Sounds a bit like nostalgia isn't what it used to be.

For me, gaming has been significantly less over the last few years. Is it nostalgia that games used to be better? Not actually. In the last few years I've played one "recent" game that I've paid full price for - Skyrim. Couple of years ago I played a lot of World of warcraft, but I couldn't stand Kung Fu Pandas. I do pick up some games off Steam Sales, and these have included e.g. FTL and Bioshock Infinite, but neither had really any staying power.

Recent games I've played:
- Quest for Glory (entire series, I to V)
- Privateer
- Wing Commander I & II
- X-Wing is ongoing right now, hoping to move on to TIE fighter soon
- Legend Adventures (Gateway I & II, Eric the Unready)
- Dungeon Master

Of course, I remember all these, having gone over them a lot of times before. As such, they don't draw me to the screen as much as they did on previous iterations - hence I play less.

Anyway, I'm really hoping that the new "indie" projects will be successful. I've shelled out money for Star Citizen, Shroud of Avatar and Tides of Numenera. Hoping for a good, modern replacement for Wing Commander/Privateer, Ultimas and Baldur's Gate/Torments, respectively. If even one of them pans out, it'll be a good year.

Also, I shudder to think of the potential mess caused by allowing personal laptops to VPN in the first place.

Depends. With proper endpoint assessment tools, you can obtain some reasonable security. BYOD is kind of a rising trend, so a generally accepted method seems to be "Sure, you can connect your own laptop or tablet or whatever to the network, but you'll use Anyconnect and the HostScan has to report conformance". This mostly stems from the fact that in all the meetings folks are starting to use their fancy iPads instead of bulky laptops...and are expecting same services being available.

I've seen some customer actually think of this as a benefit - savings in IT budget. If workers are willing to maintain their own devices on their own time and all the IT has to do is a compliance check, all the better for the company.

Lync stores the info in two databases, LCSCDR and QoEMetrics. The first one has info on all sessions, other one has quality data. It's not like it's some super-secret database, MS has full specs in Technet, for example http://technet.microsoft.com/e... shows what's exactly stored in SessionDetails table.

Yes, such info *could* be used to do data-mining. Same info could be used to optimize least cost routing, gathering statistics on network performance, planning upgrades, and whatever you like. I've personally crafted a few reports from those DBs on how much folks are calling PSTN from Lync on various customer sites, so they can decide what is the priority in upgrading E1/T1 to VoIP-based PSTN connection.

It's not a conspiracy. Server admins can look at what kind of stuff you are doing on such servers.

It's a niche project, but looks like getting a good techie phone is niche these days. Uses N900 displays and casing, so resolution is not getting any better, but has lots more processing power.

Jolla might be an option once they get the QWERTY "other half" available.

Happened to me for my first real job interview. I answered "I'm really uncomfortable with lying. So if I'm working on a project where it's starting look like the product will be crap, you don't want to put me to a meeting with a customer or I'll tell him that too".

And I got the job.

Note that it was early 2000 and dotcom bubble was still going, so maybe they took me in despite of that answer, not because...

Out in stores before the movie is finished!

We are currently monitoring six distributed sites using http://mathias-kettner.com/checkmk.html. It still relies on Nagios 3.x core, but they are going to replace that soon ("micro-core"). From what I've heard, Nagios development started really going downhill at Nagios 4.0, and this plugin issue is yet one more such symptom.

As the others have said, tailor your resume to emphasize that you are jack-of-all-trades.

I'm a CCIE and have a doctorate in computer networks, have authored an RFC, and now approaching 20 years of experience in the field, which supposedly puts me into the camp of network expert.

Expect, in reality, my work in last six months has consisted of e.g.:
    - Database design, operations and reporting (MSSQL and Mysql)
    - AJAX programming (Javascript), and all the intricasies that bunch of different Internet Explorer versions mean in practice
    - Suddendly familiarizing myself with using hardware load balancers with Microsoft Lync (well, at least somewhat related to networking...)
    - Writing a Python-based software for black-box testing microcontrollers
    - Deployment, integration and other support work for an Asterisk-based Contact Center/PBX system ...yeah, of course there's been the other bits that I'm supposedly better suited for (firewall experties, some dimensioning for network devices, and so on), but the position is pretty officially jack-of-all-trades.

    So if you are one, just proudly wear that badge. Of course, it's hard to tailor a resume for buzzword-searching headhunters, but as far as positions are concerned, one of the good signs I've seen for a true "JoaT" job ad is one where there are very few *specific* requirements (only something like "experienced in the field") is listed, and then in the "this counts as an advantage" column they have every acronym under the sun...means they don't really have a specialist position in mind, and might mean that they don't actually know what the job is. They are going to go over the resumes and actually tailor the position *for* you.

My wife is interested in getting a new laptop, as her old one is running XP and starting to be a bit slow for the indented purpose (video editing). They use Windows 7 at work with corporate desktop, and she'd like to have that at home too. Only problem: If I take a look at any laptop available it pretty much comes bundled with Windows 8.

Technically I have "downgrade" rights if the computer comes bundled with Win 8 pro, but I have heard that there are a ton of problems with getting proper drivers and so on (laptop manufacturer might not even provide drivers for Win 7).

Also, I'd still like to wait a bit, since I'm going to upgrade the house's wireless to 802.11ac and laptops are just now starting to arrive with the gigabit wireless bundled. So if it's troublesome getting Win 7 working with new machines right now, I wonder how next-to-impossible it will be by the end of the year.

Try Viva-lite's full spectrum CFLs. (http://www.viva-lite.us/). We have our whole house fitted with them. They come on immediately with full power (apart from the E14-based 11W models, "candle lamp" need a bit of warm-up time), give really nice light especially for working and have a really long life (and 6 month warranty).

Quality-wise, there have been a few occasional bad batches where I have had to call in that warranty, but of all my bulbs that didn't fail in the first 6 months, they ALL have lasted thus far. I got my first ones just for testing like 6 or 7 years ago, and they are still working just fine. Now have about 20+ of such bulbs in the house. They also have fluorescent light tubes (not compact) and full-spectrum LEDs in the product line and they work just as well.

Only drawback: Price. I have paid 20-30 EUR for a bulb, and when you are outfitting your entire apartment it can be a rather big one-time cost. However, like I said, these can last for 10 years...myself, I switched to these one room at a time when the existing bulbs burned out to spread the cost over a longer period.

I don't know about OpenVPN, but for example Cisco Anyconnect is pretty flexible for this kind of stuff. It uses IKEv2+IPSec if possible, then scales down to DTLS, and finally just https (even through proxy if necessary), and as such, can pretty much punch through any firewall. In addition, you get endpoint assessment so you can for example enforce that any updates and such things are installed to the employee's device (whatever that might be).

I have published a paper through Elsevier when I was working on my PhD. At least the contract I signed with them states that I retain the right to distribute the papers if I so choose, for example, on my own website.

Of course, if the distrubution happens through a third party...that might be a different matter.

One of my customers uses good old PSTN (or circuit-switched GSM data) to contact their automation devices around the world. They dial in once a day and report status (or in emergencies), and software updates and such are pushed by dialing out towards them. And yes, that platform is *still* being actively developed...(The installed base is huge).