Gear Archives — Eric Burns Online

j5 USB-C Triple Display Docking Station

September 30, 2020 Gear High Level Tech Intro No Comments

Desktop real estate is key to productivity, especially when working on complex topics. The more you can see without having to scroll means less mental energy goes into adjusting to pages scrolling or tabs switching. I’ve recently written about how I’ve achieved this with Linux. For work I’m on a…

“Working From Home”? No Thank You.

July 31, 2020 Attitude Gear No Comments

My time as a remote worker began in late 2010. It’s only been with the “shelter in place” and “office closings” that I’ve gotten to understand how fortunate I am. The key item is that I don’t “work from home” – I have been a “remote worker” for years. My…

6 Tips for Virtual Backgrounds in Virtual Meetings

June 29, 2020 Gear No Comments

If you can avoid using a virtual background, I’d say to do so. If you have to use one, invest in a proper green screen background and set things up right. Here are 6 tips to make the best use of a virtual background in your virtual meetings. 1. Get…

Are You Missing O’Reilly Too?

June 15, 2020 Gear Sales Engineers No Comments

Today would have been the start of O’Reilly’s Infrastructure & Ops Conference 2020 in Santa Clara, California. For those of you not familiar with the Infrastructure & Ops Conference, it was the rebranding of their Velocity Conferences. I’ve worked booths at 5 Velocity Conferences during my time at Compuware and…

6 Tips for Big Screen Real Estate on a Budget

May 30, 2020 Gear No Comments

It has been decades since I started using Xinerama to get multiple screens on my workstation. This was a big part of my effectiveness as an architect and full stack development at Garage City. One screen for my IDE (Integrated Development Environment), one for the log outputs and a third…

Top Gear for the Sales Engineer on the Road

March 31, 2020 Gear Sales Engineers No Comments

This was originally posted to my blog on July 14 of 2015. I thought I’d repost and update for 2020. At the time I was in my 5th year as a Sales Engineer. Hard to imagine I’m now nearing the double digits for experience there. That being said, I’d like…