Friday Video Picks : 2/9/24 Job Market and Aggressive Layoffs in March

Paul3 Replies

Aggressive Layoffs in March(2024)!

Economists estimate that we will have aggressive layoffs in March.   A very thorough look at what it could become like in the later months.   I am not going to say that she is right but I do think she has some very good points.  If you haven’t seen this video you should watch it and decide for yourself how much of this will happen.   Is there going to be a recession in 2024? Some information in this video actually shows me that someone is messing with the labor numbers and it is worse than than the US wants us to believe.   I am not going to say that we aren’t already in a Recession but I wouldn’t think we will be finding the jobs easier than we did in the past.   This is probably a good time to pivot and start applying to other jobs that are away from the tech industry for a time and then maybe when this is all over with you can come back to it.

Are they Lying to use about the Job Market?

Hyper Specialization is one thing that might be causing them to lie about the job market and this video goes into even more details about it. I’ve suspected something was going on with the job since I have started looking for a job the last few weeks. Nothing seems to correlate with why I haven’t gotten one interview in the last few weeks unlike previous where I could apply and have an interview at least once a week or twice a week and be feeling like I am accomplishing something.   This industry is not looking good for the for see-able future and we are going to have to consider other ways to make money.

I’ve been Applying

I will say that I’ve kept applying for jobs that I know I could do because of the my work experience.  I haven’t been in IT long so I have Production, Forklift, and Grocery store experience.   The problem I think is that with the mass amount of layoffs going on everyone is trying to find any job they can and that means everyone is applying for the same jobs and those in bigger cities will see applications for general work also skyrocket.  So the real questions is why does it feel harder to find a job and even get an interview than ever?  I’d be curious as to how long this will last but I am not going to hold my breathe on how long it will be before the real numbers actually show us that we are in the a Recession.

I’ve researched this as much as possible while not looking for a job to find out what I could do to get a job and so far everything I am a seeing is not promising and we should just tighten our belts on this to make ourselves get through the storm.   I am going to keep applying for jobs and networking to try to find people who might be able to get my foot in the door for places that I can work and hope that this doesn’t get to serious in the coming months.   I’m still hanging on to the fact that someone will hire me and let me work in IT but I will have to start looking other places also like Remote work, and Work From Home Jobs.  Again those will be flooded by people trying to find jobs and you are going to be Ghosted and forgotten most likely due to the high volume of applicants.  I don’t see this coming out any other way but we must be willing to take whatever we can to survive.

Are you looking for a job?  how is it going for you?  Have you had any success with interviews?  Leave a comment and tell me your story, I’d love to connect and find out what others have done and if they have had any interviews that didn’t pan out.   Remember subscribe to my blog for even more topics about this and other stuff.

Unlock the Ultimate Minecraft Experience on Steam Deck!

Paul

Portable Powerhouse

Can you install Minecraft onto the Steam Deck?  Yes you can.   Having been using Steam Deck to play Minecraft, I thought I would at least talk about how to be able to play it and make it portable.   Some of the ways I talk about doing this others have talked about but I have been playing around with it and It isn’t something that some people can do easily.  This won’t be a Step by step but it will at least help you to understand what you might have to do get to play on the Steam Deck.   You’ll need to have several things before you can do it on the Steam Deck like having a Minecraft License.  I already created an ultimate Gaming Shell Script for Linux Mint which you could use if you use Linux Mint as your OS while using your Steam Deck.  I’ve not really tried this but It seems like a good way to do it.  Other ways to use Minecraft would be to install Windows 11 to your Steam Deck.  I’ve also heard this be a possibility but I never found this to be very good.  I must be one of the few who doesn’t like using Windows 11 with the Steam Deck due to it just not working properly.  You can however Take your favorite block-building game anywhere with the handheld power of Steam Deck and that is where we will begin.

