Category: Information Technology

Information technology has long been an interest and a passion. Over the years, I have done the following to pursue this part of me.

I earned an Associate in Technical Arts in Web Application Development degree, as well as certificates in:

  • Business Systems Analysis
  • Requirements Analysis
  • Database Theory and Design

I also studied the following topics:

  • Cisco Networking
  • Desktop Support
  • Cloud Computing Systems, mainly AWS

The following posts are based on that interested.

AI Impacts On Admin Work

Carl Setzer1 Comment
woman in professional wear seated in front of monitor

I’ve heard a LOT about the expected impacts of AI on developers. When I was laid off right at the beginning of the pandemic, I opted to make a career pivot into Web Development, so I’ve paid attention to this trend closely. Add in all the lay-offs within the whole developer community, and this career, so recently highly lucrative, has become rather bleak. So much so that I’ve been looking backwards at returning to admin work (which is one of my two jobs right now). Now I see that admin work will be getting hit pretty hard by AI, too.

Earlier this week, I was on a Google Meet. With that, we used the built-in tool to create meeting notes. And, my God, it worked nicely! I was quite impressed. Now, as a long-time admin, taking and distributing meeting notes has been a significant part of my work. I’m confident that this will be done by AI going forward. And I expect that transition to be pretty quick.

Another key part of being an admin is scheduling travel. I expected AI to be able to coordinate travel pretty well. So, I did an experiment where I gave ChatGPT a very rough itinerary for a multi-stop business trip, asked it to recommend flights and hotels. It did a nice job with a few extra prompts. I had a pretty solid itinerary within 2 minutes. Impressive.

After just these two considerations, I am confident that AI will revolutionize Admin work significantly. With the job outlook for this work bleak (BLS projects a loss of 12,400 admin jobs between 2024 and 2034), and AI eroding the work, I expect it to become harder to find roles. (Yet it’s the main type of work I’m recruiters reach out to me for…go figure). It makes my decision to pivot to web development during the pandemic, and now shifting to data analysis seem that much more prudent.

Anyway, onwards!

Ah, Good Ol’ Email Scams

Carl Setzer1 Comment
close up shot of fake money

This one was sent to me today. Now, back in the day I used Dashlane, but I deleted that account years ago. That was my first clue that this was a scam. Now, let’s explore this further.

This one has a few other easy ways to see that it’s a scam. The first is the email address it was sent from. Notice, the sender is NOT Dashlane.

The second comes when you hover over the action button:

Again, nothing to do with Dashlane.

There’s no way to know if the scammers “know” I had a Dashlane account due a data breach which has been dumped on the dark web, or is just a random guess. They usually send these sorts of messages out by the thousands: a purely numbers game. But it doesn’t matter. The investment from the criminal is minimal, so they only need a few clicks to make this payoff.

In the end, be careful out there.

Tech Support Flowchart

Carl Setzer
pexels-photo-4705636.jpeg

As someone who works in IT, I find this flowchart funny. Well, I’m pretty amused by everything that xkcd posts.

Anyway, I hope you have a delightful and refreshing weekend.

Seth Godin’s “The Use (And Design) Of Tools”

Carl Setzer1 Comment

As I read Seth’s post today, I started wondering how tools like AI can be impacted by, or actually impact the attitude of “Too Busy To Learn”. I think one of AI’s key potentials is to make the need to understand the tool’s operation non-essential (think coding).

Mainly, I think the future will be dominated by those who understand the tools, not by the people who can simply operate them.

It’s Love Your SysAdmin Day

Carl Setzer1 Comment
person encoding in laptop

Well, it was a few days ago.

TLDR: This manager was forced to let the best sysadmin he’d ever worked with go (ah, economics!). So, he posted this post to Reddit, and got amazing results.

I have to let go of my best SysAdmin. Not because he failed—because we did
byu/namidul insysadmin

The community rose up and have kinda crowdsourced said admin a new job. This is so cool to see! This is the kind of person I strive to be, so it’s particularly nice to see that valued and rewarded.

Aspirations are a good thing to have, methinks.

All Hail The Sysadmins!

Carl Setzer
ethernet cables plugged on a server rack

I’ve long loved the webcomic xkcd. This one drifted through my inbox and thought it worthy of all the sysadmins I know.

As far as my own sysadmin skills, I do hate running cables and (shudder) crimping connectors. As I only have one thumb, these evolutions are rather uncomfortable, and sometimes painful.

Anyway, sysadmin types out there, you have my respect and admiration! Keep that uptime high!

Today’s Podcast

Carl Setzer2 Comments
an artificial intelligence illustration on the wall

One of my favorite things is listening to podcasts on my walks. During today’s walk (you can check that out on Strava, if you care) I listened to Saturday’s (June 8) Geekwire podcast: “How This Professor teaches AI and thinks about human creativity“. Featuring Léonard Boussioux, I appreciated his positive outlook on the potential that AI offers. I agree with those folks who think AI is in a hype-cycle. However, that doesn’t mean that there are no gains or innovations that will be coming out of this. I deeply believe this technology will be significantly transformative. However, I doubt it will be as destructive as some predict, nor as positive as others are thinking.

