Cool, thanks for the details.

First, the good news:
You might already realize it, but this is a tremendous field to be in. The opportunity is absolutely massive. To put it simply, I’ll say that the world (companies, institutions, and soon, individuals) are currently generating more data than we can analyze. And year-over-year we’re generating data at a faster rate.

People who are excellent at analyzing data will have lots of high-salary, high-benefit opportunities (as it is, if you have the right skill set, it’s common to get contacted by Apple, Google, Facebook, Amazon; these companies all need skilled analytics workers).

Now, the challenge:
Learning analytics is hard.

Game plan:

Short Term:

In the short term you should focus on data visualization and “visual communication.” This means, communicating with charts, graphs, and images in place of excessive words. I won’t go into the details, but the human mind is wired for visual inputs. We don’t process spreadsheets, tables, and prose that well. However, our brains are sort of wired for visual inputs. The phrase “a picture speaks a thousand words” is fairly accurate.

I agree that “storytelling” is necessary, but I sometimes dislike it because I think it confuses what we’re actually doing. Let me unpack that term a little: storytelling actually means 1. finding valuable insights, 2. communicating valuable insights.

In the early stages of your career, the easiest way to find insights and communicate them is with visualization. (note that machine learning is also awesome for finding insightful information; it will be extremely difficult to teach yourself ML though, so hold off on that until you can take a class and have a mentor at work.)

That said, here’s what you should focus on:

1. Master the “Big 3” visualizations, with all their variations
i. Bar Chart
ii. Line Chart
iii. Scatterplot

What’s important is not just being able to do them, but being able to create them fast, accurately, and knowing when to use them. 80%+ of all reporting can be done with these 3 charts and their variants.

2. Learn conceptually how each visualization functions as a tool: when to use them, why, how they are best implemented, etc.
Nathan Yao’s Data Points is pretty good for this
Stephen Few’s books are also informative, but I like his material less than Yao’s.

3. Upgrade your tools
If you want to really develop in this career path, you have to move beyond Excel. Excel is great for quick-and-dirty tasks, but for a true analytics professional, it’s not a primary tool. (It doesn’t scale well at all, it’s functionality is limited, it’s more error prone, difficult to automate.)

Here are my two favorite tools, which I highly recommend. These are the tools that I wish I knew when I started:

Tableau, R

i. Tableau
Pros:
Great for rapidly creating lots of visualizations (simple charts and graphs, as well as some exotic ones).
Great for creating dashboards (you need to have Tableau Server for this). Dashboards can take some work off of your plate if you learn to automate the process and can convince your business partners to accept an online dashboard instead of a weekly/monthly/quarterly powerpoint.

Cons:
Automation can be difficult.
Tableau is bad at data wrangling. I really dislike doing any sort of data cleaning, merging, transformation in Tableau. Tableau just isn’t great at those tasks.

ii. R
Pros: Free and highly functional for data analytics. It’s very functionality is centered around analyzing data.
Cons: The learning curve is a bit steep. It takes time.


4. Master Presentation Design
Because your deliverables are mostly PowerPoint presentations (PPTs), you should really learn slide design. Honestly, if you do this right, you’ll be ahead of most analysts; most presentations are not well designed.

i. Presentation Zen, by Garr Reynolds

ii. Clear and to the Point, by Stephen Kosslyn





In the medium to long term, you’ll need to learn “data wrangling” (gathering, combining, re-shaping data).
I’d highly recommend learning SQL and R’s “plyr” package.


If you’re serious about analytics, you should start reading my blog. I’m writing about how to learn analytics step-by-step, and I’ll eventually cover all of these above topics (data visualization, R, Tableau, data wrangling, presentation design).

Also, if you have specific questions, stop by the blog and contact me on the “Contact” page.

All the best,

sharpsightlabs.com

OK, kiddo, a couple of things here.

I can tell you're upset and feeling guilty, but take a minute to breathe deeply and relax. This is an extremely emotionally charged and heavy situation with great potential to go pear-shaped, yes, but this isn't insurmountable. You're not a terrible person for feeling this way because a) "I've had enough," is a legitimate reason to end a relationship, and b) you're trying very hard, almost too hard, to be respectful of his feelings.

First thing's first: Are you both OK, medically? A year without intimacy is a long time, and you don't really offer up any explanation for why. Are either of you sick or depressed? Have you just grown apart from him because he's not interested? Or, have you lost interest? The answer to this question will inform all your future decisions.

Second, what do you want here? Do you want to try to recover the relationship, or is it way too late? Recovery, of course, would start off with couple's therapy to identify what went wrong and how to better communicate with each other to prevent this happening in the future. If either of you are dealing with depression or other emotional trauma, individual therapy should also be considered. Medical issues should also be addressed as required.

You seem to indicate that you're all done, and it also seems like you've drifted away from him but he's still interested in you, so we'll proceed in that vein.

Have you been open and honest with your partner about how you're feeling? If not, this will be an even more difficult conversation because he'll feel blind-sided. If you are unsure of how to have a hard conversation like this, give Crucial Conversations a read. It can help you more safely navigate the murky waters of emotionally-charged conversations. A bit of individual therapy would not go amiss here, either. It will help you frame your ideas, temper your emotions and practice your words to help you prepare for the break-up. If you need help finding a free/low cost therapist and are in North America, dialing 2-1-1 will help you access community resources.

Practice your conversation, get used to saying what you will have to say. Pack your things and move your precious things to safety if you think there will be a chance for violence, and consider having a witness or two on hand just in case things get out of hand.

During your conversation, try to stay cool and collected. If he gets upset and starts accusing you of taking advantage of him, stay calm, tell him you can see why he would feel that way and assure him that was not your intent.

Remember: once you've responsibly broken it off with him, his emotions are not longer your concern, unless he's lashing out and making you feel unsafe (in which case, withdraw to safety or contact the police for help, whichever seems called for.)

Remember: you're not a bad person. People grow and change and relationships end. That doesn't mean either party was "bad" or "good." It just means the relationship has ended. Look at me: I'm Mormon. We believe marriage should be eternal. Forever. I'm divorced and remarried. Neither my ex or I would characterize the other as "evil." Don't get me wrong, I don't like my ex or want to spend any time near her if I don't have to, but I recognize that she's doing the best she can with what she's got and the two of us are just not compatible.

This will be hard, but I know you can do it, and I know you will do it responsibly. Regardless of what direction you choose, allow me to recommend seeing a good therapist before, during and after. Talking to a trained professional always helps.

I love you and am proud of you!

Love,

Dad

P.S.
If I'm honest, a year without intimacy has probably gotten a little old for him, too. He may be ready for this to end as well.

I really dug into the idea after reading about it in Discover Your Genius. It took a little while to get into the habit, but now I go about it like its second nature.

One of the best ways to improve your memory is by not having to remember stuff to begin with. Even better, it frees up my mind to focus on learning concepts and bringing creativity to the equation.

Although it doesn't help to pick up these techniques: Joshua Foer: Feats of memory anyone can do. It is really quite astounding how well people in the past had their shit together.

----

The indexing system was a natural fit for my workflow. It makes for a great addition to the Ubiquitous Capture aspect of GTD/ZTD, amplifiying it's utility, and doubles as the way to keep track of resources that both systems gloss over. I was already using OneNote with GTD in a similar manner to how The Secret Weapon does it with EverNote, so it just clicked for me.

If you are interested in how all this fits together works, its well worth spending the time to review their series of videos, and segueing into the easier to manage ZTD system.

The system also works well along side the method in "Time Management for System Administrators". There is an excellent collection of videos by the author on YouTube that goes into how it works.

----

To me, the core idea has been coined "The slow hunch". I've made it my goal to setup how I do things to allow it to happen. Here's another related quote about Darwin:

>"People love to tell stories, so it’s no wonder that most describe the advent of an idea as an epiphany, a brainstorm, that “Eureka!” moment, a brilliant flash of insight that seems like a bolt from above. Even the famous scientist Charles Darwin attributes his theory of natural selection to one such moment, and even described the moment in his autobiography.

>Unfortunately, that wasn’t actually the case. Another scientist reviewed Darwin’s massive collection of notebooks that he kept through all of his studies, and found that Darwin had developed the idea of natural selection several months prior to his epiphany moment. He just had not combined all those ideas into his theory until then.

>That shows, according to Steven Johnson in his TED talk, how ideas come more from a network than a spark. He even refers to it more as “The Slow Hunch” than a brainstorm. Your ideas come from a lifetime of experiences, so let them take the time to stew in the back of your mind, and wait for a new configuration of neurons flowing in your brain to make the connection."

>http://www.sharedidiz.com/ideas-eureka-or-incubation/

First off, you've already made a good decision. It's good you don't write like an academic, because when most writers use that term, it usually means a writerly voice that uses big fancy words in order to project intelligence and education. It's a type of writing that may hide the real person behind the words, if done badly.

Of course academics will use big fancy words, because their chosen discipline may require them to do so, but the best academic writers will still write clearly, and with clarity.

My roommate in college was a T.A. (teacher's assistant) and he'd often ask me for second opinions while grading papers. You could tell the people who were trying to sound smart, over the ones who just tried to be honest. Almost always the ones who tried to communicate well, rather than the ones who tried to sound "academic," were the students who received better grades.

So, in your case, strive for honesty and clarity. If you need to use simple words, that's not only okay, but desirable. You want to reveal yourself in your words, as so often big words or using an academic-like voice will get in the way of that.

Having said that, if you need to write as a steam of consciousness. Go for it. Stream away. Then afterward you can edit, revise and reorganize your thoughts.

Because you haven't written in so long, your writing muscle, so to speak, is dormant and weak so the number one priority is to just write. Get words on the paper. That's the only way you'll know what you want to say.

After that, polish it up. Maybe start all over, but now you know where you are going with your writing.

Here are a few books that can help give you good writing advice for nonfiction writing.

• [On Writing Well: The Classic Guide to Writing Nonfiction](
  https://www.amazon.com/Writing-Well-Classic-Guide-Nonfiction/dp/0060891548/) by William Zinsser
  
  
• Writing to Learn: How to Write - and Think - Clearly About Any Subject at All by William Zinnser
  
  This first book by William Zinnser is a classic. He has basic advice on how to improve writing skills, and provides various examples for different types of writing, like memoirs, job interviews, science and technology, etc.
  
  The second book goes even further exploring more disciplines like mathematics, art and music, nature, technology, liberal arts, etc.
  
  I think both would help you not just with your application essay but also with your writing while at graduate school.
  
  Lastly, you may already have this general writing advice book:
  
  
• Elements of Style by William Strunk, Jr.
  
  I hope that helped. Don't be afraid to write, and good luck!
  
  

No therapy is probably going to make this harder. Have you looked into anti anxiety medication with your GP? Even if it's to get the edge off while you try to work things out?

​

Anyways, fellow depression/anxiety/lashes out when stressed sufferer here. There's a couple of things that have helped for me:

- Build alternative communication skills. One of my biggest problems was that I didn't know how to properly voice my issues with my SO or anybody else for that matter. My first method of action was being passive aggressive or snide. When I realized what I was doing, I jumped to the other extreme and bottled it all up. Can't ruin things if you're not saying anything, amiright?! But then that would just explode later and cause more problems. A book that helped me very much is Crucial Conversations. It speaks about the thinking fallacies people tend to have (choosing between being honest and being nice), common communication mistakes and a step by step plan on how you can bring hard topics to the table. I use these basics in normal conversations too, when the "stakes" aren't as high. Having an alternative method for me to switch to, instead of my old ones, really helped.

- Change your internal narrative. Another thing that has been absolutely exhausting to deal with is the constant internal monologue about not being good enough, nice enough, kind enough. I should, I need to, if I was a great person I would... If you constantly beat yourself down, you stay down and words have meaning and a certain weight on their own. If I keep telling myself that I suck and I was an idiot for doing xyz, that feeling will stay. I would strongly advice reading A Guide to Rational Living by Albert Ellis. It's a bit of an old book, but I felt like they guy described perfectly what goes on inside my head. By telling yourself that you did something "less than ideal" instead of "incredibly stupid" you kind of take the edge off the situation. I know it sounds stupid, but I've been trying to get into the habit of this and found that after a while I went from having a meltdown of "OMG HOW COULD I BE SUCH AN IDIOT, I WILL NEVER LEARN?!" to facepalming, sighing at myself and be very firm in doing better next time. The energy I save with that, that I would otherwise have wasted, is very useful for other things.

- Change your external narrative. Words have a meaning and interpretations. Sometimes we're raised with ways of phrasing things and don't even realize what exactly it is we're saying. I found that I had a tendency of trying to subconsciously manipulate those around me through language. Basically shoving my feelings onto someone else, so they would make me feel better. Obviously things like bullying are big, clear markers, but there's a lot more subtle ways that people do it and don't even realize. The Gentle Art of Verbal Self-Defense by Suzette Elgin discusses how one would use language against others without being overly aggressive. It made me realize how people were actually manipulating me, but also how I was manipulating them. Have you ever used something like "Well, if you really loved me you would..." or "Even someone like you would understand...". Big communication nono's, but because they're not as aggressive like "You're a bitch" or "Get fucked", people tend to not notice them. By recognizing these patterns being used on you and you using themselves, you can stop using them but also learn tools on how to deal when someone uses them on you.

- Self reflect, self reflect, self reflect. Through my education I was forced to constantly look at my strong and weak points. I had to write assessments twice a year on what I did right and wrong, with proof. And believe me, if you either had an assessment that was all negative or all positive the teachers would have a talk with you about how well you were reflecting. Then after college I landed in a job where every year I had to do the exact darn thing. What had I learned this year? What did I improve since last year? What are my goals for next year? How do I plan to achieve those goals and why did I have those goals? What are reasonable, doable steps to not only achieve the goals, but to also improve some weaknesses? Again, and again, and again. It's hard to say you suck and can't do anything write and you don't have any good qualities when you're forced to look at yourself and point out what your good qualities are. You start usually with small or general things like "well... I'm always on time to work" or "well... I don't maim animals." While I learned this through circumstances, a friend recommended Acceptance: Time to Self-Reflect for Personal Growth by Dr. Olivia Miller as a good starting point. Where are you at now and where do you want to be next year around this time? How are you planning on getting there? What are small, reasonable steps to get there?

- Get to know yourself. Last tip I can give you is that YOU focus on YOU first. Do you have a clear self image of who you are? What do you want in life? What are your likes and dislikes? What would your ideal self and world be 2, 5, 10 years from now? Would you want to be a successful writer? Would you rather have traveled the globe? Or be a doctor, communication expert at a company, mother of 2 kids, have 2 dogs and a cat? People who don't have a clear outline of who they are, tend to be less secure and more often to lash out to others. Having a relationship with someone, while you don't like or know yourself tends to be a disaster. Because people will tend to try and get an identity or validation through the other person to feel good. Then when that other person does something away from the partner (like go on an outing with friends, talk to another person of the opposite gender or just not pick up the phone) the partner become insecure and might lash out because of it. This combines with the self reflecting, who ARE you? What do YOU want? Things like self confidence and high self esteem are nice and dandy, but they can't exist if you don't have a good idea of who you are. Start with looking at yourself first, before looking at your SO. Start small: what food do you like and dislike? What's your favorite color? Favorite way of eating an egg? Then build up the scale: Do you want a pet? Cat or a dog or something completely different? How many? Go higher again: Do you want kids? If so, why and how many? Would you like to be married? Why or why not? And higher again: What do you look for in a spouse? What would your ideal career look like? Until you've got a clear picture of who you are.

Obviously there's a lot of other stuff you can do, but I'd start with those five and go from there.

> There was a real and tangible concern that you were one of many americans who simply does not like the military. It's hardly uncommon on the internet, and in similar conversations I've had people flat out tell me that the military is a waste of time and shouldn't be used as a defintion of leadership because they are anti-war.

This pretty much tells me I should drop this conversation entirely with you because you are not being intellectually honest. You are choosing to argue from a preemptive strike perspective with zero tangible evidence, while simply adding shock value of "IF YOU DISAGREE WITH ME YOU HATE AMERICA." But as with so many internet discussions... Duty calls....

> > and while I was never personally able to serve in the military due to medical reasons

> Me too. Fuck allergies.

