to the Steam Deck. There will be movement Lag or game lag even if you had the best home network in the world. I can’t see this being without some form of lag. You are essentially trying to send loads of data over either wired to Wireless or Wireless to Wireless, or even Wireless to Wired connections. Even then you have a cap of how much data can be sent to through the air or though a wired connection.

Wired VS Wireless

Let’s Now talk about the speed caps and how much you will most likely get with each one of them. According the LifeWire, You will get these types of speed:

I tend to think this is somewhat accurate because I can’t see this not being any faster than this in most cases. You have objects in the way to get to the wireless whether it being a Door, a Wall, or even other objects. That will tend to slow the connection down because of errors and bandwidth. Even then even if you had gotten a 802.11ax wireless router the Steam Deck right now could only do the 802.11ac so that would mean it could only do 200 mbps(Milibytes Per Second) even at the best of times.

Now let’s talk about Wired options. You can buy dock that will connect to your wired network but the Steam Deck Dock will only do 1 Gbps which is way faster than you could wireles. You would need to do several things to get a faster connection. One buy a Switch or Router that is 2.5Gbps capable, and upgrade your wired connections to a Cat 7 or 8. You’d also need a 2.5Gb Ethernet connection to the Steam Deck by using a USB-C to 2.5gb Ethernet connection. You can also use this to download games faster if you have a already have installed a big enough HDD or maybe you expanded your MicroSD card selections. I have not yet to found a dock that will support 2.5gbps that will work with the Steam Deck but I am not sure if they even make them just yet. It would be nice but I doubt anyone but maybe Steam Deck will incorporate that into their next versions of the DOCK. You will also need to make sure you Desktop system that you want to stream from or two is capabile of thw 2.5gb also on a wired network. You will need to check with the company that you bought your system from or check the motherboards website to see if it has a 2.5gbs ethernet connection. Most gaming systems or motherboards will already havea 2.5gbs connection but some don’t. So you might need to buy a 2.4gb ethernet connection dongle for the laptop or desktop in question.

Game performance tweaks

Finally with all that being said, the last way to not have so much game lag while streaming is drop your resolution of the game and make the game run with less graphics. Turn off DLSS and other options in the game, also if it says it is running best possible graphics, drop it down to mid way or lower and that will allow the information tobe transmitted faster to your streaming device such as the Steam Deck. Even with this, it might still be a little slugish and slow to respond. So the best approach, I have come up with is to download the games onto the Steam Deck and try to play them on the steam without streaming them. I’ve found that most games work rather well playing from the Steam Deck than to try to stream them. The only one so far I haven’t had a chance to try to figure out is Micrisoft Flight Simulator 2020. I am hopeful they will release a patch for that so that I can play that on my Steam Deck. Although, I have begun to try to figure out a way to get it to run on the steam deck like it does on the Linux machines I’ve used in the past. Hopefully I will come up with a Hack to do that.

What’s your thoughts on Streaming Vs Downloading? Do you have any problems streaming or have you had similar issues? What games seem to run smoothly while streaming or did you have any games that will work well streaming? I’d like to hear your results also.