You’ve given me hope. Thank you.

I have self respect enough to take a loss rather than be taken advantage.

I was already deeply discounting. I also give hardware away to friends and family (my old Synology NAS just got a new home with a friend). But for strangers to underbid so hard is fucking insulting. I am generous. I am not someone of which to take advantage.

Partying in my youth was the best part of being young. Drugs and alcohol were a great social lubricant and I had a lot of wonderful experiences. I’m sad for young people today.

I’m writing from the USA, but I work in IT and some things are pretty universal. Skills for IT is one. Things you should try to learn if you want such a job:

Cloud software such as Google Workspace and Microsoft Office 365. Tons of companies run on these.

Basic network troubleshooting. You should know what DNS is. You should be able to setup a networked printer and point machines to it. You should know how to point a machine at a shared network drive. You should be able to explain concepts like DHCP.

Windows troubleshooting (most orgs are Windows-based). How to troubleshoot software by repairing or reinstalling. How to get to system files that might help fix an app by deleting them to reset the app to it’s default state.

The above will maybe help you get a foot in the door. Other things that definitely wouldn’t hurt: VOIP systems, Windows Server, Active Directory, Group Policy, Microsoft Exchange, PowerShell, virtualization (VMware, Hyper-V). After that you can go down all kinds of specialization rabbit holes. I worked at a place that mostly supported architects. We had to learn how to troubleshoot CAD software and 3D rendering apps. That won’t be useful most other places, however. But a lot of this can be taught at the job if you get hired as a level one tech, so don’t let that daunting list of scary sounding items frighten you away.

I don’t know if Managed Service Providers exist in the Netherlands. These are firms that do IT for small and medium businesses who can’t justify having in-house IT. Getting a job at one of these will speedrun you across a lot of tech as different clients use different tools. It’s a great way to get exposed to both of the dominant cloud services mentioned above. After that, try to work at a larger org with dedicated IT. It’s much simpler when you only have to support a limited number of solutions.

You can look into building a homelab. That’s where you test out and learn the skills above by building your own infrastructure. There are homelab communities and YouTube channels and the like. It’s a fun and addictive hobby if you enjoy these sorts of things and the feeling of accomplishment from implementing a technology that you learned on your own devices.

Happy to answer additional questions as needed.

Good luck!

That was not nice.

The AI didn’t do the math for you. It just made up a plausible sounding series of statistically likely words. Dumbass. But I don’t expect the kind of person who would say this to be smart.

eval "$evil"

We’re all the way evil.

Techdirt has been killing it since they decided to start covering politics.

Name one of your favorite lunches for stone masoning. Why is that one in the list of faves?

Stuff like this is always interesting to me.

Thanks for reminding me to get my afternoon caffeine.

You did this to yourselves, morons.

Let’s cut services and then blow a bunch of money on unnecessary shit!

-Repubs

If true, this is incredible.

I used to offload used electronics on CraigsList. I would deeply discount to prevent people from wanting a refund. Then every offer was like this screenshot. I gave up and now I environmentally recycle perfectly good gear that someone could have enjoyed.

"I’m immensely grateful to him for entrusting me with the responsibility of protecting free speech, turning the company around, and transforming X into the Everything App.”

But it isn’t the everything app. Oh, wait? Is it? Am I using it for everything?! No. I don’t use it for anything and neither should you.

The Passover Plot, How Jesus Became God, Jesus the Jew. It’s been surprisingly fun.