You stated previously you were in ROTC. Did you drop out? Were you in Junior ROTC? By your own statements I am lead to believe you are either a liar or someone otherwise actively misrepresenting themselves in order to cite military leadership doctrine. This is an unacceptable, inappropriate, and overall dishonorable.

> Then I suspect I'm much younger than you and also less well versed because of it.

I would tend to agree with that assessment...

> > I'm getting redundant at this point, but being an "actual leader" is not required to have anything to do with being the one in charge.

> It does in this context because Ruby is the one who was put in charge. She is, in effect, a commissioned officer, because she didn't step up to the task of leadership, she was assigned it. Also, she's not on a sports team, she's in a paramilitary organization/profession of arms. The most immediately annalogous and therefore most appropriate model for that leadership would be an officer.

> > Any Airman can be a leader and can positively influence those around him or her to accomplish the mission.

> But not every Airman is assigned to be leader. Ruby is the designated leader of team Ruby, not the first person to step up to bat in an unorganized setting.

Being an officer or being assigned does not inherently make you a leader, it simply gives you responsibility. How you handle that responsibility is what is relevant. I am arguing leadership theory and what traits make someone a good leader or a bad leader. I am not arguing specifics regarding policy or procedure. I am also not arguing that Ruby is some how the Mary Sue of leadership. What I am arguing is that Ruby exhibits many excellent natural leadership traits.

> > Leaders are not created by the chain of command. Leaders are merely given authority by the chain of command.

> Your right, they're created by training. But Ruby is already trained.

You are wrong. You are hands down, unequivocally, wrong. For someone to be a good leader they do not need any training at all. There are many elements (e.g., charisma, empathy, and attention to detail) that are inherent traits in some individual that make them naturally fall into the role of leader. Can training improve leaders? Absolutely. Should any leader stop learning and go "yep, I have become the greatest leader ever, there is no where to go from here"? Of course not. However leadership, and the potential for leadership can be an innate ability. Further citing the Air University manual: You were chosen to be an officer because you have the
potential qualities of a leader, just as an athlete is “signed” by a big league team and the aviation cadet is selected for flying training because they have certain innate abilities.

Furthermore, Ruby left Signal early and did not finish her training there. If anything she is actively untrained and being forced to learn on the job. Additionally, we have no reason to believe that anyone receives any degree of leadership training at these schools, or what that training consists of. Is "Crucial Conversations" on the Signal reading list? Or is Signal more focused on physical training and combat theory? We know Atlas takes a more militaristic approach with its academies, but what reason do we have to believe Signal does as well?

> > and setting of standards.

> Weiss's entire problem with Ruby were that she was demotivating because her standards were so low. Being late for class on the first day, sleeping in class on the first day, doodling instead of paying attention to the teacher, whispering instead of paying attention to the teacher, the list of ways in which Ruby has low personal standards for herself goes on and on, and Weiss strongly rejected all of them. She was incredibly demotivated by Ruby's "standards" as a leader. Is that good leadership?

Indeed. And when Ozpin pointed out her flaws to her, she immediately recognized that she needed to change and appreciated that she had failed in an aspect of leadership. Again, she is not the Mary Sue of leadership. What makes her stand out as a good leader is the same thing that makes Weiss stand out in her own way; when confronted with a weakness that was detrimental to the team dynamic (poor standard setting and poor followership respectively), they accepted their flaws and worked to try to better themselves for the success of the team.

> This isn't leading from the front, it's being reckless and unaccountable. Ruby has severe accountability issues, she's missing and isolated from her team with them having little to no idea where she is for the majority of the time they do, anything.

This is probably one of the few points I will agree with you on. Ruby's desire to ensure that she is on the front lines often comes into conflict with leading larger groups. However, had Ruby's reaction been to sit down, shut up, and do what the adult said, that would not be a demonstration of exemplary leadership skills either.

> > If we want to take an Air Force approach, Leadership is "the art of influencing and directing people in a way that will win their obedience, confidence, respect, and loyal cooperation, in achieving a common objective."

> And it what way does Ruby exemplify this? On the first day, one of her teammates tried to have her removed from being leader beause of how little confidence she had in her. Blake is constantly being "disloyal". She ran away from the team, twice, and Ruby never did a damn thing to address that. It's Weiss who questions Blake at the end of Volume 1 AND the beginning of volume 2 about her anti-social behaviour, not Ruby. Her teammates aren't inspired by her, they literally call her a kid behind her back in Mt. glen. They don't respect her, because they don't even vote for her to be in the doubles round. Two of them have been decidely unloyal, as a result of her failures as a leader.

She has not won the team's full confidence by Mountain Glenn in Volume 2. Based on their personal history, she's won it from Yang by episode 8 in Volume 1 (the moment where Yang is watching her lead everyone away from the ruins). However, she is quickly winning them over through her regular actions, so by the end of Volume 3 she has won. When Yang is concerned because she can't get in touch with Ruby, Blake reminds her "she's our leader, she can take care of herself" which is more than enough to reassure Yang. When Ruby declares that she is going off to find Pyrrha and Jaune, Weiss immediately joins her; Weiss wants to be by her side. When Ruby declares she has a plan, Weiss says "you always do" and follows unquestioningly. Gone is the demanding Ice Queen who insists she knows better, she's with Ruby 100%.

> You could argue that Pyrrha is a leader on her team because she exemplifies good leadership qualities despite not being the on in charge. You can say that about Weiss and even Ren to a certain extent.

I could and I would. Pyrrha is a leader on her team. Weiss is a leader on her team. Pyrrha and Weiss both help their team leads recognize flaws and grow from them. As stated before, you are not required to be the one in charge to be a good leader. "Learning to follow is the beginning of leadership."

The first thing that I suggest is that you buy a reputable book that will teach you how to write. I'm not saying that you're a bad writer, but I would wager that most people write three times worse than they think they can (I am including myself). On Writing Well is a classic, and you might also want to read this one and this one, although I strongly recommend completing the first one. What's included is:

a) Keep it simple. Don't say it's going to be a turbulent precipitation, say that it's going to rain. A lot.

b) Study each adverb and adjective. Any words that aren't necessary should be cut. Is it really important to say that the violin was wooden? Probably not. What about the sentence "She smiled happily"? The "happily" isn't necessary, that's what "smiled" means.

c) Use specific verbs.

d) Consistency is key. Switching tenses or something similar in the middle of writing is generally a bad move.

e) Proofread. Duh. That goes hand in hand with editing.

So, yeah. You should really look into that stuff area. One read-through will help significantly.

Ok. So now that I finished preaching to you, let's move on. I didn't find any templates in my quick search, so that's of no use right now. What you can do, though, is study very well-written program notes. Are their sentences long or short? When are they longer or shorter, and why? Is the tone active or passive (psst. it's probably active)? What's the tone that they use, and what is your impression at the end? You get the gist. If you write down what you think your thoughts for three of these, you'll have a good idea what you're shooting for. Other than that, it's all up to you, so go nuts.

Anecdotes are also a nice way to make things entertaining. Search for stories, or impacts on the audience. Did you know there are at least six editions of the Rite of Spring? Why was the one your orchestra's performing (let's assume) created? Many people also don't know about the riot after its premier. Stravinsky escaped out the back entrance to avoid the aristocratic mob. Say fun things, win fun prizes, or something like that.

It's also important to know that stories tend to follow the path of one person. The Odyssey could have had its crew be the focus, instead it was Odysseus. Inside Out could have placed all the emotions front and center, but it was Sadness and Joy that saved the girl. Keep that in mind if you're going down a similar path.

Man, I went all out on this. Good luck with your program.

> I just assumed that the reader cares who I am and what I think. It might sound silly, but that really was an eye-opener.

It doesn't sound silly at all!

In fact, this is probably the single most common mistake that people make -- in all forms of interaction with others. We assume that people want to know what we are thinking, what we are doing, what we have done, etc. It is pretty much the basic bias that we all have.

This is also why the simplest hook in non-fiction is to show the reader how they are impacted by what you are discussing.

Of course, I should make it clear that this not the only approach. People read biographies all the time, and so you can get them to care about other people -- provided those other people are interesting. Or, even, perhaps the other person has a problem they find interesting or care about.

For example, another good hook that might draw the reader into a story is:

"I escaped death today."

Even though I don't really care about you yet, I might care that you were about to die. Though it is a bit salacious, it is something that people are interested in (see: rubbernecking at a car accident, where people have no idea who the people involved were, but care deeply about what happened to them).

Anyway, the point is you must make the reader care about what you are going to talk about. Same as in fiction, there are many ways to do this, but it might still be done well.



Regarding the more specific points, arguments, I am happy to discuss these further too!



>objectively most of technology couldn't be directly tied to violent motivation

I was using violence in the less common definition:

"strength of emotion or an unpleasant or destructive natural force."

I was also thinking about not just man v. man, but man v. nature, which I would maintain is the primary motivator for technological advancement.

The idea is that it is the survival instinct that provides for the 'curiosity' drive. However, the vast preponderance of 'curiosity' is linked to survival still.

Take your essay itself. By your own admission (if I am reading the story right), a major motivator for your thoughts was the idea that your survival was threatened, and could end at any given time. You then had to decide how you could live under such conditions, and this motivated the rest of the thought process. Thus, the 'curiosity' that you exhibited was inspired by a direct need to understand how one lives within a possible scenario.

Anyway, that is just my read on things.



>Yes, ultimately the simulation would be governed by the laws of physics but this places no direct limitations on computational complexity other than of course in regards to resource constraints which would impact performance, but not complexity. For example, a Turing machine can compute anything that is computable

A theoretical Turing machine can compute anything, but a real world one cannot.

The Second Law of Thermodynamics ensures that this is the case, but you can also explain it with computation as well.

If there is a finite amount of energy in a system, then their is also a finite amount of information. I am thinking of Shannon entropy at this stage, which appears to be the most direct linkage between energy and information.

Given a finite resource, if one were to compute anything, the computation would need to be reversible, as you could not afford to discard energy/information. Of course, a reversible computation requires three bits per computation (in terms of logic gates), and so this means that for every bit of information you wish to compute, you need three bits of information to compute it. (Here I am working from memory of The Feynman Lectures on Computation, which I read a while ago. I may have some details wrong, but the principle is the same).

The point here is thus, this: if we used all the energy (including mass energy) to store the computation, the simulation that results could only be approximately 1/3 as complex as the universe in which it is run, given the needs to run reversible computation.

Of course, you could get rid of the reversible requirement, but then this places a more fundamental limitation on the system, in terms of # of computations that could even be performed.

And, of course, reversible computation (at speeds less than infinitely slow) are also impossible, and so we run into the heat death problem anyway.

I think that is where I was coming from, when I said the simulation would, out of necessity, be simpler than the universe in which it was stored.



Anyway, I do hope that the all this is helpful. But even if it is not, at least it might be fun!

I would encourage you to keep writing stuff like this. This piece definitely shows that you have promise, you just need to practice the elements of writing non-fiction in a way that leverages the aspects of story telling to make it as engaging as possible.

I will be excited to see what else you write!

**

PS. I thought of some other books that I found useful, when I was first learning to write non-fiction.

[Tell it Slant](http://www.amazon.com/Tell-Slant-Writing-Creative-Nonfiction/dp/0072512784): A book more generally about how to write non-fiction (not just science-based non-fiction). It is more about how to weave a story, and leverage many of the basic tricks of literature/language to your advantage.

[Made to Stick](http://www.amazon.com/Made-Stick-Ideas-Survive-Others/dp/1400064287/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1463315481&sr=1-1&keywords=made+to+stick): A book on marketing, but one that shows us how important it is to keep a message simple and engaging, if we want people to remember the message. And if you are writing non-fiction, remembering the message/information, is often the goal.

[Don't be such a scientist*](http://www.amazon.com/Dont-Be-Such-Scientist-Substance/dp/1597265632/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1463315517&sr=1-1&keywords=don%27t+be+such+a+scientist): If you want to concentrate on science/technology writing, you will eventually run into the problem where you are giving too much technical detail and caveats. This will bog down the writing. This book shows why this is a problem, and why (many times) you will have to accept saying things that are not 100% correct, in service of the story/message you are trying to get across. I know this sounds crazy, but I am a firm believer in this now. If you write something that is 100% correct, but boring, no one will read it. You might not have even written it. If you right something where the core message is correct, but the details are not necessarily supported strongly, but it is engaging, this is more useful. It is hard to do this justice, without going through the entirety of this book, so I would just encourage you to read it.

Instead of buying tons of books, you might want to look at Safari Books. I have the 10-book bookshelf subscription, and it is seriously plenty. Pros, you have instant access to a massive library of tech books. Cons, you are stuck reading on your computer/tablet/phone (I did try reading a few chapters on my Kindle, but the didn't care for the experience).

Books I would suggest:

• UNIX and Linux System Administration Handbook - this is seriously a great book, that will make any admin better.
  
• Time Management for Systems Administrators - has a lot of good tips for time management, but some things are a little dated.
  
• The Practice of System and Network Administration, Second Edition - This is a great read on how to be a better system administrator.
  
  I'm not a huge fan of training videos, but generally watch recordings from conferences. Although, I do really enjoy the format of vimcasts though.
  
  As for general advise, I did see someone recommend looking for an MSP. If you are looking to be a Linux SysAdmin, I wouldn't recommend this route as you are going to be supporting MS installations. Personally, I started doing help desk for a web company and moved up from there. Also, I worked hard to create my opportunities within each position. You'll have to put yourself out there and be patient, It took me 4 years to earn the official title of Systems Administrator (in a small-ish town). The key to this is finding a good Sr. SysAdmins who are willing to mentor you, and some environments/people aren't conducive to this.
  
  EDIT:
  
  BTW, I have a B.A. in Political Science, so don't be ashamed to rock that Philosophy degree. You will see a lot of posting that are looking for a B.S. in Computer Science/Computer Engineering/Rocket Surgery, but seriously don't even worry about that. Most job postings are a list of nice to haves, and most places really only care that you have a degree.
  
  I've been recruited by and interviewed with some very respectable tech companies. I just usually have to explain how I got into tech with a political science degree. In an interview, having the right attitude and knowing your stuff should say more than your major in college. But, you will also run into elitist douche bags who knock your degree/doubt your abilities because you don't have a B.S. in CS/CE. If you work with these people, your work should speak for itself. Don't try and get caught up into a pissing match with them. If it is an interview (as in someone you might work for), practice interviewing never hurts.

I think I disagree, but guess I haven't read a ton of books about writing. In my experience, they can be helpful, especially to people who are just starting out. Maybe not as helpful as reading the types of books that you want to write (and reading the stuff you don't want to write—it's important to read widely), but I don't know if I'd call them a waste of time. King's book is great (but that might be because I got the impression that I'd like him as a person while I was reading that), Strunk and White Elements of Style and Zissner's On Writing Well are helpful for tightening beginners' prose, Writing Fiction: a guide to narrative craft has great exercises at the end of every chapter, and I'm reading Benjamin Percy's essay collection Thrill Me right now, and it's great. I feel like a large part of /r/writing would really connect with the first and titular essay in that collection, actually. He talks about reading a lot of so-called trash genre fiction before being exposed to literary fiction and how he kind of overcorrected and became a super-fierce advocate for that-and-only-that before he realized that you can take the good parts of both to create amazing stories. I've also never read any other respected literary person mention reading R. A. Salvatore, which was cool to see since I forgot I was a big Drizzt fan when I was younger.

Hi there. I was diagnosed with Social Anxiety Disorder back in college (10 years ago), and I could tell it was much more than just shyness or introversion. I've always been a quiet awkward kid growing up, so I think genetics and my sheltered upbringing might've caused it.

Symptoms: when I'm with people I end up being all quiet and awkward, too. I tend to smile a lot and my mind goes blank or perhaps into a panic mode. It felt as if words were stuck behind a locked door and I could not reach for my true personality.

People and dates have said I seem a lot more confident chatting online and expressing myself, but in person I'm like a statue or limp doll. People asked me too many favors because I was afraid of saying no or standing up for myself. My voice was lost in one of those locked doors.

Getting Help: I've tried cognitive behavioral therapy and my doc also prescibed Lexapro but I only used it until 2011 (side effects include insomnia and other stuff..)