Install Minecraft

There are multiple ways to do it.   Install something like Prism Launcher in your Linux Desktop environment.  You’ll need to use the Desktop Mode, which is easy by press and Hold the power button until the power menu comes up and select Desktop Mode.  You’ll probably should use a mouse and Keyboard and you can even use small dongle connection to do it temporarily so you can do what you need in the Desktop Mode.   Once in the desktop Mode, You can either download Minecraft which would require some work around to keep you from having to login to Microsoft every time you launch the game or click on Discover and install one of the many Minecraft Apps available to install it.    I suggest trying one of those to see if it will keep your login credentials when you launch the game.   You’ll probably need to search for a work around on some of them to keep from having to login every-time.   I can’t remember how I did but I think I installed the key-ring credentials to use the java version.

Adding it to Steam

You’ll want to click on Add a Non-Steam game!

Some things you will need to find out is where the Minecraft launcher is on the Steam Desktop. If you did it right it should be on your desktop. However, if you didn’t do it right, you’ll need to track down where it is on your steam os file system. However, it shouldn’t be hard to find and it should be hard to direct steam where to launch the launcher and stuff.  I’ve done it on my Steam Deck and there are even instructions do it for Prism.  I’ve not used Prism so I don’t know how well this will but it should work in theory.

Seamless Integration

Discover how Minecraft seamlessly integrates with Steam Deck’s controls for an immersive gaming experience. This is something you should be done before you do anything is to customize how it looks. You will probably need to add a custom Background and Custom Logo.   You can easily do that by using clicking on the right mouse button and finding a background that would work for you.   I typically search for a good background and save it to the Steam Deck to use.   This helps when you leave the Steam OS desktop.  You’ll need to also probably also look for a good Logo that you want to use as a way to identify with it as being Minecraft.   This is something that can be easily done in the Desktop.   Also you will need setup the control by clicking on the little COG icon and selecting the proper controller setup for Minecraft.   I believe the WASP / Mouse settings work best for me and you will need to customize that to make it even more easy for you.   Play around with the settings to see what works well for you.

What games are you using with the Steam Deck?   Why not leave a comment and tell use what you are doing with yours and how you are using it?  it can be very useful to know which games work on the Steam Deck?  Don’t forget to subscribe for more Steam Deck tips and tricks.

The Best 3 Free Tools for Desktop Support Professionals

Paul2 Replies

Display Driver Uninstaller

Display Driver Uninstaller (DDU) is something that every desktop professionals should have mainly on computers that may have Graphics cards that are required for the job such as Nvidia or even AMD cards.   You will find that every so often some driver updates causes a problem and this is a very good tool to uninstall the driver completely.     I will say this is open sourced and is very good for every day support when you might need to use this little utility for just those occasions.   You will find this free tool will be used more and more and you can even keep it on a USB drive as a way to use it offline when you need to do use it.   It’s very small and won’t need a big USB drive but this is only one of the few that you might have available to use on your USB drive.

Portable Apps

Portable Apps has so many portable applications that it would be hard to talk about all them.   However there are several that I will talk about that you can install on the USB drive.  Depending on the size of your USB portable drive you have will depend on what you might want to install on the drive.   However if you have a big enough USB drive, you could in theory install all available applications from Portable Apps and then you would be set.

  • Revo Uninstaller Portable — Great for those pesky programs that might not uninstall all the way or when something goes wrong with uninstalling programs.
  • HackthisPortable — Good for looking for viruses, and Trojans that might be on the system and gives you a run down on what might be running on any given system.
  • McAffeeStingerPortable and Kaserpky Task killer —  These are great apps for programs that you have issues with when they want to keep running even when you need them to not be loaded or running on a system.
  • CPUZPortable and GPUZPortable — great ways to find out even more about finding out what drivers you might need for GPU and looking at what type of CPU might be on any given system.  In case you needed to know.
  • Microsoft Safty Scanner — Great portable app that you can use on any Windows system in case you might have a Virus infection and is being blocked from being download or run locally.
  • CCleanderPortable —  Another great applications to use to clean the registry and other places in Windows that might be causing problems and helps fix some of the registry problems you might have.

As you can see there are several portable apps you can install on any given USB drive and have ready at moments notice if you ever need it.  So this is great tool that you can use for what ever you might come your way.

