I’m a network guy, so everything in my labs use SNMP because it works with everything. Things that don’t support SNMP are usually replaced and yeeted off the nearest bridge.
For that I use librenms. Simple, open source, and I find it easy to use, for the most part. I put it on a different system than what I’m monitoring because if it shares fate with everything else, it’s not going to be very useful or give me any alerts if there’s a full outage of my main homelab cluster.
Of course, access from the internet to it, is forbidden, and any SNMP is filtered by my firewall. Nothing really gets through for it, so I’m unconcerned about it becoming a target. For the rest of my systems security is mostly reliant on a small set of reverse proxies and firewall rules to keep everything secure.
I use a couple of VPN systems to access the servers remotely, all running on odd ports (if they need port forwards at all). I have multiple to provide redundancy to my remote access, so if one VPN isn’t working due to a crash or something, I have others that should get me some measure of access.
I have a framework. The smaller one. I think they have two now. One of the older CPUs. Got it now than a year ago and it’s been solid. Disclaimer: I don’t run Linux on it, so IDK what that’s like at the moment.
I’ve used most makes and models of laptops and desktops at some point for some duration… The hazards of being in IT… I can’t recommend anything from Microsoft. Simply too hard to do anything with when anything goes wrong and you’re entirely at the mercy of MS for everything. I personally don’t like Lenovo, I’ve had a few Lenovo’s that have their PCIe slots locked to only accept specific device I.D.s in the firmware. I had to flash a hacked firmware to upgrade the wifi in one. It was an unpleasant experience. It did eventually work, but it was not fun. I also don’t care for their keyboard layouts. That’s been improved recently from what I’ve heard, I’m still equally not a fan of their systems.
I’ve had the most experience with HP and Dell, and for the most part they’re very similar. Anything from their business lines will perform quite well though graphics may only be whatever comes integrated with the CPU.
I always push towards business systems because from what I’ve seen, they’re more robust and usually don’t break nearly as fast.
I’d think about getting an eGPU for gaming since no matter how powerful the system or it’s GPU is, it will be massively outdated long before the system fails or becomes inoperable from age. With an eGPU external enclosure, you can upgrade any time you like to a desktop card for much cheaper than replacing the system. Most eGPU enclosures can also act as docking stations, providing power and even network and other things along with the graphics connection.
That’s a lot of hardware talk though. I’m not going to tell you what to pick, I’m just making the best recommendations I can given the information available to me.
In addition, I find that a stunning number of folks are okay with either simply rinsing their hands with only water, or not washing their hands at all. Disgusting.
I often don’t shake people’s hands, or at least sanitize after shaking hands because I don’t know who washes up after using the restroom and who has shit on their hands.
Nope, I’m an IT guy with a nurse for a wife. I’ve taken first aid (including proper handwashing) for about 30 years being a member of St. John’s ambulance for a long time in there.
It’s been beaten over my head for most of my life. Looking into it, the rabbit hole goes deeper. I also found a TED style talk (may have been TEDx? I forget) talking about the best way to dry your hands while using as few paper towels as possible.
I know I’ve only really scratched the surface with what I could know on the topic. I also understand that there’s helpful “germs” on your skin, and over washing or over use of hand sanitizer can be detrimental to skin health and long term health; of course with a huge number of caveats that are just so far outside of the scope of what I’m trying to say.
Looping back on topic, I’m a science nerd, first-aid trained, very curious and knowledge seeking individual with a large exposure to medical people. Hygiene is very important.
The correct way to handle this would be to use a disposable paper product. Most places still have a paper towel dispenser along side the air hand dryer, you’re supposed to use that.
Besides the point, most people don’t know how to properly wash and dry their hands. There’s a technique to both that actually improves cleanliness a lot and reduces overall waste.
I never use air based hand dryers. Paper towel for life. Some places use maze patterns instead of doors, which I generally like but usually requires some extra work with air handling to make sure the bathroom air stays in the bathroom, and a bit more floor space to provide the room for the maze pattern. Those restrooms are usually the ones without paper towel, I don’t mind, I just have moist hands for a few minutes afterwards.