Recently, I've gone to see a therapist again (I havent gone in 5 years). She said it's very good that i'm self-aware, brave to open up and be vulnerable, and really motivated to change (secret: I get 3 free sessions before my insurance resets, so I was like, why not?)

I still do struggle with SAD, but my friends say I've improved much over the years.

I think what helped me the most is not the drug or the therapy, but the actual self-awareness and commitment to change. Not to change to please others, but to change so I could express myself better. To say the things I mean to say. To be eloquent and confident so that no one would misunderstand or mistreat me.

So I put myself in social situations. In college I joined a lot of clubs, met all kinds of people (albeit I would be the quiet one, but I made friends with other shy people!). Since my 20s, I've gone on many dates. A lot. Endured tons of rejections, but these experiences just taught me what to do and what not to do..

I listened to some good audiobooks..
It's the Way You Say It: Becoming Articulate, Well-spoken, and Clear
http://www.amazon.com/Its-Way-You-Say-Well-spoken/dp/1609947436

The Charisma Myth: How Anyone Can Master the Art and Science of Personal Magnetism
http://www.amazon.com/Charisma-Myth-Science-Personal-Magnetism/dp/1591845947/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1450833579&sr=1-1&keywords=the+charisma+myth

Nowadays I'm much more confident in my own skin. I found strategies on how to talk to strangers, coworkers, and often with friends, I'm the center of attention. But if you met me in high school or in my early college years, you'd probably think i'm the weird snobby wallflower.

Sometimes I still am. But hey, we're all works in progress, right? I just take things day by day, trying to improve myself with all the help available out there.

I guess in most things in life, it all starts with accepting yourself. Then determine what the problem is, see if there are solutions to fix it, and seek help from the experts. (side story: I almost broke a new watch, struggling the unlatch the deployment mechanism. Took me 45 mins and almost threw it out. Then I checked YouTube and the answer was in the very first video)

I have recently gone through a ton of interviews for various ID positions and I will share my experience with you.

Some companies are going to be focused on your process for developing courses and curriculum from beginning to end. Being familiar with adult learning theories, ADDIE, Kirkpatrick Model, ect. will help you get into an entry level role if you can competently demonstrate your grasp of those subjects. You will also be asked to speak to your experience working with SMEs, project planning, how you see yourself functioning within a team, and how you pursue individual projects.

Other places are going to be more concerned with the technology itself. How many authoring tools can you use? Do you know HTML/CSS/Javascript? Are you good with Photoshop? Illustrator? After Effects? What experience do you having working with Learning Management Systems? What is your approach to data and analytics? Do you have experience using SCORM or XAPI? Can you show examples of work you've created across multiple modalities? You may even be asked to complete a short design assignment where you are given some branding material and asked to storyboard or outright create an entire course.

My opinion is that since you already have a degree in Psychology and professional experience as an event manager, you could easily parlay that knowledge and skill set into the theory and conceptual aspects of ID. There are plenty of great books you can read to supplement your degree like this and this. If you feel like you are lacking in the technology department then definitely go get experience using all the tools you can get your hands on. Employers wants to see real examples of real work, so the faster you can start building things the better. Not just courses but all the other things associated with ID like storyboards, job aids, and lesson plans.

Again just my opinion, but I believe ID is a field open to many types of professionals. It's just a matter of filling in the gaps where you may need it. I have a degree in English/Professional Writing and started off my career doing tech support. There have been positions where I've had the title of "Instructional Designer" and barely had a single course up in the LMS that was mine because I was focused on script writing, video production, and managing assessments. Just to give you a personal example of the different paths you can take.

If you have any more questions I'd be more than happy to help out in any way I can. Good luck!!!

Oi. Disclaimer: I haven't bought a book in the field in a while, so there might be some new greats that I'm not familiar with. Also, I'm old and have no memory, so I may very well have forgotten some greats. But here is what I can recommend.

I got my start with Koblitz's Course in Number Theory and Cryptography and Schneier's Applied Cryptography. Schneier's is a bit basic, outdated, and erroneous in spots, and the guy is annoying as fuck, but it's still a pretty darned good intro to the field.

If you're strong at math (and computation and complexity theory) then Oded Goldreich's Foundations of Cryptography Volume 1 and Volume 2 are outstanding. If you're not so strong in those areas, you may want to come up to speed with the help of Sipser and Moret first.

Also, if you need to shore up your number theory and algebra, Victor Shoup is the man.

At this point, you ought to have a pretty good base for building on by reading research papers.

One other note, two books that I've not looked at but are written by people I really respect Introduction to Modern Cryptography by Katz and Lindell and Computational Complexity: A Modern Approach by Arora and Barak.

Hope that helps.

Congrats on the good technical review!
Generally soft skills are 'inter personal communication' and 'customer service'.

Answering your direct question though. . .

I think it boils down to time and prioritization. You have to take the appropriate amount of time to do things correctly, and you have to retrain yourself that you want to do things correctly (remember things), and you want to dedicate the appropriate time to meet those goals. I think empathy helps, but its not required.

Develop a discipline to cataloging things in things in whatever system you use at a corporate level. Ask for refresher training from a manager or team-lead.

For a low cost personal solution, just use a pen and paper and write down what you need to complete today. when new things come in, add to the bottom of the list. Mark through them as you complete them. I sometimes use two columns, one for work, and one for home stuff that I need to complete during the day - bills, things like that. When you keep at something like that for a little while, it helps you figure out what's important to track, what details are important to capture, and what is fluff.

For work with teams, I think digital systems are best - ticketing systems specifically, so everyone can see what others are doing, and with appropriate priorities. Details and action logs go there in case you are out, or someone needs to check status but you are busy. Hopefully you have one.

Don't let app vendors and websites trick you into thinking they have a better mousetrap and all you need to do is spend money. If you don't have the discipline, you won't use them. Some apps do make this process more friction-less, but you may spend more time playing with features than with defining your discipline and using the systems for their intended purposes.

This book may help, and may give you some different perspectives.

TL;DR: There are all kinds of tools that claim to 'do it for you' - ticketing systems, to do lists, iphone apps, but without discipline and re-prioritizing, you probably won't use them.

I did some research a few years ago and put together a 32 page word doc with interesting facts I found. Such as...

"

Why data visualization over text reports?

The human brain receives 8.75 megabits of data from the eye every second.

An average person comprehends 120 words per minute reading.

That is equivalent to 81.6 bits of data per second.

As you can see, human eyes are able to absorb and grasp information more easily through visuals and images than texts and numerical figures.

"

​

Also put a long list of different chart types with the usage and pros/cons of each. Then the last part was basically a thought process on how to design a dashboard that is helpful but not too busy or hard to use for the common customer. Stuff like not using too many types of fonts, make sure fonts are readable, limit using a large palette of colors, avoid distracting colors, verify your tooltips are helpful or remove them and other things like that. It also has a really good checklist I found somewhere with things like this...




What questions are you trying to answer?

· Does this visualization answer all of your questions?

· Is the purpose of the visualization clearly explained in its title or surrounding text?

· Can you understand the visualization in 30 seconds or less, without additional information?

· Does your visualization include a title? Is that title simple, informative, and eye-catching?

· Does your visualization include subtitles to guide your viewers?

​

​

I plagiarized a lot with this. But it started as a document for myself as I started down my data visualization career. Now it's used pretty extensively around my department. I really enjoyed this book and the insights that were shared in it.
https://www.amazon.com/Big-Book-Dashboards-Visualizing-Real-World/dp/1119282713

​

Ahhhh. I see. That's helpful.

When it comes to leadership (and training leaders) Toyota sets the bar. But they've also built a complete system and culture around it. This is something I try to do at every place I've been, people are our most important resource. As Scrum Masters we should be doing everything possible to instill this into the industry. we should take the time to invest in our people to ensure we have strong leaders at all levels of the organization. A culture that actively encourages and reinforces skill growth is more likely to attract and retain top talent.

To get you started, I'd recommend reading Crucial Conversations. Leadership requires you to have a good understanding of both people and process. understanding people is slightly more important, as process understanding can be delegated to/shared with the team. It's generally much easier to learn process than people skills. Still, as a Scrum Master you should consider yourself part process engineer.

Anyway, the focus of the book is to help you understand and dig into the 'why' when it comes to conflict. It also gives you some techniques to try.

To help you accelerate your learning, you should consider the differences between managing a team, leading a team, and coaching a team. After that you should begin to understand the different ways people learn. This will not only help your own learning, but allow you to more easily teach/coach a team.

A few techniques that might help you out:

provide answers in the form of a question instead of a statement. Don't provide solutions, instead consider how to 'incept' the idea into the team. By figuring it out themselves it reinforces their learning and progress. When they are struggling, you should explain the concept but allow them to put it into practice. Everything should be driven by the team, you're just a catalyst that makes it easier.

Scrum helps you out a lot in this regard, as many of the by-the-book processes break things in specific ways(It's probably more correct to say there are common problems in the industry that we see at most organizations, they generally break the same way). As you become more experienced you can make recommendations that will highlight specific problem areas in the next sprint. This will prime the next retrospective towards a specific topic/area. This becomes easier as you get a better understanding of process and workflow.

One of the items in your job description is to remove impediments. Keep in mind that this includes morale. a team (member) with low morale will be less engaged, and that means lower productivity.

https://www.amazon.com/Crucial-Conversations-Talking-Stakes-Second/dp/1469266822

And I have these in my list on amazon. Would love to get some opinions on them:

 

How to Win Friends and Influence People

by Dale Carnegie

 

Secrets of a Freelance Writer: How to Make $100,000 a Year or More

by Robert Bly

 

Words that Sell

by Richard Bayan

 

Tested Advertising Methods

by Caples and Hahn

 

Writing That Works

by Kenneth Roman and Joel Raphaelson

 

Confessions of an Advertising Man

by David Ogilvy

 

The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing

by Al Ries and Jack Trout

 

The Robert Collier Letter Book

by Robert Collier

 

Nicely Said: Writing for the Web with Style and Purpose

by Nicole Fenton and Kate Kiefer Lee

 

Letting Go of the Words

by Janice (Ginny) Redish

 

Essential English for Journalists, Editors and Writers

by Harold Evans

 

Can I Change Your Mind?: The Craft and Art of Persuasive Writing

by Lindsay Camp

 

Writing Tools: 50 Essential Strategies for Every Writer

by Roy Peter Clark

 

Read Me: 10 Lessons for Writing Great Copy

by Roger Horberry and Gyles Lingwood

 

Hey, Whipple, Squeeze This: The Classic Guide to Creating Great Ads

by Luke Sullivan

 

WRITE IN STEPS: The super simple book writing method

by Ian Stables

 

On Writing Well

by William Zinsser

 

The Wealthy Freelancer

by Steve Slaunwhite, Pete Savage and Ed Gandia

 

Write Everything Right!

by Denny Hatch

 

The Secret of Selling Anything

by Harry Browne

 

The Marketing Gurus: Lessons from the Best Marketing Books of All Time

by Chris Murray

 

On Writing

by Stephen King

 

Writing for the Web

by Lynda Felder

 

Everybody Writes: Your Go-To Guide to Creating Ridiculously Good Content

by Ann Handley

 

This book will teach you how to write better

by Neville Medhora

I don't know how much advice I can offer in this regard, but I think you should practice writing just as you would practice programming. Find a mentor that will give you honest feedback on your writing, and run everything past them for brutal honesty. I have a circle of people I work with who's writing I admire, so I always send written stuff to them.

A blog is a good way of forcing yourself to practice writing on a regular basis. Don't be ashamed to force it upon people and ask them for feedback, most will be flattered you have high regard for their opinion.

If you're wondering if you've written something worth a damn, here is an approach I like to use, that has helped:

1. Before you write anything, ask yourself "if people walk away with only 1 idea after reading this, what do I want it to be"
   
   
2. write something with this intent in mind, when you're ready...
   
   
3. get someone with little to no context (like an intern or new hire) to read your documents, and then ask them what they took away from it... was the idea you wanted to convey the first thing they said? Second? Did it ever come up in their description of the document? If not, use this as a feedback loop... what did they pick up on? How could I have made my idea more clear? etc....
   
   I found "on writing well" to be a great book on the subject: http://www.amazon.com/Writing-Well-30th-Anniversary-Nonfiction/dp/0060891548/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1321336616&sr=8-1
   
   Hope some of that helps...

From my experience, it can actually make Instructional Design harder when you highly knowledgeable with the content. A big, vague suggestion: return to the objectives and try to cut any content that doesn't directly pertain to training those objectives.

It may also be useful to think about scenarios or examples, and using them more frequently. This can often make the content more easy to follow, and provide learners with more of a frame of reference. Even with the same amount of learning content, the right structure for the learning can make it an easier learning experience.

As an example, I'm working on healthcare training courses right now that started off as 20-page documents about processes, rules, etcetera. I've whittled that content down into narratives that can be covered in 5- to 8-minute lessons focused on an example employee's experiences. About every minute, learners answer one or two questions that directly tie back to the learning objectives. (Wish I could share the actual content, but I can't.)

If you are still new to the field, I would recommend reading Design for How People Learn, which covers some helpful strategies to get started, and is also an entertaining and quick read. This also makes it a good example of a great educational resource, and may give you some new ideas based on the approach used in the book!

I hope these ideas help a bit as you figure out how to get started!

Okay, so I'm not home so these are the few off the top of my head that I can remember I've read and loved.

• On Writing Well - this book was used for my Script Writing class in college - I loved it, and I still have it on my bookshelf.
  
  
• How to Write Science Fiction and Fantasy - This book by Orson Scott Card is genre themed, but I really suggest it no matter what genre you write. It's just a great source to have all around.
  
  
• No Plot? No Problem - Somewhat humorous take on those of us who procrastinate and have lots of writers block.
  
  
• Wonderbook: The Illustrated Guide to Creating Imaginative Fiction - Okay, so I haven't read this yet, but it looks amazing and I might actually just pick it up myself.
  
  
• Book In A Month - Okay, so this isn't really in the same category, but it's incredibly hands-on, fun book that can really, really, really help with outlining. I always suggest this book to people who participate in NaNoWriMo, because it's just super helpful.
  
  I hope one of these can help out!

This book has been suggested a few times so I finally got around to reading it. I think it has some good information in it. I'm only about halfway through it, but I like it so far.

Time Management for System Administrators

Other books would be any of the social books like "How to influence people", "7 healthy habits..." Etc.

I haven't read this one yet, but It has been suggested to me if you plan to go more into management/leadership Start with Why

Other books that have I have ear marked due to being mentioned:

• The Devops Handbook
  
• The Practice of System and Network Administration
  
• The Practice of Cloud System Administration
  
• Cognitive Behavioral Therapy - This one might have been a joke, but as someone who has dealt with depression and burnout on the job. I think this could be beneficial.
  
• How to win friends and influence people
  
• How to win friends and influence people in the Digital Age
  
  Also, do a search for "Books for IT Professionals" to find a lot of other suggestions.

The best thing is to maintain a positive attitude. It's a bump in the road, not a crash.

• Talk to your adviser to find out what's going to happen. If you get kicked out, find out what steps you have to take to get back in. Attending another school (adviser might be able to suggest one) might provide you the opportunity to stay enrolled. This will allow you to keep your health care & give you a way back to VT next semester.
  
• Be open & honest with your parents about it.
  
• This book might help you with your procrastination issue.
  
• Stay positive. It's not the end of the world.
  
  Good luck!

I few years ago my youngest brother got his first IT job, and he fell right into an admin role. He too is very sharp. I bought him the following books as a gift to get him started...

The Practice of System and Network Administration, SecondEdition - a few years old but has lots of fundamentals in there, still well worth reading. Hoping for a third edition someday.

Tom Limoncelli's Time Management for System Administrators

I see others have recommended this great book, and I wholehartedly agree: UNIX and Linux System Adminstration, 4th Edition. I was sad when Evi's ship was lost at sea last year. :-( You could tell she loved sailing old wooden ships... just look at the cover. A great loss; she did so much for our community.

Additionally, I will second or third anyone recommending works by Brendan Gregg. I got the Kindle version of Brendan's Systems Performance: Enterprise and the Cloud. I really like this book. It was written to be a good foundational book for the next several years. I am planning to get a hard copy version too. While you're at it, check out these links...