WinDirStat

WinDirStat is something that helps me find what might be hogging a system drive.  It is great and showing graphically what could be taking up the space of a hard drive.  It is portable and can be put on USB also but can also be download and used for many different reason but mostly when you need to find out why the hard drive is so full and how what you can delete to create space.  So this is something most Desktop Support people will use at one time or another.   I have used this several times in the past to find files that can be deleted, you just have to be careful what you delete and never touch anything in the Windows Directory or Program Files directory unless you want the system no run properly when you reboot.

These are what I have on my USB just in case I need them but these are only a few of them because there are even more tools that I use when I need them however this would start you on the right to having a powerful USB drive when you might need it.   Do you have a favorite tool that you want to let everyone else know about?  Why not leave a comment and tell people about it.

Don’t forget to subscribe to keep updated on any new posts.

 

 

Best ways to use ChatGPT for keyword researching!

Paul

chatGPT, ai, font, toy, art, machine, metal, fictional character, action figure, event, graphics, macro photography, games, graphic design, still life photography, circle, Free Images In PxHere

Using ChatGPT

ChatGPT can be quite interesting to help you in many different aspects for using with what you might need to use it for.  I’ve been playing around with it for the past few weeks after my lay off to see if what it might do to help me find a job or to use with my blog.  So I thought it would be a good way to check out some keywords that might be useful for my blog posts.   I went through the whole process and I’ve found some good tips and tricks on how to bring people to my blog.  I am going to try this even more to see how well this will work for me.   The idea that we can have Short Tail keywords and Long Tail Keywords is an aspect that will make it even more interesting.  I didn’t know about this until I started talking to the ChatGPT.

Figuring out Keywords

The first process I used was to ask ChatGPT what would be good keywords for my blog but it didn’t really come back with anything useful do to it not having access to my current blog posts.   It only has access to the old blog post that were before AUG 2022, so even if I can’t know what it wants to think about my current state of my blog.  So I went started asking specific questions wanting to know what keywords would be good for [niche] and that seemed to bring back some good ideas.   However it isn’t what I wanted to use for my blog.  I decided to ask about some good Long tail keywords for my niche and it came up with several again, it wasn’t very useful for me due to it being non specific and that can be something that I don’t want to go into.

Diving Deep

I decided to start asking even more deeper questions about what are some good uncommon blog posts about [niche] and also even asked the really good questions about making long tail and short tail keywords for that particular niche with uncommon blog posts.  You’d be surprised how many times the uncommon blog posts from people help draw people to your blog.  Having used Chatgpt for other things, I thought it would be interesting to see how this will go with this blog post and see what may happen.  I asked ChatGPT what would be some good examples of a long tail keyword and this blog post was suggested by ChatGPT.

Using Multiple Sources

Some of the ways I am using Chatgpt is also using Google Trends, and Even using sites such as Backlinko, and Google Keyword Planner. It just depends on how you want to use these tools to figure out what you want you want to look for and how you want to use what ChatGPT suggestions.  I will say don’t just use the suggestions without at least doing some research on how much you want try these suggestions.  I suggest that you really go as deep as you can with Chatgpt and ask deep questions with it, so it can suggest some good blog posts for your Niche.   You will need to decide which ones would be good for your blog and which one might not be so good and not to use.

ChatGPT Hacks

There are certainly many hacks you can search for and find but I didn’t need to do that.  If your keyword or blog post will be against Chatgpt ideals then you might need to figure out a way to get what you but I don’t suggest that because it shouldn’t be used for evil but I am sure people will always want to come up with ways to use ChatGPT for blog posts and create blog posts for them.  I however don’t believe in that type of posts.  My blog posts will always be written by me,   However you should be cautious with other blogs that use them to write blog posts.  I haven’t really looked into other blogs that have used them in the past.   I am sure you’ll find blog posts that have done that but have very little content and that can be a sign of poor AI guidance or user doesn’t want to put the work in for their blog.

What have you done with ChatGPT and have you had any success with ChatGPT?   I’d like to hear your opinions on that, why not comment and tell me how you have done with it.   Also don’t forget to subscribe to my blog for more insightful content.

Windows Batch Scripting for Beginners and how to use it.

Paul

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.