Imagine What you Could Do… ..If You Could Do What You Imagine

Great post over at Palaestra Training on 25 Reasons it’s Good to be an IT Guy (or girl for that matter).

There aren’t too many women in IT (relatively speaking) but that’s slowly changing.

Salaries, environment and technology in general is making the IT industry more appealing to women.

Check out Palaestra’s post and see if you have anything to add to the list (if you’re in IT).

Daughtry, one of my recent favorites (watching him come up through American Idol) and turn into a smash hit, recently covered another one of my older favorite bands, U2.

Daughtry’s cover of “Sunday Bloody Sunday” is excellent, and worth a watch. Check it out here.

If you are a senior-level person in the IT industry and not making 6 figures (and who doesn’t want to do that), you need to re-evaluate your strategy. 

If you’re brand new, then of course you have to put in the time, make the right moves and position yourself in the right sector.

However, if you are in fact a senior lever person and your are not making 6 figures a year, then take a look at the Top 10 Highest Paying Senior-Level IT Jobs to see what areas you should be focusing on. 

There are a lot of areas that can provide that level of income, and it of course will vary from location to location.  However, the jobs are out there, and it is up to you to go after it.

Some of the high paying senior-level IT jobs are:

• Database Architect
• Applications Architect
• Web Creative Director
• Content Engineer

For the full list, along with descriptions of the jobs, salary ranges and more, check out this post at Palaestra Training’s Blog.

Education certainly plays a part, as does industry.  But in the IT arena, earning a 6 figure salary is definitely a possibility once you’ve been around for awhile. 

I know personally that moving from company to company can sometimes be challenging if not down right difficult, but you can’t look at any particular move as the “end-all-be-all” and think “What if I go there and I don’t like it”? 

It’s not the end of the world, and it’s not forever.  Look at each move you make as a stepping stone, and if love it stay there as long as it excites you.  If you hate it, gain as much experience as you can, leverage any training or opportunities the company has to learn new technologies or business processes, and then look for better opportunities.

By looking at it as “there is a light at the end of the tunnel”, the idea of switching to a new company and possibly not liking it becomes instantly more tolerable.  You realize you are there for a finite period of time, and that you will be using it as learning experience to acquire new skills, boost your marketability and improve your resume.

Change is good, although we often fear it.  Stability is good although we often get bored.  These two basic human needs are always in direct conflict with each other, oddly enough, and form the basis for what drives us (and drives us crazy).  Always be willing to challenge yourself though, and push to reach your full potential. 

There ARE people out there doing exactly what they want to be doing, where they want, how they want, and with who they want.  That’s not fiction, it is reality for some.  The difference between those people and you is that that they went for it, and weren’t afraid of change. Go for it, and see where the future takes you.

Billy Joel tribute band “Big Shot” hails from Long Island New York and plays a lot of local venues throughout the Long Island, NYC and PA areas.

I happened to come across their website a few months ago, and I was really impressed by the quality of their music.  Exceptionally tight, and they sound just like Billy Joel.

On their site they make mention that someone called Billy Joel on the phone and played their music to him over the phone…  and he thought he was listening to himself.  After you see their video of their performances, you’ll understand why.

If you’re into Billy Joel music but haven’t had a chance to see him live, these guys are about as close as you’re going to get to the real thing.

Check out their video from their website, showcasing some of their performances to see what I mean. 

If you live close to the Long Island area, definitely worth checking out.

If you installed Windows XP SP3, thinking you’ll be ahead of the curve and check out the new features, enhanced security, etc., I’m right there with you. 

I like to be up on things as much as possible, and Release Candidates certainly don’t scare me away.  I routinely run them on production boxes, and have never had an issue (and if I did, I’d simply reinstall – no big deal).

That’s worked for me for quite awhile, until just last week when apparently the RDP client in XP SP3 RC1 is set to time-bomb.  The bad part is, you can’t just download and reinstall the older client because it gives you and error stating the version you’re trying to install is older than the version on your system.

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Selling digital products on ClickBank is a great way to earn extra income, and link up with affiliates from all over the Internet.  When you first set up your account and create your sales page and thank you page, there really isn’t any security built in to keep people from trying to figure out your thank you page’s address, and going there directly, bypassing the ordering system.

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I came across a video of Stephen Wiltshire, a London artist who is an absolutely amazing artist.  He’s able to look at something once, and draw it in amazing detail days later.

In this video, he’s taken up in a helicopter over the City of Rome and given a 45-minute aerial tour of the city.  He spends the next three days drawing the entire city-scape, down the cars on the streets and the correct number of windows in the buildings – in amazing detail and exacting scale.

Truly an amazing talent and a gift the world.  The fact he is autistic makes in even more amazing.   Check out the video and see his website at http://www.stephenwiltshire.co.uk/

I recently was playing around with Windows XP SP3 (build 3264) and I slipstreamed the service pack into my Windows XP install media to make installing a new build easier (SP3 would already be installed).

Normally, it’s a pretty straightforward process, however with SP3 (at least the RC build I was using) didn’t take HD audio into account.  When you’re installing onto a PC (Lenovo R60 laptop in my case) you typically need to install an HD Audio hotfix (KB888111) prior to installing the HD audio drivers.

The issue in this case it that SP3 supercedes the hotfix, so when you try to install KB888111 you’re presented with an error saying SP3 is newer and you don’t need the hotfix.  Unfortuantely, you can’t install the drivers without the hotfix, and you can’t install the hotfix because SP3 thinks it’s newer and doesn’t need it.  This is supposed to be fixed in the final release of SP3.

You can work around this however, by downloading the hotfix KB888111, then using WinZIP or WinRAR to extract the files within the hotfix.  Once you install the files, you’ll see a folder called “common files”.  From within the folder, you’ll find the driver files for the HD audio and HD modem driver. 

Open device manager, right click on the “PCI Device” under the “unknown devices” section, choose properties, update driver and point it to the “common files” folder you just extracted. 

The drivers will install, and you can then go back and install the HD Audio driver file (if necessary).

Again, this is not necessary if you install XP with SP2 first, and then install SP3 afterward.  Additionally, the final release of SP3 should have that fixed, but we’ll have to wait and see on that.

Having three children, my wife and I named our children months ahead of time to (with names picked out if they were a boy or girl) and I never really gave much thought to how difficult a task that could be. 

We have a few sets of friends who are a few years behind us in the “baby realm” are and having their first kids.  The amount of effort they’re putting in to finding baby middle names is pretty mind boggling.  It’s apparently even more difficult if they when searching for baby boy names.  The don’t want to go the more traditional route and name their children either after themselves (junior) or after the grandparents.  They also don’t want to choose a middle name that belongs to their favorite stars (sports, movies, etc).  They also don’t want to use common inanimate names like apple, star, silver, etc.  

So in their quest for rare baby names, I can almost guarantee that as soon as they find the special one, they will instantly start seeing that name everywhere; much like when you buy a new car and then all of a sudden you see that car everywhere.  It’s the nature of the beast.

So as the magic date approaches, they’re still without a middle name for their baby.  If it’s a girl, they are close to settling, but choosing a baby boy name might just send them over the edge.

Any good sources for baby middle names would be appreciated, I’ll pass it on to them. If you happen across some that are truly unique, please feel free to comment.