Brendan Gregg:
http://www.brendangregg.com/
http://www.brendangregg.com/linuxperf.html
https://github.com/brendangregg/perf-tools
http://lwn.net/Articles/608497/
http://www.brendangregg.com/USEmethod/use-linux.html

Tom Limoncelli:
http://everythingsysadmin.com/

Introduce him not only to books, but online resources and communities like /r/linuxadmin :-)

Cheers!

Lot's of questions... but here we go. (Warning... you didn't say I had to self censor. Some swearing below)

1. I was always in to electronics. I did some time as a car stereo installer as well as doing car alarms. I realized it wasn't going to pay the bills for the rest of my life (or at least not provide the kind of income I wanted) so... I decided to step it up a bit. A couple years doing basic computer work, software installs etc and I decided to go back to school (very late at almost 30).
   
   
2. Basically the ladder - helpdesk, junior admin, tech 3, worked at a couple MSPs and got to my recent employer as lone sys admin.
   
   
3. I'm a manager of a small IT team so for me the hardest has been picking up people skills when I haven't needed them for years. Let's be honest here most of us don't go into IT because we want to be people persons. Other than that - organize. Read Time Management for Sysadmins. But the biggest thing you can learn along the way is when to admit you're over your head on something. Don't screw it up because you're afraid of looking stupid. Admit you don't know, then research the hell out of whatever it is.
   
   
4. Everything is a learning experience. Basic electrical I learned in car audio. Organizational skills, planning etc I learned in a job doing logistics. I don't care if you're working at Starbucks... there's something to be learned wether it's inventory management or marketing.
   
   
5. I went to one of those over priced, spend the rest of your life paying for it technical colleges. Why? Well I needed to take classes at night. Also, the major universities offered CS courses. I want to actually learn systems administration and networking and I didn't have 4 years for theory. I needed to hit the ground running as I was already employed in the field. Most important class? Cisco CCNA. Network fundamentals are something you will use every day.
   
   
6. RHCSA (Red Hat), MCP SharePoint. Maybe another but I can't remember. They haven't been overly huge in my career. They have been work related in one way shape or form and paid for by the company.
   
   
7. These days being a manager... becoming a people person. Playing the politics. Keeping people happy (customer and staff). Working with high expectations on a minuscule budget. Being in the K-12 space we're broke and expected to make miracles happen. Think enterprise support on a small company budget.
   
   
8. Technology Manager. I report to a director but I'm more technical so basically I drive the bus.
   
   
9. Roughly 95k. I could be making more in the private sector, but I agreed to it, so I'm ok with it.
   
   
10. No. Yes. Maybe. It all depends on the day. I'm not going to bullshit you and say IT is all roses. It's stressful day in and day out, night in and night out when you reach a certain level. When the infrastructure is your responsibility and the buck stops with you it weighs on you every day all day. It's the first thing you think about when you wake up and the last thing you think about when you go to bed. So, no it's soul crushing. BUT... when it's humming along and the train is rolling it's the best job in the world. When shit is crashing down around you, everything is broken and you're the one in the fire, there's nothing like it. And if you manage to get it all back ... well you'll remember it for years to come.
    
    
11. See #10. But ultimately management sucks. I want to be technical. I don't really want to be a people person. I want to work with the systems, the network... I could give a shit that you can't come to work today because your kid has the sniffles or you ate some bad sushi. We've got shit to do and you're holding up the bus. :)
    
    
12. Solving problems. By far the best part of working in IT is solving weird shit.
    
    
13. Like any other job that works in an office building. I have an office, a desk, a chair, a computer and phone that never stops ringing. And email... the emails never stop.
    
    
14. Yes. My wife supported me going back to school, my folks were always helpful and have always been my rock. I speak to my mother at least a couple times a week and she's always my sounding board. Monetarily... no. My wife and I paid and are still paying the bills.
    
    
15. Trick question. I would change everything. I'd be a pro hockey player. Or something badass like that. In IT... I may have changed some stuff, but so far it is working out. I'm not as far along as some of my peers from school, but I'm worlds ahead of others.
    
    
16. The world doesn't owe you shit. You're NOT entitled to anything. I don't care who your parents are, I don't care that you've grown up with computers. Yes, work life balance is a thing. Yes, some people have it. NO, you're not going to have it in the majority of small IT shops especially if you're the sysadmin or network admin. Someone will call you at 2am to say something is broken and you damned well better be in the car 10 minutes later. Sorry, that was harsh! But, the reality of IT work beyond the help desk and desktop tech roles is the business doesn't run without you. If you want to get ahead and get promoted, start making better money, you have to commit. It means being on the verge of burnout, It means being willing to come to work at 2am because some putz in Europe can't get to the mail server. That's the job. If you don't think you can do it... go in to accounting.
    
    
17. Systems admins are a dying breed - the really good ones will stay working, but Cloud services, MSPs and the like are making that look like a closing door. Network admins, programmers, DBAs, security... I don't see them going anywhere anytime soon. Even if you don't become a programmer - learn the basics. Powershell, etc... HTML/CSS/SQL and the like are all good skills to have and stuff you will use regularly in a lot of roles.
    
    Hope that helps. I'll PM you my basic info shortly.

Sure, the new iWork suite has removed quite a few features that was otherwise available in the old version. But it might only be temporarily.

The new version is rewritten to revisit and enhance the suite of tools going forward, but it has made it necessary for Apple to not include all features at first launch. That's why the old version was not overwritten when the new version first launched and presented as an update in the App Store.

Much wanted features like Apple Script support was only recently reintroduced, and details like the one you mention here might also come in a later update.

Until then, consider using the old Keynote(it still works on Mavericks) if you can't do without this feature. Personally I do not fancy these "bullet reveals" during presentations and would encourage you to try out some new styles of presentation to keep an interest in the lecture. The best lectures are usually built on a solid written and rehearsed and slides that are build to enhance it even further.

Some book recommendations to that end:

• Lend Me Your Ears by Max Atkinson
  
• Presentation Zen by Garr Reynolds
  
• Resonate by Nancy Duarte

I swear, growing older is amazing (and that's the best-kept secret, because I had no idea how much better each year gets). You are fine, and as long as you're kind to yourself and remember your worth, you'll do just fine. You'll survive this and get the hell out, to a place where you can wear properly-fitted clothes without harassment. You'll grow more confident and better-informed.

I'm only 25, but I kid you not, every year since 21 has been a new high. There's been tough times (understatement), but fundamentally, I'm good and getting better. My mother says the 30s are where it really gets good, but that every decade she knows her strength more and likes herself better.

Hang in there. BTW, resources: Captain Awkward for life and relationships of all kinds, Ask A Manager for workplace issues, The Gentle Art of Verbal Self-Defense for de-escalating things that would otherwise lead to conflict.

Therapy - for both you and your partner, separately and as a couple (if you can manage it, I know that can be tough) - is my advice for a first step. It sounds like you're trying, but still struggling when you get reactions that you're not used to or prepared for. Communication is definitely a key thing and a good, trans-affirming therapist can be an incredibly helpful first step in overcoming that first hurdle. If you'd like something to help that's more immediately available, I recommend Crucial Conversations - it was incredibly helpful to me long before anything trans-related came up in my life.

Also, there's no need to compare your pain and struggles to hers. What she's going through is incredibly difficult, yes, but you shouldn't feel guilty for not understanding every part of it or having been through something similar. Belittling the experiences that made you who you are today will only make adjusting to all the changes in your lives that much more difficult. Her struggles are different from yours, and that's okay. You're both going to be going through a lot together as she begins her transition.

Be strong and sure in who you are and continue to choose to be there for your partner. That is extremely important in all of this. If the two of you love one another and are willing to put in the work, you can find a way through this rough patch. <3

Hello! Thought I'd try my first stab at DestructiveReaders on your story. Lucky you. Disclaimer: I'm a professional editor... of marketing materials--not fiction.

Here's what you requested be dug into:

1) Narrative Style

I think people are telling you it feels detached because it needs another heavy edit. I'd recommend reading On Writing Well by William Zinsser. I think his advice could help you clean your prose up a bit. I see what you're trying to do to add tension, but your sentences don't flow together as nicely as they could. Another suggestion would be to read your work out loud and assess where it doesn't sound right.

2) Worldbuilding

I can see that you're trying to give the story an ominous tone with your prose, but try to favor showing to set the tone. The dramatic language should be a second layer to back up what's happening in the story.

For example, your story begins with three paragraphs of what I'd called "preamble". More effective would be to open the story by starting with the Kalina looking out her window at the mourners. I feel like you're repeating the fact that the Czar's daughter is dying too many times. Readers will understand after you mention it once.

I'd also recommend not saying "the Czar's daughter" repeatedly in the beginning. Start with "Kalina, the Czar's daughter..." and the refer to her as Kalina beyond that. Even better would be making one of the mourners wail something like, "Kalina, our Czar's daughter! We mourn you!" to be more artful about the exposition.

Everything being "red" might be a little too on-the-nose of a metaphor for a book about communism, but maybe that's just my taste.

Overall, too much showing and not telling. Just one example of many: "...dying people should not speak, it is improper." I want to see an example of somebody chastising her for speaking (or something), not just be told that it's improper. Readers want to care for Kalina, and building tension by showing that she can't even speak, even though she's dying, would be more emotional.

The image of a mourning crowd outside the dying princess' room is and makes me want to know more. Why is she dying? Why do they love her so much? Good stuff.

3) Dialogue

Use your dialogue to drive the story and the amount that you're (again) showing. For example, in the scene where Kalina interacts with her mammoth, start with "I'll come back, Lyuba." And then describe what she does with the mammoth from there. There's a whole paragraph of telling above it that could be worked into the action after she first speaks to her pet.

I'm actually at work now, but hopefully I can do some line edits tonight.

Overall, I think it's an interesting concept that could be helped with some screw tightening.

Senior Level Software Engineer Reading List

Read This First

1. Mastery: The Keys to Success and Long-Term Fulfillment
   
   

   Fundamentals
   

   
   

2. Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture
   
3. Enterprise Integration Patterns: Designing, Building, and Deploying Messaging Solutions
   
4. Enterprise Patterns and MDA: Building Better Software with Archetype Patterns and UML
   
5. Systemantics: How Systems Work and Especially How They Fail
   
6. Rework
   
7. Writing Secure Code
   
8. Framework Design Guidelines: Conventions, Idioms, and Patterns for Reusable .NET Libraries
   
   

   Development Theory
   

   
   

9. Growing Object-Oriented Software, Guided by Tests
   
10. Object-Oriented Analysis and Design with Applications
    
11. Introduction to Functional Programming
    
12. Design Concepts in Programming Languages
    
13. Code Reading: The Open Source Perspective
    
14. Modern Operating Systems
    
15. Extreme Programming Explained: Embrace Change
    
16. The Elements of Computing Systems: Building a Modern Computer from First Principles
    
17. Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software
    
    

    Philosophy of Programming
    

    
    

18. Making Software: What Really Works, and Why We Believe It
    
19. Beautiful Code: Leading Programmers Explain How They Think
    
20. The Elements of Programming Style
    
21. A Discipline of Programming
    
22. The Practice of Programming
    
23. Computer Systems: A Programmer's Perspective
    
24. Object Thinking
    
25. How to Solve It by Computer
    
26. 97 Things Every Programmer Should Know: Collective Wisdom from the Experts
    
    

    Mentality
    

    
    

27. Hackers and Painters: Big Ideas from the Computer Age
    
28. The Intentional Stance
    
29. Things That Make Us Smart: Defending Human Attributes In The Age Of The Machine
    
30. The Back of the Napkin: Solving Problems and Selling Ideas with Pictures
    
31. The Timeless Way of Building
    
32. The Soul Of A New Machine
    
33. WIZARDRY COMPILED
    
34. YOUTH
    
35. Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art
    
    

    Software Engineering Skill Sets
    

    
    

36. Software Tools
    
37. UML Distilled: A Brief Guide to the Standard Object Modeling Language
    
38. Applying UML and Patterns: An Introduction to Object-Oriented Analysis and Design and Iterative Development
    
39. Practical Parallel Programming
    
40. Past, Present, Parallel: A Survey of Available Parallel Computer Systems
    
41. Mastering Regular Expressions
    
42. Compilers: Principles, Techniques, and Tools
    
43. Computer Graphics: Principles and Practice in C
    
44. Michael Abrash's Graphics Programming Black Book
    
45. The Art of Deception: Controlling the Human Element of Security
    
46. SOA in Practice: The Art of Distributed System Design
    
47. Data Mining: Practical Machine Learning Tools and Techniques
    
48. Data Crunching: Solve Everyday Problems Using Java, Python, and more.
    
    

    Design
    

    
    

49. The Psychology Of Everyday Things
    
50. About Face 3: The Essentials of Interaction Design
    
51. Design for Hackers: Reverse Engineering Beauty
    
52. The Non-Designer's Design Book
    
    

    History
    

    
    

53. Micro-ISV: From Vision to Reality
    
54. Death March
    
55. Showstopper! the Breakneck Race to Create Windows NT and the Next Generation at Microsoft
    
56. The PayPal Wars: Battles with eBay, the Media, the Mafia, and the Rest of Planet Earth
    
57. The Business of Software: What Every Manager, Programmer, and Entrepreneur Must Know to Thrive and Survive in Good Times and Bad
    
58. In the Beginning...was the Command Line
    
    

    Specialist Skills
    

    
    

59. The Art of UNIX Programming
    
60. Advanced Programming in the UNIX Environment
    
61. Programming Windows
    
62. Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X
    
63. Starting Forth: An Introduction to the Forth Language and Operating System for Beginners and Professionals
    
64. lex & yacc
    
65. The TCP/IP Guide: A Comprehensive, Illustrated Internet Protocols Reference
    
66. C Programming Language
    
67. No Bugs!: Delivering Error Free Code in C and C++
    
68. Modern C++ Design: Generic Programming and Design Patterns Applied
    
69. Agile Principles, Patterns, and Practices in C#
    
70. Pragmatic Unit Testing in C# with NUnit
    
    

    DevOps Reading List
    

    
    

71. Time Management for System Administrators: Stop Working Late and Start Working Smart
    
72. The Practice of Cloud System Administration: DevOps and SRE Practices for Web Services
    
73. The Practice of System and Network Administration: DevOps and other Best Practices for Enterprise IT
    
74. Effective DevOps: Building a Culture of Collaboration, Affinity, and Tooling at Scale
    
75. DevOps: A Software Architect's Perspective
    
76. The DevOps Handbook: How to Create World-Class Agility, Reliability, and Security in Technology Organizations
    
77. Site Reliability Engineering: How Google Runs Production Systems
    
78. Cloud Native Java: Designing Resilient Systems with Spring Boot, Spring Cloud, and Cloud Foundry
    
79. Continuous Delivery: Reliable Software Releases through Build, Test, and Deployment Automation
    
80. Migrating Large-Scale Services to the Cloud

Just do it. Just put it out there. Some of the worst stuff I have written, that I still call "trash fiction", is the stuff people loved best. Some of the best stuff I have written has gotten the harshest critiques. The point, here, is to be careful of becoming "married" to things, that is, being unwilling to change it if someone has a valid critique.

Basically, take everything that is said to you about your work, process it as feedback rather than attack, and use it to help your writing get better. If someone took the time to critique your work, rather than defending the work, thank them for the criticism. Take the criticim, apply it, and see if it makes your work stronger. If it does, keep it, if not ignore it. Rough criticim has helped me immensely.

I also cannot emphasize how much a few writing classes and good books can help. Check out On Writing Well by William Zinsser, and Sin in Syntax by Constance Hale. Worth their weight in gold.

Feel free to inbox me with your stories. I promise to be thorough, yet non-douchy! Here's my online portfolio , if you want to check out my stuff. :)

EDIT: A comma.

I'm by no means an expert, but here are some tips I've picked up over the past year or so:

Prep

• Make sure they know how long you plan to interview them for, and stick to that time limit when you do the interview.
  
• Know the basics of what the person does that you are interviewing. Don't waste time asking basic stuff.
  
• Have some questions for if the conversation goes dry or to get at specific points, but don't try to structure the whole thing. Plan to go off-track with your interview.
  