All of this can be googled. So I won’t go into more detail, but the majority of people couldn’t possibly give fewer fucks about handwashing or hand drying properly. So I expect most won’t even try to learn how to do things better, ever. They just go with whatever their parents taught them as a child and never question it again. Bluntly, your parents probably did the same, so you’re probably working off of 50+ year old advice on hand washing.
I’m rewatching TNG and season 1 was pretty… Off. Most of the characters seemed to be cheap knockoffs of their established personas. The most distinctive for me was Brent Spiner (Data), where, I can’t put my finger on it, but he just seemed off the the data that I know and love.
I chalk it up to him coming off of being a comedic bit actor and he was still finding himself for the more dramatic role of data. He hadn’t really nailed down the robotic methodology of his actions and speech that really makes data stand out. His responses were often quick, to the point of speaking over others, and his actions were fairly fluid and organic, which isn’t Data at all.
It really didn’t take long for him to work his way into the role (and into our hearts), I’m not criticising Brent by any stretch. He was and I’m sure still is, an incredible actor… Judging by his fairly recent role reprising Data on Picard, he really hasn’t lost his touch.
There’s plenty of other things about season one that are odd, but I found Data to be the most notable. Still, worf was a lot more brooding, Picard seemed almost more timid, Riker didn’t have a beard… The only person from season one who I can point to with certainty and say that they didn’t seem off from season 1 (compared to how I know the character), was Dr. Crusher. She was hitting it out of the park from day 1.
No matter the oddity, almost all of it was simply gone by the end of season one. I’m partway into season two now and I wouldn’t be able to differentiate the characters on screen from any other season of the show, or from their movies.
Don’t be scared. I’m rarely over 32GB of use. I mainly have it for when I need to do some virtualization/lab work.
Even when I do labs though, I usually debate whether to run them local or put them on my home server with 256GB of RAM.
Edit to add: since I have the memory, I’d rather that chrome uses it for useful stuff. No point in having the memory if it’s just going to sit vacant most of the time. I already bought the RAM, so I might as well use it.
I’ve been thinking about upgrading. I have room to increase the memory on my main system, and my laptop. I can easily double both…
I believe my main system will support upwards of 1.5TB of RAM in specific configurations. I likely would not exceed 256GB. Beyond that and even the best CPUs for my system probably wouldn’t be able to support enough processes to really take advantage of it. Even now I’m more concerned about CPU speed in my main rig than I am about RAM. I’ll probably pick up something with faster cores soon.
I like you. You have the right mindset. The main motivator for working IT support is helping people. The tech usually takes a back seat to soft skills.
On top of that, you’ll figure out that, as long as you know the fundamentals of how things work, all the details are something you can google. Figure out the fundamentals and you’ll be able to work on anything. Convincing prospective employers of this skillset is a bit more difficult.
I wish you luck and I hope I have the pleasure of working with you some day.
As someone who works in IT support, I have yet to find any significant number of support people who can’t troubleshoot process issues. What I have found in spades is management making it impossible to make any meaningful process improvements.
There’s a nontrivial number of management type folks that just want it done a specific way, regardless of how that impacts worker performance or how difficult it makes my job.
The number of times I’ve suggested improvements only to be told that the existing methodology works, is too damn high.
I want my browser to be hungry. I’d rather have it using the memory for sites than have the sites reload when I switch tabs. I want it to be fast on all things.
This is not exclusive to Chrome. No matter what I use, I want it to be running from RAM and not have to swap or reload anything. Even things on my phone. I absolutely hate when I’m in the middle of multitasking on my phone and I go back to some information and the app has been unloaded and needs to load from scratch again (sometimes requiring a login to view the information I had previously retrieved).
That being said, I load everything I own up with about as much RAM as I can, and I buy devices with more RAM than I think I’ll need. Generally when considering an upgrade to my current cellphone, I’m looking at the RAM of the new phone and considering if the increased amount justifies the work and cost involved with changing phones (if there’s an increase at all). Since RAM will be the most significant factor in whether or not something can keep up with me.
My main PC has 64G, my laptop has 32G, and I believe right now, my current phone has 8G. It may be time to upgrade my phone…