Are you sure there is no ticket? Some systems let you make tickets that the end user is not notified for. Also, depending on the size/ levels of automation your call may have populated all your info on the agents end.

Depending on the help desk they probably knew it was you. Did you call from a phone HR knows about? If it was a walk up, did they make the ticket before or after resetting your MFA?

I use it a fair bit. Mind, it’s something like formating a giant json stdout into something I want to read…

I also do find it’s useful for sketching out an outline In pseudo code.

Aka sso.tax

Id say if it’s in your budget - get one. We have no other apple products in the house but that. The biggest annoyance was making an apple account (for some stupid reason they require it…)

+1. We are a household of sysadmins/engineers. Sure I or my wife could design a PC for media in an afternoon - but I don’t want to deal with it.

An apple TV was a no fuss, no headache media box that can interface with the servers that store my media.

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

Let’s be clear - current AI models are being used by poor leadership to remove bad developers (good ones don’t tend to stick around). This however does place some pressure on the greater tech job market (but I’d argue no different then any other downturn we have all lived through).

That said, until the issues with being confidently incorrect are resolved (and I bet people a lot smarter then me are tackling the problem) it’s nothing better then a suped up IDE. Now if you have a public resources you can point me to that can look at a meta repo full of dozens of tools and help me convert the python scripts that are wrappers of wrappers( and so on) into something sane I’m all ears.

I highly doubt we will ever get to the point where you don’t need to understand how an algorithm works - and for that you need to understand core concepts like recursion and loops. As humans brains are designed for pattern recognition - that means writing a program to solve a sodoku puzzle.

There is more to a program then writing logic. Good engineers are people who understand how to interpret problems and translate the inherent lack of logic in natural language into something that machines are able to understand (or vice versa).

The models out there right now can truly accelerate the speed of that translation - but translation will still be needed.

An anecdote for an anecdote. Part of my job is maintaining a set of EKS clusters where downtime is… undesirable (five nines…). I actively use chatgpt and copilot when adjusting the code that describes the clusters - however these tools are not able to understand and explain impacts of things like upgrading the control plane. For that you need a human who can interpret the needs/hopes/desires/etc of the stakeholders.

That’s more or less it.

For example, I’ve got somewhere around 700 users. If we don’t have SSO (SAML preferred, oauth as a fall back, and good whiskey is required for ldap/ad) whatever your attempting to buy won’t pass review. Now Timmy the sales drone knows that, and so does their leadership - hence the SSO tax.

I almost never interact with desktop Linux. That’s a horrifying trend.

With how they keep shoving snaps at everyone? At my work a migration to Debian is starting to be openly pondered.

It’s not uncommon for the password manager to not be on the same system as where the password is being entered - hence a human needs to type. For example: consumer electronics with their own dinky little screens. Smart TVs/game systems and servers where remote access is not possible (or copy/paste does not work by design).

Depends on how niche. Some stuff unfortunately only comes from truly large user bases. At a guess, the further you go from a tech/liberal core and overlapping hobbies, the longer it will take for the content to emerge.

The people who are here are more willing to post. So less of us overall but also less lurkers.

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.

Just use npm to install all the dependencies. What’s the worst that can happen.

You being up an interesting point. Let’s expand electricity a little bit.

If I flip a switch the lights come on. I don’t need to understand it but someone does. And because electricity can be deadly of handled wrong, everyone in your proximity handles electricity the exact same way (and this is enforced via law). This means only a few people anywhere need to have the deep knowledge of how it works for the rest of us to get light.

Compare this to computing - sure you click the button and get Facebook but that button could be designed any number of ways. Like electricity the generation who tinkered is past (well passing), but unlike electricity firm standards on how to design your Facebook button have not been written in blood.

I for one am terrified of what the next 10 years of the business IT landscape is going to look like as we need to start absorbing kids who grew up on iPads.