  The Interview
  
  
• Don't be afraid to wait after your interviewee finished talking. Just a few more seconds might lead to the really interesting bits of what they are thinking about.
  
• Ask questions you already know the answer to. This can help with getting good quotes and can also lead to unexpected places (because you wound up not actually knowing the answer).
  
• Don't be afraid to write stuff down (or record if your interviewee doesn't mind). You'll never remember everything interesting that they say and you don't want to kick yourself later while writing.
  
• Regarding notes, make sure to look at them and summarize them shortly after the interview! They'll make more sense sooner rather than later.
  
  Some other Resources
  
  Longer-Term, the Turnaround is a podcast about interviewers and their techniques.
  
  The chapter about interviews in Zinsser's On Writing Well was helpful for me. If you are pressed for time grab it at your library and just read that chapter, it's short. Amazon Link
  
  > Get people talking. Learn to ask questions that will elicit answers about what is most interesting or vivid in their lives. Nothing so animates writing as someone telling what he thinks or what he does -- in his own words.
  
  Zinsser, On Writing Well
  

I don't have ADD, but I do exhibit some super mild symptoms similar symptoms sometimes (from what I understand, maybe just one symptom), so I have a few suggestions.

• Find a comfortable place to work. I work best on my couch and at my desk. If I'm anywhere else, I often have a hard time maintaining focus (coffee shops, other offices, conference rooms, etc.). I think comfortable working spaces is one of the workarounds for ADD.
  
  
• Stop reading shit like reddit and slash dot. You said you used to read for enjoyment, but now you can't. I've been an avid reader in adulthood and read fiction and super technical philosophy (journals and books). I've found in the past three years or so my ability focus has waned. I read somewhere that short Internet articles are to blame (or contribute to the problem). So I've stopped using reddit and other online media as much and my focus has improved (it takes time, though).
  
  
• Th pomodoro technique works for some people to help them focus (not me).
  
  Also: This book might help

Syntax as Style by Tufte is the best for sentence level mechanics. By far.

On Writing Well by Zinsser is the best for non-fiction.

If you're interested in fiction, Story Engineering by Brooks is the one I usually recommend for structure. But you might use Knight's Creating Short Fiction for that purpose. Or Save the Cat by Snyder.

People often recommend Elements of Style by Strunk and White. It has the benefit of being very short and direct. It will make your writing better, if you're a beginner. Your essays will read more smoothly. But I don't like recommending this book because it lacks nuance and is sometimes wrong. If you just want to improve your writing as quickly as possible, get this book. If you actually care about language, get Virginia Tufte's book instead.

I am glad that you finally got through to your parents, and I agree with the positive comments that are already here. So as not to just repeat what other people have been saying, let me just add one or two things that I hope will be helpful for you in the long run.

And it actually has less to do with Mormonism than you might think. It sounds like you had some issues that built up for many years and they finally boiled over and turned ugly. It's easy to justify saying some blunt, rude, and aggressive things afterward with a false dichotomy: it was either that or suffer in silence. Maybe you could see this as a starting point: instead of bottling up, you let it out. Now, look into some strategies for letting it out in a more effective way. Think carefully about what "victory" means to you and your relationship with your parents, and have specific goals in mind when you talk to them. It sounds like your parents don't have certain important communication skills, and you may not have them either as a result. That isn't your fault. However, your adult life is just beginning, and you have plenty of time to be so much better than they are.

The book that helped me pick up all the skills my parents lacked is called crucial conversations. I wish you the best of luck as you move forward with your life.

Time Management for System Administrators has some great ideas to get you going, that work for solo on up to large teams.

A lot of people have said it already, in short

• Learn to say no, or at least "not at this time"
  
• Carve out literal time for certain tasks. Morning can be tickets, afternoon can be projects, or whatever best fits your day (if your calls usually happen in afternoon, make the morning your project time)
  
• Out of that carved time, Friday's are read-only, so handle light-weight tickets during ticket time, but project time on Friday is for investing in YOU, education, catch up on industry news, etc.
  
• You will need to time-shift your day, so get everyone (and you) used to submitting tickets, leaving voicemails, taking "I'm busy at the moment but let's try after 1pm today" seriously, etc.
  
• Let the phone ring, or put it on silent during project time. They'll find you if there's an emergency. If your alerts don't tell you, users will definitely alert you to flames coming out of the server. (No flames, then come back after 1pm please...)
  
  edit: I missed you had sites as well. You can make a certain day or two travel days, the sites know to expect you only then, primary site knows not to expect you. Even better, if you only have 1 or 2 tickets for the site with 6 users, bring your projects with you (or self-investment ed) and enjoy the peace and quiet of a remote site. Nobody misses you at the main site because you're expected to be gone. Site support as a solo IT can really throw a wrench in all of this, so you'll really need to set/define expectations of service etc there.

Since you asked for books, if you want a general introduction into scientific writing I really liked The Craft of Scientific Writing. It might be a bit much to read though, if you only want to write one paper for school. If you plan to write more papers especially at University, I definately recommend that book.

Another book which I liked even more was more generally on non-fiction writing. I wish I would have read that one years ago. It's called On Writing Well

Another great thing to do is to just read research papers. You could find real papers with Google Scholar though it might be hard in the beginning to get a grasp on it, since it might be pretty different from what you have read so far.

Lastly I found this blog really interested when I started out writing papers and theses.

I hope this helps

I'm no expert (there are a lot of the books on the topic and I've read exactly one half of one of them), but I've been enjoying my time with 'The Big Book of Dashboards' by Wexler, Shaffer, and Cotgreave. They do in-depth analysis on dashboards, breaking down each piece and talking about what makes the dashboard great, and how you might be able to improve it.

I don't know that it's the best book on the market, but it has been pretty much exactly my speed as an intermediate/advanced Tableau dev who struggles with design elements more than technical elements.

I highly recommend Mindset. A fixed mindset is basically shooting yourself in the foot if you have any sort of goal whatsoever.

Facts and Fallacies of Software Engineering is from the mid-90s but basically everything is still true today.


Becoming a Technical Leader and Apprenticeship Patterns are kind of like two sides to the same coin. I read the former during my first internship and I definitely think it helped me succeed at my second internship and in my first job.

On Writing Well has an entire chapter on technical writing, but the rest of the book is fantastic as well.

>Hello Reddit!
>
>My name is Randy Olson. I was a scientist, I became a filmmaker, now I’m back working with scientists and environmentalists, helping them strengthen the narrative elements of their communication efforts using the narrative tools I present in my 3 books. My first book, “Don’t Be Such A Scientist” (Island Press, 2009) outlined the problems faced in the communication of science to the public. My recent book “Houston, We Have A Narrative” (University of Chicago Press, 2015) provides solutions via the tools I have developed — especially the ABT Template (And, But, Therefore) that I derived from Hollywood screenwriting techniques. Now I am about to embark on “the action plan” of the book which is putting the tools to work through my Story Circles Narrative Training. We are running Story Circles with a wide range of institutions from NASA, USDA, US Fish and Wildlife Service and National Park Service to universities including Yale Forestry School, UCLA Institute of the Environment, Tufts University and entering the biotech world with Genentech. Story Circles is a new approach to communications training built around 10 one hour sessions that are more “workout” than lecture. It takes time, but is fun, powerful and applicable to everyone. I’m eager to share the details of the training and the powerful ABT Template that we have labeled “The DNA of Story.” Looking forward to this AMA!
>
>I’ll be back at 1 pm EST (10 am PST, 6 pm UTC) to answer your questions, ask me anything!

>Hello Reddit!
>
>My name is Randy Olson. I was a scientist, I became a filmmaker, now I’m back working with scientists and environmentalists, helping them strengthen the narrative elements of their communication efforts using the narrative tools I present in my 3 books. My first book, “Don’t Be Such A Scientist” (Island Press, 2009) outlined the problems faced in the communication of science to the public. My recent book “Houston, We Have A Narrative” (University of Chicago Press, 2015) provides solutions via the tools I have developed — especially the ABT Template (And, But, Therefore) that I derived from Hollywood screenwriting techniques. Now I am about to embark on “the action plan” of the book which is putting the tools to work through my Story Circles Narrative Training. We are running Story Circles with a wide range of institutions from NASA, USDA, US Fish and Wildlife Service and National Park Service to universities including Yale Forestry School, UCLA Institute of the Environment, Tufts University and entering the biotech world with Genentech. Story Circles is a new approach to communications training built around 10 one hour sessions that are more “workout” than lecture. It takes time, but is fun, powerful and applicable to everyone. I’m eager to share the details of the training and the powerful ABT Template that we have labeled “The DNA of Story.” Looking forward to this AMA!
>
>I’ll be back at 1 pm EST (10 am PST, 6 pm UTC) to answer your questions, ask me anything!

• The Writing Life by Annie Dillard -- An example both in the things she says and how she says it of damn good writing. It's short, and influential. I read it three times in twenty four hours the first time I picked it up.
  
  
• [Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art] (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/087788918X/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=087788918X&linkCode=as2&tag=crysbrya-20) by Madeline L'Engle -- I recommend this for anyone of any faith or lack thereof for L'Engle's discussions on true art, the morality of art, the effect it has on a person's being and possibly the best writing I've ever read of hers, and I love L'Engle's novels, so that's saying something.
  
  
• On Writing Well by William Zinnser -- My personal copy has probably half the book underlined, but my favorite chapter, by far, is Chapter 2, Simplicity. I feel it should be required reading for every author aspirant.
  
  
• The Art of the Personal Essay by Philip Lopate -- This is an anthology, but a better teacher of good personal writing than any how-to book I've ever read.
  
  
• Eats, Shoots and Leaves by Lynne Truss -- You'll never find grammar or punctuation boring again after reading Truss's hilarious and informative treatment of the worthiness of punctuation, in current times and throughout history. (Though I disagree with her dismissal of the interrobang.)

You should really get yourself a book to learn Teeline the right way. I recommend this one. I assume you're just using whatever free resources you can find. Many of your letters are joined incorrectly and a lot of letter combos, like "tr", have their own symbols. In this case, a long horizontal line. These increase your speed a lot. Here's what it looks like using some shortcuts.

Spoilers, for anyone who cares....



> You have my heart

> You had it from the start

> I love you [from afr?]

Spez: Just realized that last word is probably “afar.”

False as in you don't think that it ever happens and isn't a valid concept? I don't think that's the case.

Have you heard about "write to market" authors? They pretty much do what you describe in your first big paragraph. I don't know how to cite that concept but here's a popular book for authors about how to do that:

https://www.amazon.com/Write-Market-Deliver-Faster-Smarter-ebook/dp/B01AX23B4Q

As for whether books can be gendered I think at the least you can say that some genres are mostly read by certain groups. I think romance is 80% read by women and military science fiction is 80% men if not more.

I'm not saying that I LIKE this situation. I don't like that some of my favorite authors say they're more successful when they write more cynical books. But in terms of if authors target demographics or certain genres have demographic trends I think those are things that happen.

First, read our Wiki. It is very thorough and answers a lot of these common questions such as

day to day? The Practice of System and Network Administration
And the topical reference books listed below.

Books to help in shaping a sysadmin? The above &:
The Phoenix Project
Time Management for System Administrators


Topical Books I see mentioned often and have been very helpful to me:
Powershell in a month of lunches
Learn Python the hard way
Unix and Linux System Administration Handbook
Windows Server 2016: Inside Out

Group Policy
AbsoluteBSD
FreeBSD mastery:ZFS
CCNA
RHCSA/RHCE
Pro Puppet
SSH Mastery

On my docket:
FreeBSD Mastery: Advanced ZFS

Michael W. Lucas and Thomas Limoncelli are very good sysadmin writers, you can't go wrong with a topic they have chosen to write about.

Most of the *nix stuff assumes a baseline knowledge of how to use a unix-based system. I learned as I went but did pick up an old copy of Unix Visual Quickstart Guide not too long ago at a used books sale, which seems like a good starting place for someone overwhelmed with sitting at a terminal and being productive.
I notice I don't have any Virtualization books, perhaps someone else can fill in good books. Most of my knowledge regarding virtualization and network storage has been a mix of official docs, video training, and poking at it. Seems innate but it isn't.

Grab a copy of Time Management for system Administrators and actually read it. It took me months to make the time to read it but it is worthwhile. To start with you get instant confirmation that you are not the only person in your situation and that there is hope to improve the situation.

If management will not let you have a second person talk to them about hosted email. That would remove a chunk of the "stuff" you have to manage. Do a three and five year ROI on it just to make sure, but you are likely to come out ahead after you factor in DR, licensing, and time. Use the old Exchange install and what it took to upgrade as examples.

Even with an open floor plan you need a ticketing system and you need to believe in the system. If people complain tell them the ticketing system is so that "I can better do my job helping you."

The personal PC crap has to end. You open yourself and the company up to liability working on personal hardware.

For your bosses, have a sit-down chat about their "lottery bus" plan. That is what if you a) get hit by a bus on the way home, or b) win the lottery on the way home. For the company it doesn't matter because you're not going to be in to work the next day.

Wow, I honestly didn't expect that to be such touchy subject.

You may find some benefit from this book.

Regarding your response:
My complaints as you put it, are in your mind. I have no significant attachment regarding the outcome of that reference. I used it as an example of a problem insofar as sustainability and waste are concerned.

Your comment regarding a victim complex i'll let pass with this reply: I said many consider that culture, of note is that I never included myself in that grouping and again what would be the point of a discussion if I was included. There wouldn't be any point.

This post has been centered around a singular problem. The level of tacit knowledge to perform basic tasks is too high in linux (in mine, and others opinion) and growing from that discussion has been an unfortunate focus on an attitude issue or culture if you will.
"A projection", as you say, is simply an issue being all in your head (i.e. skewed perception), but others have recognized this very issue being a problem and thus this particular characterization is without merit.

I wouldn't call standing my ground, and calling out bad behavior as being sensitive, though I can see how some might see it that way.
As for ego, I don't have much of that, which I think is a good thing as it allows flexibility in finding solutions others would miss. I do appreciate people staying on topic during a discussion though.

I am familiar with the book. Its a nice piece of philosophy but there are significant issues with its use as a communication tool.

Positive beliefs can have a profound impact on people which is generally considered good, but assuming others will use that same belief to interpret communication is a poor assumption. Its only valid so long as everyone holds that belief, not everyone does, and some say they do when they don't.

A better approach is being specific, and respectful. It goes without saying that going off on tangent when one feels their beliefs are threatened is bad behavior.

Also, I feel I have to correct a notion you put forth about the tree branch in your post. Ambiguous communication isn't one meaning, or the other, its both and then its left up to the person receiving the communication to decide which meaning is correct based on context and what they know of the person.

When one assumes only a single meaning applies, when there is another that is equally valid, it is flawed logic and any subsequent response based upon such a premise is incorrect and not valid.

Additionally, while we are on the subject of flawed logic, fallacy arguments really have no place in intelligent discussion.

You seem intelligent, and so I'm assuming your aware of its uses in manipulating the direction of a conversation. It comes at great risk for one very important fact that is often overlooked.

That fact is that people don't like being manipulated, and it is not uncommon for there to be extreme negative sentiment towards the source once people realize its happened.

A perfect example would be, "how many people do you know like Michael Moore films?"

Best guess not many, his movies quickly lose their allure as one picks up on the subtle tactics used in the films to manipulate the viewer towards that viewpoint.

All that aside, if you have something to discuss that is germane to the topic at hand, please feel free.

I feel for you. I used to be in a relationship with an atheist and remember rehearsing during my drive home from work how I would break the news that I would be giving 10% of my earned income to the church because.. God. Thankfully I never had the courage to tell her and thankfully I started reading atheist books and dropped the superstition.

 

It's a tight situation for you - totally. It looks like you both have a few Crucial Conversations ahead of you.

 

I'm not sure how I feel about deconverting your wife... I would suggest using Street Epistemology if you do - but really it's about the shared vision for your family and your home and whether donating 10% to a church will help accomplish what you two are setting out to do.

A few thoughts. Hopefully at least one of them will be helpful.

• Learn How to Speak Boss. Stop reading this post and go watch this. Yes, right now. I'll wait.
  
• Your job is just a job. They get your time in exchange for a paycheck. They do not get your physical and/or mental health.
  
