Eric Burns Online — Page 8 of 13 — My Virtual Take on Tech

Does the “Spiraling Plane” Analogy Apply to Your Firm?

July 27, 2020 Attitude Startups No Comments

Sometimes referred to as a death spiral, it is similar to an analogy I remember John Chambers using after the difficult decision to the difficult decision to lay off 8,500 in 2001. I was fortunate to have survived that round, even with my team going from 24 employees down to…

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…

Is LinkedIn Diluting Education?

May 20, 2020 Getting Hired No Comments

When creating a profile on LinkedIn there are three places where you can enter your education. “Adding” a “certificate” to your profile is too easy. This dilutes education and how it is categorized. The way LinkedIn has integrated Lynda.com is the cause. And if they have integrated these “certificates” into…

Do you have enough UMI to protect Blue Shield?

April 29, 2020 Attitude No Comments

Under-insured Motorist Insurance, or UMI, is important to have. And it also is inexpensive, since the odds are low you’ll ever use it. Basic economics there. Are you aware that if you are in an accident, your health insurance might step in and demand half of any settlement? That it…

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…

Authentication? Authorization? What’s the diff?

February 12, 2020 High Level Tech Intro No Comments

Early on in security courses one of the key lessons is around authentication, authorization and access control. The first two are fairly straight forward. They then roll into the last of the concepts – access control which I’ll cover last. Authentication Authentication is verifying that you are who you claim…

Regex and Performance

January 15, 2020 High Level Tech Intro No Comments

Compute power costs money. This is one reason why it is important that developers write their regular expressions (regex) with efficiency in mind. It also needs to be written correct so that it functions explicitly as intended. I was using a SaaS tool to simulate the performance impacts of certain…

Being Prepared for Changes in Your Career

December 23, 2019 Attitude Getting Hired Hiring Process No Comments

Right now is a great time to be employed in the IT space. But it doesn’t mean that your current employment has any guarantees, especially if you work for a small start-up, or if your employer has been taken private. There are a few steps that are worthwhile no matter…