Tech Tilt

JNCIS-SP Exam Strategy, Study Materials, Thoughts, and Tips

A few months ago, I was exposed to Juniper as an alternative to Cisco, which has been my primary networking life to date. I took and passed the composite CCNA before the certpocalypse of 2020 using the Cisco OCG and Neil Anderson’s excellent Udemy course. If you’ve touched Juniper, then you know just how different that first exposure can be inside the Junos CLI.

Juniper has really been pushing discounts and training with their certs. As I dug into the Juniper cert framework, I reviewed the free CCNA-to-JNCIA content on Juniper’s Learning Portal to get a 75% off discount and passed the JNCIA-Junos within a couple of weeks. If you’re at or above CCNA-level, this should be a pretty easy test for most people.

JNCIS-SP Study Materials

On to the JNCIS-SP, I found a lot of new content within the exam topics – like MPLS, IS-IS, and Q-in-Q. However, it was all stuff that I wanted to learn more about, so this should be a fun ride.

Dymo Rhino 5200 and 4200 Review – The Ultimate Cable Labelers

If you spend any significant amount of time managing cabling in the IT, audio, video, or lighting worlds, then you may have already met the Dymo Rhino 5200. If not, allow me to introduce you.

The Rhino 5200 lives in my tool bag and is rarely far from my reach. While it’s not cheap at $113-ish, it’s one of those tools that is worth its weight in gold. It’s also available in kit form for $140-$160 with an included case, charger, and labels.

Of course, you can print basic labels with the Rhino 5200; however, the magic for wrangling and documenting cables are found in label presets for “Cable” and “Panels.”

How to Opt-Out of PreScreened Credit and Loan Junk Mail in 5 Minutes

master card visa credit card gold — Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

Consumer credit reporting agencies are selling our consumer credit info to marketers, which leads to daily piles of prescreened credit card and loan offers arriving in our mailboxes.

Any business that requests a consumer report from a consumer reporting agency (CRA), like Equifax or Experian, must have a permissible purpose to do so. When a credit card company wants to pull a massive list of consumers to send prescreened notices, it just asks CRAs for our financial info and they provide it for a price. Federal law allows this practice as a “permissible purpose” under the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA).

Why? Why? Why?

Because big banks and insurance companies lobby the representatives that we elect.

The “oh, we do something for the people” part comes in as a rarely-used exception that requires CRAs to allow consumers to opt-out of prescreened offers, which takes us out of the lists that banks and insurance companies purchase from CRAs.

UniFi Protect G3 Instant Camera Review

UniFi Protect G3 Instant Camera Table-Top Setup

The UniFi Protect G3 Instant Camera has been hard to catch in-stock on Ubiquiti’s website lately; however, they seem to be getting a little easier to grab. I managed to get one the other day after checking the Ubiquiti subreddit and finding a 5-hour-old post about their availability. Unfortunately, the stock is still limited at the time of this review to a single camera per customer.

For $29, it’s hard to pass up this camera for any use in a UniFi Protect system.

Using an HP Z420 as a 20TB Plex Server

On a budget, I believe there is no better bang-for-buck Plex server than loading up an old HP Z-series workstation with a solid Xeon CPU and six internal hard drives.

My journey with Plex started on a humble iMac with an external USB 3.0 hard drive back around 2014 or so. That turned into a couple of large external drives that was really too much for the aging iMac to handle as we moved into a 4K library.

After I attempted to convert an old gaming PC into a 24/7 use and the hardware was just failing, I did a proper upgrade. I had previously set up an HP Z420 for a friend and decided to bite the bullet for myself as well.

Guest Access: Using Microsoft Teams with People Outside of Your Company

In the new age of remote work by default, it’s amazing how much work can actually get done from home when work has to get done from home. With a laptop and an Internet connection, we’ve found a way to collaborate with our staff and connect with our communities. And, finally, I’ve seen staff using email reply-alls less to team communication (to be clear, it’s still there though) and a greater push to focused communication with Microsoft Teams.

It’s a platform that every Office 365 user has previously had the ability to use; however, so few have taken the time to get to know it and the collaboration power that it offers. There are shortcomings for sure but if you already pay for it, there’s so much value that it offers – particularly in today’s world of figuring out how to work from home.

One of the features we’ve had to explore and educate users on – is using Microsoft Teams with some people who are not part of our organization’s Active Directory and Office 365 user group. Fortunately, it’s a pretty simple process since Teams allows guest users as a built-in feature.

CIPP/US Exam Strategy, Study Materials, Thoughts, and Tips

The IAPP’s Certified Information Privacy Professional is the current industry go-to for privacy practitioner certifications. There are several flavors based on jurisdictions – CIPP/E (for Europe), CIPP/US (for US), etc.

CIPP/US was the first certification that I obtained from the IAPP. The exam was harder than I thought it would be but I still managed to pass on the first attempt. Below are my thoughts and tips on studying for the exam and how to approach the exam.

Following Uber/Postmates’ Failed Injunction Attempt in ‘Gig Worker’ Suit, New Class Action ‘Crossley v. California’ is Filed

After a judge rejected injunctive relief to Uber and Postmates in their challenge to AB5, the California gig worker law, a new round of plaintiffs have filed an exhaustive Constitutional challenge to the law in federal court.

Manually Updating the Firmware on Dell R610

Recently, I purchased an auction lot of a dozen or so Dell PowerEdge R610 and R710 servers from an auction. Part of my initial evaluation of the servers was to update the firmware. I started with the R610 servers.