• Work you ass off for 8 hours then GTFO. Do things you love, with people you like, and don't answer the fucking phone or your work email until your return to work the next day.
  
• Long weekends are your friend. You have vacation time. Use it and don't even feel bad. Don't think of 10 days as "two weeks". In a place this crazy, taking an entire week off will be utter hell coming back - assuming you'll even get an entire week off approved. Think of 10 days as "one long weekend every 6 weeks". Put the time off requests in all at once.
  
• Work from home is evil. Home is your safe place to get away from work. Working from home defeats this purpose. Fight me.
  
• Read Time Management for System Administrators then do what it says.
  
• Document how you spend your time. Do this in addition to the ticketing system, because the ticketing system only tracks time on tickets. You have other things to do, too, and that time probably isn't visible to your supervisor.
  
• Document what you do. Get in the habit of documenting EVERYTHING. Convince yourself the task isn't completed until the documentation has been updated, and do not move to the next task until the current task is done. Ignore the tendency to "document it later, when things calm down". Pro Tip: Things will NEVER calm down. Build documentation time into your project timelines.
  
• There is never enough time. Ever. I don't care how many people are on your team, IT isn't about having no tickets. It's about properly managing the workload.
  
• Incremental progress. You aren't going to change things in big chunks. Don't try. Read The Practice of System and Network Administration: Volume 1: DevOps and other Best Practices for Enterprise IT and do what it says - even if nobody else on the team does.
  
• Automate all the things. Seriously. You have better things to do than manually perform system checks. Automate that shit. If it can't be automated, make the business case for upgrade and then automate it.
  
• Sometimes it's better to ask forgiveness than ask permission. If your boss is resistant to process automation, pick a small non-critical process, document how much time it takes to do manually, then automate it anyway. Show how much time you saved by not doing this one thing manually. Repeat as necessary until you're the most productive motherfucker on the team. Then use this information to justify a pay increase.
  
• Slow the fuck down. My dad used to say, "I'm always in a hurry, but I never rush." Do things as efficiently as possible, but do NOT rush. Rushing causes you to overlook critical aspects of things. Rushing makes you frazzled. Rushing makes you leave your keys on your desk & locks you out of your office. DO NOT RUSH. Things take as long as they take.
  
• The phone on your desk is Satan incarnate. Don't answer it unless you absolutely must. (Y'know, like when your boss calls.) Staff will do everything they can to bypass ticketing systems. The ringer on my desk phone is turned all the way down; I can barely hear it. Our phone system integrates with email, so messages show up in my Inbox. Playing back a message from my email is less of an interruption to my workflow than actually talking to some asshat who can't be bothered to submit a ticket. Most of the time, people won't leave a message, anyway.
  
• Close your email when you need to focus. Not just minimize the window. Close it completely. If desk phones are Satan, email is one of the Dukes of Hell. Just because someone emails you doesn't mean you have to read it immediately. In fact, replying as soon as a message arrives only serves to encourage users to email you directly as a bypass to the ticketing system. I check my email three times a day.
  
  I could go on, but most of the above is already in the two books I listed and I'd just be riffing on a theme. I'll leave you with this:
  
  
• They can't take away what you learn. Seriously. Learn it ALL.
  
• The best time to find a job is when you have one. Absolutely keep your resume updated and sign up for job alerts on your favorite job site (sent to your personal email, obviously). Take a page from actors & musicians and never stop looking for your next gig.

> This is generally true, but there's also the situation where you're just not very good at something and it's stressful and overwhelming to adapt.

First of all, I respect your discernment. Agree/disagree comments are fine, but when someone provides a conditional agree/disagree comment - it demonstrates a certain degree of intellectual prowess.

> if you're fat and go to work out for the first time, that's gonna be a bitch. Or if you're learning to be a computer programmer for the first time

Are there some people in those situations though, who are enthusiastic instead of stressed?

Of course there are. In any given situation, there are infinite meanings humans can create out of their experience; and emotions are shaped by meanings.

Am I saying this is always easy? No, but it is a learn-able skill and it can become easy.

Crucial Conversations has some good tips on how to take this seemingly abstract conversations and translate it into concrete habits you can implement.

Maybe it will get easier; depends on the culture where you work, and what kind of support you could get from them. Have you approached your higher ups with your concerns, or are they just part of the problem?

Yes, sometimes you get those new projects where your confidence level is high, but being in IT, I learned long ago that nothing is ever as easy as it seems.

If you want some skills to help with productivity and organizing the constant stream of distractions, I recommend two books:

Getting Things Done by David Allen
Time Management for System Administrators by Thomas Limoncelli

Both are better reads than you would think.

You are going to need to learn "office politics."

On another message board, I gave a list of books to help newbie programmers. The most relevant of them are the books on dealing with other people.

• To Be or Not to Be Intimidated.
  
• Looking out for number one.
  
• Million Dollar Habits. I feel that these 3 by Robert Ringer are very important. If you think his first book was about to intimidate others, you only read the press coverage. If you think his books are about real estate, then you only skimmed them. There are a lot of people in the world who will try to intimidate you into giving up what is yours, and he shows you what some of them are like, and what countermeasures you can use.
  
  
• Snakes in Suits. There are some evil people out there. You'll work for some of them.
  
  
• Bullies, Tyrants, and Impossible People. One book on office politics and dealing with some of the worse sort.
  
  
• The Gentle Art of Verbal Self-Defense at Work. Some folks are very good with verbal manipulation, this book and the others in the series, cover how to deal with such people.
  
  
• Winning with People. Most of the books this author writes are about managers and leadership. This book is more about people skills. It will be focused more at managers, but I think it is a good one.
  
  
• The 48 Laws of Power. They have it. You want some. Light read with anecdotes. I like his other books as well.
  
  http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/86502/6591/#86540
  
  Start with the ones I've given Amazon links to.
  
  If "adam" approaches you when others are not around, leave.

Read up on the following:

• Bloom's taxonomy
  
• Maslow's hierarchy of needs
  
• ADDIE
  
• User Interface design (UI)
  
• User eXperience design (UX)
  
• Educational psychology
  
• Instructional Systems Design
  
• SCORM/xAPI
  
• Agile PM
  
• Waterfall
  
  Get to grips with the following:
  
• Authoring tools: Storyline, Captivate etc.
  
• HTML5 (not necessary but helps)
  
• MS Word (if you think you know enough teach yourself more!)
  
  A great book to read which outlines much of what you need to know is [Design for How People Learn by Julie Dirksen](design for how people learn (voices that matter) https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0134211286/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_ZzV9BbKZ740GT). I give a copy of this book to all new IDs that I take on as it provides clear guides and excellent examples to illustrate the concepts.

I'd like to say something good about it, but I can't, it's pure crackpottery, "meme magic" is the cultural analogue of creationism. Memetic Magic doesn't even respect the subject matter of memetics honestly: no outside sources are given, Richard Dawkins isn't even mentioned despite having coined the word "meme." There is next to no critical thought applied in the examination of claims given wholesale as unqualified, unexamined Truth.

If you're interested in memetics, start with Dawkins: at least The Selfish Gene, and preferably The Extended Phenotype, and The Blind Watchmaker. to get more of a perspective to his evolutionary point of view. I think that Dawkins' genetic reductionism is a valuable perspective, but a vastly incomplete account in itself.

Susan Blackmore's The Meme Machine is another good source.

Media Virus: Hidden Agendas In Popular Culture by Douglas Rushkoff is essential. Here is a section describing experimental and very weird memetic engineering that occurred in the early 90's on the internet.

Memetics is the extension of the paradigm of biological evolution to that of some aspects of conscious experience (interaction of ideas between minds,) an idea that goes back to Darwin. The concept of extension is essential to memetics, and is part of the reason why "The Extended Phenotype" is such a valuable read. An extension of evolutionary theory into the fields of epistemology and metaphysics is process philosophy, which is my current obsession.

Here's some of my own meme magic in the form of video clips that came together out of living conversations out of long periods of time until they felt "right." The goal is to convey feeling, and inspire the sense of unexplored connections.

Here are some resources I've found especially helpful for my own puzzle making and codebreaking endeavors.

General Overviews and Websites:

• Cryptography - Wikipedia
  
  
• Classical cipher - Wikipedia
  
  
• Cryptanalysis- Wikipedia
  
  
• Steganography - Wikipedia
  
  
• Ryan Riley's "Introduction to Basic Cryptography" series - Youtube: 1, 2, and 3 (plus several others, just look through his channel)
  
  
• The American Cryptogram Association
  
  
• Practical Cryptography
  
  
• Elonka.com
  
  
• The Black Chamber
  
  Basic Cryptanalytic Techniques:
  
  
• Frequency Analysis - Wikipedia
  
  
• Coincidence Counting - Wikipedia
  
  
• Kasiski Examination - Wikipedia
  
  Beginner hand-cracking tutorials:
  
  
• How to Solve a Cryptogram - Puzzlebaron.com
  
  
• Vigenère decryption with unknown key - Youtube
  
  Tools for creating and cracking codes quickly:
  
  
• Rumkin Cipher Tools
  
  
• dCode Crypto Tools
  
  
• Quipqiup Crytogram Solver
  
  
• Cryptii Tools
  
  
• Guballa Vigenere Solver
  
  
• Boxentriq Code-Breaking Tools
  
  Interesting cryptographic puzzles for inspiration:
  
  
• World's Greatest Unsolved Ciphers (Craig Bauer), Part 1 and Part 2
  
  
• Cicada 3301: LEMMiNO Documentary; Great Big Story Documentary Series
  
  
• Kryptos: Great Big Story Feature; Cracking Kryptos (Elonka Dunin)
  
  Books:
  
  While I haven't read these, I've heard a lot of good things about them:
  
  
• Cryptanalysis: A Study of Ciphers and their Solution, by Helen F. Gaines
  
  
• The Code Book: The Science of Secrecy from Ancient Egypt to Quantum Cryptography, by Simon Singh
  
  
• The Codebreakers: The Comprehensive History of Secret Communication from Ancient Times to the Internet, by David Khan
  
  EDIT: Tweaked some wording and formatting

Thanks form making this.

1. Use grenade trajectory, especially on the cache flash. Or use a grenade so we can see the entire flash path rather than you turning away for half the grenade path.
   
2. Everything that you can say is longer than it needs to be. Use a script and revise to shorten your long train of thoughts.
   
3. Long times intimidate people, 9 minutes for 3 grenades/flashes is quite inefficient use of time. It could have been said with more clarity in much less time.
   
   Here is an excellent book that will help your scripting/writing tremendously. The book is written quite well :)

Honestly, though a lot of the information wouldn't be applicable to you, I highly recommend the book On Writing Well by William Zinsser. It helped me with my writing (across all uses) tremendously. My novels, non-fiction articles, personal letters, and even my reddit comments have improved! Hope I helped a little bit :)

What about field interest you? Elearning? Corporate training? High Tech? Higher Ed?

Look for job listings and ask yourself what it would take to meet the requirements (Check out the FAQ if you haven't already)

I would start by adapting my existing content into an online portfolio, learning some authoring tools (Storyline and Captivate are the big ones) and beginning to teach myself an ID-related skill I don't already possess.

To echo u/counttess, adult education is where the jobs are-- so you need to demonstrate your value to an organization that sees training solely in terms of ROI.

Oh, and start reading! Design for How People Learn might be a good starting point.

Good luck!

I found some tape recording of a consultation session he did with clients - pretty amazing.

Heres Some more:
My Life in Advertising and Scientific Advertising

https://www.youtube.com/user/kopywriting/videos

https://www.youtube.com/user/marketingshowtv/videos

https://blog.kissmetrics.com/

http://socialtriggers.com/

The Ultimate Sales Letter: Attract New Customers. Boost your Sales.

The Copywriter's Handbook: A Step-By-Step Guide To Writing Copy That Sells

Writing That Works; How to Communicate Effectively In Business

What OS are you running your svn server on? The basic solution to people offsite accessing svn securely is https, which involves generating an ssl certificate and is fiddly. SVN has a pretty good handbook called the red bean book: http://svnbook.red-bean.com/. The chapter covering your options is: http://svnbook.red-bean.com/en/1.5/svn.serverconfig.html

If I were you, I'd follow bandman614's advice: list everything adn then prioritise. The thing to think about with priorisation is: who are you blocking? Could be that a few developers are getting paid and can't work until you've got the svn setup dealt with. Could be that they're fine for now, in which case don't worry about it before backups.

I imagine your vm to hardware migration is least important, but it depends on why you need to do it: is the hardware that the vms are running on going to vanish? Or is it just to better utilise available resources? Or is it because everyone's getting network timeouts because the VMs are underpowered and running your DNS server and DHCP server, and most of your company can't work properly until they're migrated?

List, prioritise, work through the priorities. http://www.amazon.com/Management-System-Administrators-Thomas-Limoncelli/dp/0596007833 is pretty damn good.

I'm so sorry for what you're going through. When my marriage was on the skids due to the church (there was a little bit of sexual frustration in the mix as well) I was so depressed and anxious. It sucks balls. I didn't think I could have a worse two years than my mission. But we made it through and we're doing better than ever.

My mantra: I will become a great communicator.

I will work on communicating my needs and understanding my wife's needs. If this leads to divorce, that will be for the best because we are not able to fulfill each other's needs. If we stay together, it will be for the best because we are both fulfilling each other's needs. Divorce vs staying together will be the result of good communication.

This is my favorite intro to assertive communication and I'd also suggest picking up a copy of Crucial Conversations.

You can get through this and get to a more healthy relationship that includes sexual fulfillment. Internet strangers are rooting for you!

I read a helpful book on this subject recently: "Write to Market" by Chris Fox. It is not specific to the romance genre, but it IS pretty specific to Amazon, explaining their ranking system, how to research, etc. etc.

If you have a KU subscription, you can borrow it and read it for free.

https://www.amazon.com/Write-Market-Deliver-Faster-Smarter-ebook/dp/B01AX23B4Q

I started in the same boat as you, but I've been doing this for a few years now. Probably worse than someone who came up in a very structured environment.

Get a orchestration mgmt system setup, like salt, puppet, chef, etc.

Get monitoring set up if you haven't already. Central logging and automatic alerting, etc. If you have time, set up visualization for logs so you can see trends, using things like splunk or elk.

Make sure you have backups, and make sure you can actually restore from backups.

These are good, and written by someone with way more experience than me: 'The Practice of System and Network Administration, Second Edition', 'Time Management for System Administrators'

My library had The Codebreakers: The Comprehensive History of Secret Communication from Ancient Times to the Internet when I was a kid and I may have forgotten to bring it back in the past twenty years.

It's partly a historical book (and was originally written in the 60's), but it's insightful on what you're looking for. Extremely interesting if you're into this kind of thing.

Bear in mind that book doesn't really go into base64 or anything like that that can only be done with computers, because these things simply weren't around in the 60's. But in terms of ciphers and human encryption it's a great historical resource and can give a lot of insight into how this stuff works.

Thanks. I don't go for "self-help" books, but the more I read On Writing Well the more I realize that so much of that excellent writing advice is also excellent life advice.

I took several "creative nonfiction" courses in college, and two books that we used were Tell It Slant and On Writing Well. I remember Tell It Slant more vividly; it included several examples of various styles of nonfiction writing, several of which I enjoyed and used as inspiration for my own writing. I assume that On Writing Well is also valuable, though, considering how long it's been in print.

Tableau's own video tutorials are really good!

The Big Book of Dashboards (https://www.amazon.com/Big-Book-Dashboards-Visualizing-Real-World/dp/1119282713/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?keywords=big+book+of+dashboards&qid=1570551048&sprefix=big+book+of+dash&sr=8-1) gives a good idea of domain specific dashboards and best practices on dashboard creation.

I recommend that you get https://www.amazon.com/Gentle-Art-Verbal-Self-Defense-Work/dp/0735200890 and read it. It will help with this, and it also offers some useful pointers for communicating, generally. Very useful for a litigator. I also recommend https://www.amazon.com/Deposition-Handbook-Revised-5th/dp/1941007309/ref=sr_1_2?keywords=the+deposition+handbook&qid=1555794825&s=books&sr=1-2 which has only a small section on this but is invaluable as a handbook.

