Just to give an outsider perspective to anyone reading this. I live in the Seattle Metro, have worked for Microsoft, and now work at a unicorn. I have a list of skill and experience that any ops department would drool over. Amazon is is one of the companies I won’t even apply to unless I’m desperate for a job (and even then I’m not planning to stay).

And I know I’m not the only one.

How can you not link the rpgnet review of such a…system. https://www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/14/14567.phtml

Aka sso.tax

That’s the scary thing. It looks like this narrowly missed getting into Debian and RH. Downstream downstream that is… everything.

Along a similar vain to making a git friend, buy your sysadmins/ops people a box of doughnuts once in a while. They (generally) all code and will have some knowledge of what you are working on.

Wiki for anyone who does not feel like searching: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ninja_rocks

I should point out that when Wikipedia of all places has a legal status section you should take real care with how/when/where you have them.

Not the person you asked, but another forever dm who likes it.

I fell into it because I wanted to play and the best way to control scheduling was to run the game.

If you like to write stories that’s wonderful - take a look at some of the pre generated adventures in any system to understand how the different components work in pen and paper games. Just remember that no plot can survive contact with the players unscathed (after all it’s group story telling)- and some level of improve skill will help the overall experience. After that just have fun.

What about the fact that any DnD universe is inherently functioning a set of non euclidean rules with respect to geometry? We know this because moving at a diagonal takes the same amount of movement as a square in one of the cardinal directions.

First off, aiming to start in security is a fools errand. Security is one of the many paths that your career might take after you gain some knowledge.

Some more random thoughts before real advice. The two hardest things in IT are getting into help desk, and getting out of it. The reason is two fold: 1) help desk is the great entry point for the greater IT industry, and 2) one person in a help desk role is fairly similar to another when it’s time to move out of help desk.

Now: If you have the time, go to your local community college and take their it/networking/security program. The degree will help - you won’t skip help desk (unless your lucky), but you are better equipped for getting out of it. You will also learn a bunch of stuff, get some projects to stick on a resume, etc.

If you don’t have that time you can go the cert route. Be warned however - certs do not substitute for real experience. Do not fall for the trap of thinking that getting X cert is your ticket to Y job. You will be in for a ride awakening when your sitting across from someone like me that only asks situational, hypotheticall questions with no correct answer ( I care about how you think and approach problems over book smarts).

Ok. Last bit of advice: the 10 things I look for (in order) when interviewing entry level help desk.

1. customer service skills,
2. ability to learn,
3. customer service.
4. some mild interest in tech.
5. customer service.
6. the ability to learn troubleshooting.
7. customer service.
8. the ability to admit you don’t know…
9. customer service.
10. not being an asshole.

I can teach you how to fix a printer, design a network, or spin up infrastructure in the cloud. I can’t teach you how to act around people.

It’s $100. In 2023 that does not even cover groceries for a middle class household of four for a week.

If you want to advocate absolute austerity to someone who has no expenses yet - go for it. Me? The world is shitty enough as is - of something’s going to make you happy, and you have no other expenses, go for it.

Don’t spend your money because it’s a " good deal". In theory your guardian(s) are covering the expenses the rest of as as adults just accept. Therefore take advantage and spend your money on what brings you joy.

So for years I was similar on reddit. Then I realized I could use my account as a bookmark organizer for subs I was interested in.

Never posted anything however. Here I have alts with post history. Interacting is still taking some getting used to.

As someone who manages a Google workspace instance currently, God I wish I had exchange for my email service.

Shit. I think it took me 5 years on reddit to comment once. Now I have alts! Alts!

So counter point. Active directory is a god send for managing endpoints, user accounts, endpoints, etc.

No you don’t let windows act as a dns server outside the ad subdomain, no you don’t use windows to admin your root private ca, and for all you hold dear do not enable that God forsaken web server. But for what it does well, it’s the best solution out there.

Just to pile on. I’ve seen devs throw out the entire git history when moving between repos for ongoing projects.

Yes? If you don’t like your clutch? Mid 30s in the PNW. Now to be fair, one of my cars is an ev, the other is a cvt transmission.

I don’t know what part your unaware of - so let me do the ELI5. They (HashiCorp) created a tool called teraform which is used for defining what servers/other infrastructure you use in places like AWS. Up until recently this was open source under the Mozilla license to something that’s not quite open, but not fully closed source (yet).

We’ve got it rigged up for aws sso. Each department can make any number of permissions sets (and link to any number of groups). The config for that is all stored in git (with code owners configured so you can only mess up your own stuff).

Fyi. If your IT department is remotely on top of things - they know. They just might have larger fish to fry.

We can see all kinds of things about any devices that log on to check email, connect to the VPN, etc.