I also appreciate that they touched on the sustainability issues surrounding AI. Huge amounts of energy and water are part of this equation. These will be key elements for the efficacy of this technology.

I have a few ideas that I want to explore with AI tools. These tools will be critical ones to learn and master. I’m confident many jobs that will be replaced by AI, will create new roles on the other side of this equation.

They had a side discussion looking at the ethics of using AI to enhance photography, and what should be disclosed. Todd Bishop, one of Geekwire’s founders, used an AI tool to enhance (de-noise is the phrase they used) an image. When I first heard the situation, I thought that disclosing was unnecessary. Mainly, I don’t see any difference between “de-noising” and color-correcting, or cropping. As they went on and explored the issue, I shifted to thinking disclosure is the wisest course. As I respect the distrust many feel towards AI, so it makes sense to just be conscientious.

There’s so much that AI is challenging in our lives. I really appreciated this unique dive into it.

What do you think? Let me know in the comments.

Another Step Forward

Carl Setzer5 Comments
woman working on computer in office

Today I finished Google’s Operating Systems and You: Becoming a Power User certificate. I have two more to complete in order to finish the Google IT Support course. Initially, it was nice to refresh on a lot of the material that I studied completing my Associates in Information Systems. We’re pushing through that now, which is pretty cool. In particular, diving deeper into Linux is something I’ve really wanted to do. This wasn’t terribly deep, but I enjoyed the Linux focused labs, which took me a bit.

I’m still exploring what I want to do after this cert. There are so many options within the world of tech. I could dive deeper into systems administration, or I could move into data analysis. I really enjoyed my studies into data systems and structures. And I enjoy my current IT role.

More soon!

More Web Dev Projects

Carl Setzer2 Comments
data codes through eyeglasses

I didn’t post yesterday, so I’ll post about the project I did yesterday and the one I did today. Yesterday, the project was for an Animated Countdown timer. Using CSS and JavaScript to create this animation was pretty cool. My consternation came from a bunch of mistyped elements in my code. Finding those little glitches (like typing “igm” vs “img”) gets wearying after awhile.

Today’s project was an Image Carousel. I only made one code error, but it was a sneaky one. The images would not sit well in their frame. Turns out, I tried to set the size to 500px, but I had a stray “1” in there (1500px…opps). Once I found that, viola!

These are rather small projects, where I’m mostly trying to refresh my understanding of HTML, CSS and JavaScript. I want to be far better than I am, even if I don’t end up becoming a coder. I really enjoy this and want to grow.

I also am working on Google’s IT Support Professional and Project Management certificates. Both of these are valuable skills, and useful things to understand regardless of role in IT.

Sigh…”Job Cuts in Big Tech Continue Unabated”

Carl Setzer
code projected over woman

The news about big tech’s layoff woes are hard to miss. In my feed today came this article: “Job Cuts in Big Tech Continue Unabated“. Yeah, more glum news for those of us trying to make a career in tech right now. I really appreciate Sheharyar’s insights into what’s going on. Things like:

  • “The last commonly held belief for layoffs was that businesses hired way too aggressively during the COVID-19 pandemic…”
  • “artificial intelligence has now sparked a demand for professionals that can tame the beast and help make products that companies can then sell to others, or, just make them better at what they do. Hiring specialized professionals isn’t cheap, so of course, companies are letting go of people that don’t necessarily possess the skills that they’re looking for while bringing on those that do”
  • More succinctly “while some jobs are being made redundant, others are springing up all the time.”

Big tech companies don’t seem to be struggling, though.

  • “Meta’s results stood out, so much so that its stocks jumped a whopping 20%…”
  • “Over at Alphabet, the Google parent saw Q4 revenue of $86.31 billion, up 13% year over year…”
  • “Apple posted quarterly revenue of $119.6 billion, up 2% year over year…”
  • “Microsoft….booked an 18% year over year increase in quarterly revenue to $62 billion…”
  • And Amazon? Their “Q4 net sales increased 14% to $170 billion while net income increased to $10.6 billion…”

This all reinforces the notion that tech has simply overhired. The video below talks about that, too.

Of course, the billion dollar question is “how long will this last?” At what point do we expect these thousands of tech workers to get re-assimilated into the machine? Late in 2023, I was hearing pundits predict that 2024 was going to see the end of layoffs and a rebound in hiring. Well, that hasn’t happened…not yet, at least. Of course, we’re only two months in.

Also, I think that the notion of specializing might be less than optimal for your tech career. Building out as much complimentary skill as you can seems to be wise. And, in the short-term at least, developing skills with AI seems a solid bet for finding employment. Will AI find itself in the dust bin of the latest hypecycle? Hard to say, though it’s stayed the course stronger than crypto and Web 3.0.

What do you think? I’d love to hear your thoughts.