​

I suggest leveling whenever this happens. Express your objection, and the reason for it, and ask for an apology. Watch closely the reaction. If the person is speaking in good faith, talk it out. You are a professional advocate. They are a laymen. You will win; if by some chance you don't work out why, and adjust your technique accordingly. If they repent, forgive them. If at anytime they go rogue - resort to verbal attack, outright insult, false reasoning, etc - then stop talking it out and hammer them like you would an opponent who tried that in open court. Call them out on the insufficiency of their defense, state plainly the wrongdoing they have committed, and impose whatever sanctions are within your power to have imposed. Don't be ashamed to have your boyfriend pitch in if he's the one with more direct influence, which, in his home or at his family's appointment, he probably is.

​

Also, if you haven't passed the bar yet, then don't take being mistaken for a paralegal as an insult. You don't yet have a license that sets you apart from them and there are paralegals who differ from attorneys only in that they are unlicensed. Those would take a similar offense to you objecting to be compared to them.

Read other technical documents, and really just practice. I recommend On Writing Well to many of my junior engineers who are just learning how to do this. It's not tech specific, but does give a lot of good best practices.

I didn't realize there were so many vim books now honestly. I Started off with this one. Worked well for me.

Would like to know what people think of Hacking Vim 7.2? My book is pretty old these days, wondering if this one is a bit more advanced?

Could you be more specific on the type of magazine editing job you're looking for? (Headlines, features, etc. – it can also make a big difference in what type of magazine you want to work for.)

​

This is a pretty great book on all around nonfiction writing and editing https://www.amazon.com/Writing-Well-Classic-Guide-Nonfiction/dp/0060891548 Check your library for a copy; if they don't have this one I'm sure they can recommend a similar book.

Start with this book: Time Management for System Administrators.

> Currently I write down all my tasks at the start of the day, then split them down to smaller tasks and fit them into 30 minute chunks.

This may be part of your problem. Stop micromanaging your tasks.

> I have done none of my tasks for the day as I have been chasing up other things.

What these other things you are chasing? Why are you chasing them? Start documenting these shiny objects and sit down with your boss and be honest with them, "Hey. I have been trying to get all this stuff done but I keep getting pulled on doing things like this, this, and this. How would you like me to handle these when they come back up again?"

In addition you can see where you time is going and realize you are getting a lot accomplished. Just not prioritizing the right work to get done.

Simple tip this is not, but I found that William Zinsser's "On Writing Well" is a fantastic read. It goes through basics on conciseness and writing factually, but also has specific guidelines on writing nonfiction (travel, humor, business, sports, arts, etc.) Also helpful on how to rid yourself of cliches and clutter.

First off, start a blog and force yourself to write 3 articles a week. It will get you in a routine, and after a month you will see drastic improvement. Getting hired through a traditional j-school program or an internship is highly improbable. I got hired at my first paid gig because I knew how to code in a few web languages. After two months I was writing features on international finance. Do not under any circumstance pursue graduate work in journalism or a JD. You are wasting your money. Most journalism work is trending towards specialization, while j-school prepares you as a generalist. Not only that, you can learn all of the tricks simply by writing and reading a few books. Four years ago, I was in your position. Now I write for a living.

I'd recommend the following books/articles for any person interested in writing
On Writing Well
On Writing
Malcolm Gladwell's Advice
Interview with Matt Taibbi

Best of luck

Honestly, I could never find a technical solution for the non-ticket task items that really worked for me.

After reading this book I went the analog route and write down every task I do. Then, first thing the next morning I bring over tasks that are still on my list from the day before. This has been the best way to keep myself on track and not forget about my action items.

I got a nice planner with a set of planner paper that works well for me (close to what's discussed in the book). It's always open on my desk, and I always have it with me in meetings, so I never have an excuse to not log a task.

This book: Best $10 (kindle edition) you'll spend.

http://www.amazon.com/Management-System-Administrators-Thomas-Limoncelli/dp/0596007833/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1342718941&sr=1-1&keywords=time+management+for+system+administrators

I've been doing the sysadmin thing for 6 years and he has taught me some very valuable skills. I wish I would have read this book years ago!

Writer here. That shit is definitely hard. My recommendation? Write down everything you want to say and don't worry about length. Then edit ruthlessly. Cut out anything redundant or that doesn't further your point. Look at every word and every sentence and ask yourself, do I need this word? Usually you can cut out adjectives in favor of strong verbs. E.g. "Earning a master's degree from your fine institution would be a great boon to my career." (16 words) becomes "A master's degree from X would catapult my writing career." (10 words) Or something. I've had some wine.

William Zinsser is way better at this shit than me. Everyone should read "On Writing Well."

Surprised no one else has mentioned it, but the best resource that I've found on this subject is

Tom Limoncelli's - Time Management for System Administrators

Don't just read it, but actually implement his teachings and you'll be much better off.

Nicely done. I think you did a great job illustrating some problems in medicine: clueless admin and excess paperwork.
Your speaking was clear and a good tempo. Content was detailed without being boring.
My only critique is to minimize your transitions, like "this is a quote that got me through..."; "so here it goes". While those transitions might add emotional impact or significance, I think it distracts from its own purpose which is to highlight the quote/joke. You're already significant by being on stage in a white coat (non-medical audience) and have impact from your topic. It's nitpicky but you asked. sidenote: as a rule, I hate intros and transitions so maybe it's just me. This is the book I used when learning effecting writing for reference. Surprisingly enjoyable read.
Well done OP!

You mention a diverse set of topics, and you're probably not going to find any one book that covers all of them.

For algorithms for cryptography, signatures, protocols, etc. the definitive go to (last I checked) was still Schneier's Applied Cryptography.

For a history of cryptography, I'm fond of Kahn's The Codebreakers, but be forewarned that it is a large book.

For Network Security and Information Assurance concepts, I like Anderson's Security Engineering, but the state of the art changes so rapidly that it's difficult to recommend a book.

Yeah, and she also has a book called "It's the way you say it."
http://www.amazon.com/Its-Way-You-Say-Well-spoken/dp/1609947436

Otherwise get a voice coach if necessary, and practice practice practice. Once you get a better appreciation of how things work, learn to consciously implement what you've learned on a daily basis.

On a related note, when i was trying to improve my french accent I read out loud and watched a lot of tv and films in french so that i could mimic what they were saying to the point where the accent and mannerisms of that language became second nature.

*definitely learning on his time?

Or are you being defiant by learning on his time against his wishes?

--------

If you want to learn how to write things people will actually want to read (as opposed to just doing it because someone pays you), I'd suggest reading a book or two about how to write well.

On Writing Well by William Zinsser is a classic for non-fiction writers. It has lots of helpful guidelines about how to communicate effectively, even if you have no aspirations of being a magazine writer or book author.

However, there are probably some books about copywriting or some other areas closer to what you're doing.

Along those lines, look for other websites that have the kind of writing you or your boss are aiming for. Try to learn what they do well and what they do poorly, and emulate the good sites in your writing.

Time to have a come-to-Jesus talk with this man. Brush up on your "crucial conversations" skills, let him know your expectations of him, that you support him, and see if he's interested in development opportunities. Basically - be a good leader. He'll either come around or he won't.

I suggest getting a book, since they are typically far more readable.

I first learned Vim with Steve Oualline's book.

More recently, Drew Neil's Practical Vim and Modern Vim are excellent choices.

Your local public library may well have some good books on Vim as well, if not these exact titles.

I've just search the thread and couldn't find a pointers I think is worth mentioning:

• have a diary, a 1 dolar notebook where you write down what you have to do and what you have done each day.
  
  This helps you not only to track your efforts and see what you have to do but also gives you a feeling of accomplishment on the end of each days.
  
  
  Time Management for System Administrators is also a must read IMHO with many great pointers.

If you're interested in the history of cryptography and how different ciphers and their "cracking" methods worked, I can highly recommend David Kahn's *The Codebreakers*. It's a great book

1. https://www.amazon.com/Crucial-Conversations-Talking-Stakes-Second/dp/1469266822 helps with conversations on difficult topics. There may be a revised version by now.
   
   
2. You are engaged to someone and are only now finding this out?
   
   
3. He makes 6 figures and has credit card debt? He is probably not looking to FIRE.
   
   
4. https://www.reddit.com/r/relationship_advice/ is a better place to ask.
   
   
5. Intentionally left blank to make the list seem longer.
   
   
6. If none of the above steps help then do not marry him.

My pleasure! As an aside, Julie Dirksen is plain awesome in many arenas of L&D/workplace performance.

As I said, we (well, ADL) are working on more instructional designer-focused materials. Coming soon!

Depends on the issue and its priority. Managing and juggling your priorities is everything in this sort of job, involving considerations like "is this a fix or an addition?", "how many people is this affecting?", "how long is it going to take me to resolve this?", and "how confident am I that my estimate is accurate?". Then there's always the wildcard of your manager dropping a scanner install for a secretary that is drop-everything-urgent, pulling you away from fixing your domain controller (which will happen).

Related, this book is the standard for this sort of discussion: https://www.amazon.com/Time-Management-System-Administrators-Working/dp/0596007833

The only thing you can control is your own reaction to things. Ignoring him when he's giving you the silent treatment doesn't seem like the best approach, since that's what you're mad at him for doing. For tips on having difficult conversations, I really recommend the book Crucial Conversations. It's a quick read, and you seem like someone who would be able to apply its lessons to other areas of your life, too. Good luck!

This is great.

I haven't finished it yet but it seems to be great so far.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Management-System-Administrators-Thomas-Limoncelli/dp/0596007833

Please tell us more about the benefits of making someone sing and dance as related to IT. Don't worry, I'll wait for you to google some more horseshit.

You want a team building exercise, or something to bring someone out of their shell? There are a ton of them that don't involve stupid shit like this. This gave me anxiety just reading it, and I would not participate. Is this really worth losing a brand new hire? If so your company must have more money than brains.

Recommended reading: A book with literally nothing about singing and dancing in IT.

The Codebreakers: The Comprehensive History of Secret Communication from Ancient Times to the Internet by David Khan Amazon . If you want a synopsis you could read Simon Singh's "The Code Book". Maybe not mind blowing in the metaphysical sense but it certainly is in-depth and informative.

Also, "Tom Crean: Unsung Hero of the Scott and Shackleton Antarctic Expeditions" by Micheal Smith. Any time I get a bit uppity, thinking about Crean puts me back in my box. He was as hard as nails.

Here's a link
http://www.amazon.com/Crucial-Conversations-Talking-Stakes-Second/dp/1469266822

There is another book called crucial confrontations that is excellent, it focuses more on confronting someone about not doing what they promised or were assigned to do. It is excellent for workplace issues or dealing with particularly prickly people.

I'm glad it was helpful. It takes practice to get it down. I practice by going through conversations in my head and mapping it out to get my plan before I talk to the person. It is tricky at first but it gets easier.

THIS. So much. I bought this https://www.amazon.de/Management-System-Administrators-Thomas-Limoncelli/dp/0596007833 and its really helpfull imho, but you should do it.
I have to keep it up. Thanks for reminding me :)

Not exactly admin documents, but this is a very good stuff imho. Maybe not for start, but as soon as you start doing all those little things and you'll have dozens of little things to do - it will help.

Before transitioning into my current PM role I worked for a PR company. The CEO strongly recommended this book for general writing. It's not tech-focused, more general purpose but still a great resource.

http://www.amazon.com/Writing-Well-30th-Anniversary-Edition/dp/0060891548

Yes, a TL;DR would be great. I think in general, it's important to self-help/advise narratives short and to-the-point. I've read way too many self-help books that are mostly fluff, with author repeating either (1) themselves over and over again, or (2) talking about unrelated stories from their life. Good writing ^([1]) in general should be short, succinct, to-the-point, and packed with valuable information.

^([1]) Best book on the topic: On Writing Well.

I would skip certs for now, only because you need to get up to speed quickly.

I would check r/sysadmin and see what they think.

if you want some advice for books and such, then I suggest the following

1)

Networking for Dummies: - You can probably get this one free from the library. I think my library has it

https://www.amazon.com/Networking-Dummies-Computer-Tech/dp/111925776X/ref=asc_df_111925776X/?tag=hyprod-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=312114711253&hvpos=1o1&hvnetw=g&hvrand=472462205621134697&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9019032&hvtargid=pla-327835119737&psc=1

This will give you an over view of networking.

2)

The Accidental SysAdmin Handbook: A Primer for Early Level IT Professionals 1st ed. Edition

https://www.amazon.com/Accidental-SysAdmin-Handbook-Primer-Professionals/dp/1484218167

​



Understand the concepts, processes and technologies that will aid in your professional development as a new system administrator. While every information technology culture is specific to its parent organization, there are commonalities that apply to all organizations.

The Accidental SysAdmin Handbook, Second Edition looks at those commonalities and provides a general introduction to critical aspects associated with system administration. It further acts to provide definitions and patterns for common computer terms and acronyms. 

What You Will Learn

• Build and manage home networking and plan more complex network environments
  
• Manage the network layer and service architectures as well as network support plans
  
• Develop a server hardware strategy and understand the physical vs. virtual server ecosystem
  
• Handle data storage, data strategies and directory services, and central account management
  
• Work with DNS, DHCP, IP v4 and IP v6
  
• Deploy workstations and printers
  
• Manage and use antivirus and security management software
  
• Build, manage and work with intranets and Internet support services
  
  Who This Book Is For
  It is assumed that the reader has little to no experience in a professional information technology environment. 
  
  ​
  
  

3. Time Management for System Administrators: Stop Working Late and Start Working Smart 1st Edition
   
   https://www.amazon.com/Time-Management-System-Administrators-Working/dp/0596007833
   
   ​
   
   Please note - I'm not a system administrator

Here you are, read it for yourself. You seem more intelligent than 99% of your own brain cells.
https://www.amazon.com/Media-Hidden-Agendas-Popular-Culture/dp/0345397746
Media Virus! Hidden Agendas in Popular Culture Paperback – February 6, 1996
The most virulent viruses today are composed of information. In this information-driven age, the easiest way to manipulate the culture is through the media. A hip and caustically humorous McLuhan for the '90s, culture watcher Douglas Rushkoff now offers a fascinating expose of media manipulation in today's age of instant information.

Communicating science can be just as important, and much more difficult than the science itself. You have to capture your audience's attention, avoid jargon as much as possible, and tell a compelling story. There are some great books out there about the subject. Connection is my personal favourite, but Escape from the Ivory Tower, Don't be such a Scientist, and Am I Making Myself Clear are all good reads as well.

Chris Fox wrote a great book about how to find the sweet spot between what you want to write and what is selling - https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01AX23B4Q

> TIA, and sorry for the bad english

A little secret here that I learned from the Ruby community... Knowing English well is what separates a good programmer from a bad one.

"On Writing Well" is an excellent book Link

Make all of your function names descriptive on what they return not what they do (there is a lot of debate about this).

Use namespaces (kind of ugly in PHP), classes, then functions. Procedural is awesome and I'm more of a C guy than a C++ guy. But, organization is key especially if the project involves more than one person.

What a cool example! Thanks for sharing.

is this the book?
https://www.amazon.com/Crucial-Conversations-Talking-Stakes-Second/dp/1469266822

Dr. Jordan Peterson wrote a pretty good template on it. Also if you have have time you could read On Writing Well by William Zinsser.

https://www.scribd.com/document/317511611/Template

https://www.amazon.com/Writing-Well-Classic-Guide-Nonfiction/dp/0060891548/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1497275862&sr=8-1&keywords=On+writing+well

People have already gave some great suggestions. A couple of books you may like:

• Design for the Way People Learn by Julie Dirkson
  
  
• E-Learning and the Science of Instruction by Clark and Meyer / kind of the "textbook" for e-learning instructional design

At one of our P.A. Days were were highly recommended this:

https://www.amazon.com/reader/1885477910?_encoding=UTF8&page=random

It has pictures of the right way and the wrong way on a variety of things. Kind of quick social stories about things like interrupting, asking someone to play, taking turns, keeping calm etc. This is for school-aged kids. There is another one for high school and up.

I haven't bought it yet, but I've been eyeing it. I'm an E.A. and buy entirely too many things for my kids. I don't make nearly what teachers do, lol.

The Billion Dollar Spy is a fascinating story of how the CIA ran a Soviet spy while he was working at an advanced radar facility. It is estimated that the intelligence he passed to America ended up being worth nearly one billion dollars.

First In: An Insider's Account of How the CIA Spearheaded the War on Terror is about the first Americans to land in Afghanistan in the weeks after 9/11

The Code Breakers One of the most comprehensive anthologies on all forms of cryptology of the past 5,000 years.

May I recommend time management for sysadmins. A lovely short, tongue in cheek read. Sometimes a bit dated, mentions palm pilots but the lessons still hold true.

https://www.amazon.com/Management-System-Administrators-Thomas-Limoncelli/dp/0596007833

The future direction of news and how it can be improved
Links in this section are RSS feeds

Jay Rosen is my favorite author on the subject:

• His Posterous
  
  
• His blog... PressThink
  
  
• Twitter
  
  Jeff Jarvis is nothing to shake a stick at either:
  
• Blog - BuzzMachine
  
  
• Twitter
  
  And finally, we can't forget Clay Shirky:
  
  
• Blog
  
  
• Twitter
  
  Presentation design and using visuals to increase group effectiveness.
  Links in this section are to books
  
  
• Nancy Duarte's Slideology and Resonate
  
  
• Garr Reynold's Presentation Zen and The Naked Presenter
  
  
• Dan Roam's Back of the Napkin
  
  
• David Sibbet's Visual Meetings
  
  
• Jeff Conklin's Dialogue Mapping
  
  EDIT: formatting

I also recommend this classic, they're the two books I love the most for fixing my productivity:

https://www.amazon.com/Time-Management-System-Administrators-Working/dp/0596007833/ref=pd_sim_14_2?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=0596007833&pd_rd_r=6AK06QXFWC51K76RR30N&pd_rd_w=0qG8h&pd_rd_wg=4HBBC&psc=1&refRID=6AK06QXFWC51K76RR30N

Get this.

Read it, learn it, love it. Follow it like whatever religion you are a part of.

It's an older book but this one is still got some great tips:

https://www.amazon.ca/Time-Management-System-Administrators-Working/dp/0596007833

> great articulation

You will like this book, then...

"On Writing Well", by William Zinser

https://www.amazon.in/dp/B0090RVGW0/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1

• "The Practice of Systems and Network Administration" by Thomas Limoncelli, Christina Hogan, and Strata Chalup
  
  
• "Time Management for System Administrators" by Thomas Limoncelli
  
  
• "Getting Things Done" by David Allen
  
  
• "UNIX and Linux System Administration Handbook" by Evi Nemeth, Garth Snyder, Trent R. Hein, and Ben Whaley
  
  
• "Essential System Administration" by Æleen Frisch
  
  Even more formatting fun!
  
  By the way, thank you for this list.

Read "Write to Market" by Chris Fox. It's free on KU or $2.99 to buy. I found it extremely helpful.

Buy this book: http://www.amazon.com/Management-System-Administrators-Thomas-Limoncelli/dp/0596007833

Seriously, one of the best reads ever and exceedingly helpful.

I found myself getting yellow stickies and marking interesting passages/suggestions as I read through. It now resembles some sort of ornate flower. I like kd5vmo's suggestion: return to the book from time to time and review the sections relevant to the day's events.

Pick up his "Time Management for System Administrators" book as well; as TheSojourner said, you'll likely find it won't fully sink in until you're a couple years into your career:

http://www.amazon.com/Management-System-Administrators-Thomas-Limoncelli/dp/0596007833

There are 1001 books on the subject. If you're looking for recommendations, I'll plug On Writing Well by William Zinsser.

If you're looking for one simple answer, it's this: get to the point. People get bored really, really, fast, especially on-line, so every sentence, every word, has to do something for you. Don't just write. Write with a purpose in mind, and fight for it.

Read good writing. The New Yorker is (arguably) the best magazine in the world. Read that. Read The New York Times. Read anything that seems exceptional to you.

Start small. Look for a volunteer position. People always need writers. If you're lucky, find someone to teach you. Work for someone else before you work for yourself.

Well I'll be the first one to give you generic information that you could have found with the search function.

You just do the needful.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/032194318X/ref=wl_it_dp_o_pC_nS_ttl?_encoding=UTF8&colid=3IXCECMPTZ0C5&coliid=IJFXHOHENJ2FH

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0321492668/ref=wl_it_dp_o_pC_nS_ttl?_encoding=UTF8&colid=3IXCECMPTZ0C5&coliid=I3J2AR8V86JZMD

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0596007833/ref=wl_it_dp_o_pC_nS_ttl?_encoding=UTF8&colid=3IXCECMPTZ0C5&coliid=I2OPTI4J0S4UG2

Good screwdriver set.

https://www.ifixit.com/Store/Tools/64-Bit-Driver-Kit/IF145-299

A network tone tester in case you need to map out your network and document everything. Also functions as a basic cable tester.

https://www.amazon.com/Fluke-Networks-MT-8200-60-KIT-IntelliTone-Toner/dp/B00N2S6RPY/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1473701817&sr=8-5&keywords=fluke+networks+tester

A punch down tool.

https://www.amazon.com/TRENDnet-Punch-Krone-Blade-TC-PDT/dp/B0000AZK4D/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1473702091&sr=8-1&keywords=punchdown

An ethernet crimper.

https://www.amazon.com/TRENDnet-RJ-45-RJ-12-RJ-11-TC-CT68/dp/B0000AZK4G/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1473702137&sr=8-1&keywords=ethernet+crimper

A quick cable stripper.

https://www.amazon.com/Monoprice-Stripper-Cutter-Cables-107051/dp/B0069LRBU6/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1473702190&sr=8-3&keywords=ethernet+stripper

A usb hard drive dock.

https://www.amazon.com/Sabrent-External-Duplicator-Function-EC-HDD2/dp/B00IKC14OG/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1473702021&sr=8-2&keywords=usb+hard+drive+dock

A notebook.

https://www.amazon.com/Rhodia-Meeting-Book-Made-France/dp/B001DCDSW6/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1473702220&sr=8-1&keywords=rhodia+meeting+book

Your necessities may vary, this applies to more of a one-man shop, and there's plenty of other things you'll want to get that I don't have listed here depending on your job.

I dunno how much you should get paid.

Teeline seems a viable choice. You can find people online or in real life to discuss the finer points with, and you can learn it from one of the best textbooks ever written for any shorthand system here is link

Bakerwrite is heavily promoted, I don't know if it's also popular. If you come across anyone who is using it you could ask for their impressions. I believe you're the first person to ever mention it here.

Dearborn's version of Speedwriting can be typed on a keyboard (the later versions cannot be), and she claimed she could type it as fast as anyone could speak, although it's unknown if anyone else ever reached that speed. I assume you've seen the nearly abandoned subreddit for Classic Speedwriting here is link where the wiki and sidebar contain useful info.

I've dabbled in both Teeline and Speedwriting. I think the ease of learning is similar. You can stop learning Teeline at a very basic level or dig deeper and learn more principles for writing more quickly, and I think the same is true of Speedwriting although Dearborn never said so explicitly.

Unless you're a journalist I don't think the differences between US English and UK English are large enough to preclude you using Speedwriting. Some words are spelled differently, a very few are pronounced differently ("Schedule"), and the sequence of words is sometimes a little different, but not hugely.

Now, the terms used in newspaper articles, that's a different story. Frequent words about court actions, government agencies and offices, etc are quite different and Teeline has abbreviations for the UK terms.

I'd recommend the book Crucial Conversations. Fantastic book on communication.

Jed Baker's social skills picture book is pretty nice for children with autism if you're looking for more of a "teaching" book

http://www.amazon.com/Picture-Teaching-emotion-communication-children/dp/1885477910/ref=la_B001JP01XG_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1380783367&sr=1-1

> And not to forget things

I hope you're not trying to keep it all in your head. Your head asplode. In the absence of external issue tracking, I'd likely roll all the issues (or at least the ones I've spotted) into my personal time management system so they don't get lost. If it's not written down somewhere, I will forget it. (I don't know where you are with WRT time management; for myself, I'm in the middle of trying personal Kanban against my current GTD setup, but if you're new to TM, Limoncelli's book is a good place to start.) But all that is just a temporary fix.

> because no issue tracking exists her and some people actually vocally despise and reject this idea.

The "why" here would be as interesting as the "who." If it's fellow IT teammates, I'd find out if it's opposition to performance metrics. I've long resisted using ticket metrics to judge personal performance because they're crap for that even when people aren't gaming the metrics, so you might need to get assurances that your management won't try to do that. If it's your users, perhaps they've had problems with tickets falling into a black hole never to be seen again, in which case you have some organizational issues to sort out and some trust to rebuild.

In any case, it sounds like you know the value of an issue tracking system. Hold onto that in case it takes a while to get everyone to come around on the idea.

It sounds like you have a problem organizing your projects. I'm going to recommend a book that I think will help you out. I saw it recommended in this subreddit a few weeks back, and it's really helped me.

http://www.amazon.com/Management-System-Administrators-Thomas-Limoncelli/dp/0596007833

No, I don't. I work in that very place locally. And I like it.

Sure, we have problems. No place is immune to problems - but its how you deal with them, and how they're addressed.

We've all had Crucial Conversations training, and actually put it to use. We support a work-life balance for real, and not the bullshit claims that are said but never acted on.

This is one of the few jobs that I like showing up day to day. There's shit we can't dismiss because its external to us - but even up to the CEO all support us.

Hi there, I like to read On Writing Well yearly to calibrate my writing (lhttps://www.amazon.ca/Writing-Well-Classic-Guide-Nonfiction/dp/0060891548). It's a writing book that doesn't feel like a writing book.

That and of course elements of style... But that one feels like a writing book

You could leave like suggested or you could talk to your supervisor. Or HR. Or someone up above you. You report to someone, right? They're responsible for you and your workload. The only way they'll hire someone else is if there's a demonstrated need to do so, they won't go looking to hire more people for funsies.

If there is too much to do for one person then document that and show that to your higher ups. If they ignore you or promise to deliver a change but never do then, sure, leave. Otherwise you may have created a new role.

Another option is to show them that you need time away from break fix to automate or address root issues to reduce your tickets. There are a couple of ways to approach this. I would start with reading Time Management for System Adminsitrators. That book has suggestions for people in your situation about how to get a break from constant interruptions.

It's not a family where you can hide your emotions forever, it's a business. Be professional and get some relief. Don't let a job affect your life outside of work like this.

Time management for system administrators: READ IT!

Best book of the sort I've ever read.

I agree with what others have said and I also have a book recommendation, "Time Management for System Administrators". There's lots of good ideas and suggestions in it.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Management-System-Administrators-Thomas-Limoncelli/dp/0596007833

Sounds like Time Management for System Administrators (amazon) might be for you. I've started reading it after good comments I saw here, it's decent so far.

If you're looking for a book about communicating better, I'd recommend Crucial Conversations.

Old but still good

Might not be a technical best practice, but is a best practice in terms of mind set on how you manage your time.

I clicked here to suggest that book, but not surprised someone already has. It's the first comprehensive book about how to do the job of system administration.

Tom's Time Management for sysadmins book is another one I recommend.

Related: I really liked this book http://www.amazon.com/Dont-Be-Such-Scientist-Substance/dp/1597265632
The author bloviates a little too much, but the core themes are crucial. For anyone preparing a scientific presentation, I would recommend preparing as you normally do, then videotaping yourself. Then read the book and implement some of the points, and then videotape again and compare.

Limoncelli is the man! His book Time Management for System Administrators is amazing.

You're a graduate student, not an artist. There's so much "artistic freedom" in here that the paper is twice as long as it needs to be and it takes forever to make its point. That's why I'm not reading the whole thing. I don't mean to be insulting. Sorry.

In general, I think this is a really helpful book. More academics should read it.

I'd like to recommend this to the author.

Treat yourself to On Writing Well: The Classic Guide to Writing Nonfiction by William Zinsser. It's not only one of the finest books on writing nonfiction, it's also a damn good read. That means the book itself is a case study in writing well. I see a previous person made this recommendation, too.

Someone recommended this book to me :

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0596007833/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0596007833&linkCode=as2&tag=steste-20

Its pretty decent and it helped me get a lot of things buttoned down.

> But how can we be manipulated so easily?

Read this, then read this, and then read this. None of these books can be condensed in to an ELI5 answer, and the third book has some dated examples (although they are just as relevant as ever), but they are well worth your time and have the answers you seek.

This book helped me a lot and changed my life I strongly recommend - Time Management for System Administrators https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0596007833/ref=cm_sw_r_sms_c_api_i_r4WWCbJPR5RPA

get off reddit and don't ask people wasting their time on a metal forum how to properly utilize their time. /s

On a more serious note, I really enjoyed this book, might not apply to you if you aren't in software engineering although I think much of it should apply to life in general: https://www.amazon.com/Time-Management-System-Administrators-Working/dp/0596007833

If you really want to know what good writing is, read this: http://www.amazon.com/Writing-Well-30th-Anniversary-Edition/dp/0060891548

You and he could benefit from these [important] (http://www.amazon.com/Elements-Style-Fourth-William-Strunk/dp/020530902X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1465206715&sr=1-1&keywords=strunk+and+white+elements+of+style) [books] (http://www.amazon.com/Writing-Well-Classic-Guide-Nonfiction/dp/0060891548/ref=sr_1_9?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1465206715&sr=1-9&keywords=strunk+and+white+elements+of+style).

Check out The Practice of System and Network Administration, and Time Management for Systems Administrators.

Oh, and nagios/icinga is free and totally rocks, as does spiceworks.

• Time Management for System Administrators
  
  
• You have a team, use them. Rotate people through being the person to interrupt. Train your users that the person working at a certain desk, or with a big "Ask Me!" above their monitor is the person to talk to.
  
  
• Meeting room, just you and your laptop.
  
  
• my favorite "Excuse me, can you show me how to put a vacation rule up" - wiki that stuff
  

I only have recommendations on generalized books. The Practice of System and Network Administration has already been mentioned but I would also recommend TIme Management for System Administrators. Those 2 books are my "Every person that works in IT should read these" books.

Chris Fox has a very good book on this.

https://www.amazon.com/Write-Market-Deliver-Faster-Smarter-ebook/dp/B01AX23B4Q

The Social Skills Picture Book is a really good photographic guide to managing every day social situations too.

You might start with Time Management for System Administrators.


Aside from that, start small. Create a OneNote notebook with tabs and pages for different systems and procedures. It doesn't have to be the best organized thing in the world, but at least start writing things down somewhere. You can work on organizing it later.

vim can do almost anything

it's often used for programming but could be customized easily

http://www.thebend.ca/work/notepad/zenburn.png

this book would answer all questions

http://www.amazon.com/Vi-iMproved-VIM-Steve-Oualline/dp/0735710015/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1279494717&sr=8-2

It's not specific to blogging but I think you'll be very well served by reading William Zinsser's "On Writing Well."

Time Management for System Administrators: Stop Working Late and Start Working Smart

The Practice of System and Network Administration, Second Edition

Windows Server 2008 R2 Unleashed

Windows Server 2016 Unleashed includes Content Update Program

The Practice of Cloud System Administration: DevOps and SRE Practices for Web Services, Volume 2

The Practice of System and Network Administration: Volume 1: DevOps and other Best Practices for Enterprise IT

Network Warrior: Everything You Need to Know That Wasn't on the CCNA Exam

I would start with Cover & Thomas' book, read concurrently with a serious probability book such as Resnick's or Feller's.

I would also take a look at Mackay's book later as it ties notions from Information theory and Inference together.

At this point, you have a grad-student level understanding of the field. I'm not sure what to do to go beyond this level.

For crypto, you should definitely take a look at Goldreich's books:

Foundations Vol 1

Foundations Vol 2

Modern Crypto

Dude, buy a copy of this book.

https://www.amazon.com/Writing-Well-Classic-Guide-Nonfiction/dp/0060891548

It's not the be all, end all. But it will really help.

I'm going to go ahead and take the easy answers: On Writing Well and Elements of Style. Both a must for any writer.

On Writing Well
has a good chapter on technical writing.

Katz and Lindell is the undergrad gold standard on intro cryptography. Goldreich is a good graduate-level intro if Katz and Lindell is too basic. Goldreich also has a second volume.

Maybe reading this book would be a good long-term investment