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Showing posts from November, 2022

We're Leaving Together, But Still It's Farewell | Tech Topic Connection - Network Security

                  Throughout this course and through the recently posted topics on the TEC101 blog, we were introduced to the topic of Network Security and the importance of it both as an individual and as an institution. In an increasingly digital world, more and more applications and devices are able to connect to the internet. With nearly everything in your life connected to the internet, it is crucial for you to take the step required to properly safeguard your personal information. There is no shortage of people who will try to lie, cheat, and exploit technology for nefarious reasons which means continuous learning and evolving is a critical component of our future with technology. Experian, a major analytics and credit reporting agency, reports that fraud incidents relating to identity theft amounted to over 6 billion dollars in losses in 2021 (Akin, 2022). While phone calls and text messages were the ...

Password ≠ Password - Security Is Everyone's Responsibility

In a world that is becoming more and more integrated with technology, network security will continue to be a major focus. Ensuring user and company data is secured is like trying to hit a moving target. When an area of vulnerability is found and resolved, another will inevitably be found. There is no shortage of people who will try to exploit technology with nefarious intentions so continuously learning and evolving network security will be a critical component of our future. When I was young and newly interested into the world of computers and technology, I was always fascinated by the computer savvy and idolized computer nerd type characters in television and film. I also recall someone telling me about a school that taught you how to hack computers and networks so you can learn to defend against attacks. Although dismissed at the time, the thought stayed with me through the years and now that a career in IT is a real possibility for me that conversation and memory resurfaced. Major ...

You can buy a house 100% online - but should you? Computers & Real Estate

Computers and Real Estate – that combination of words might not seem like they should go together but especially in today’s highly technological world these two go hand in hand. Even before the influx of remote work post 2020, computers have been a highly critical piece of the real estate industry for decades. A lot of people when they think of real estate they think of the home buying and selling process, which is largely done in person – meeting with your agent, touring homes, and eventually signing the mountain of papers needed for each transaction. At its core, real estate has a critical use for computers with every single deal which is to draw up and print the contracts & documents needed for that transaction. Whether you are buying, selling, or refinancing a home there are tons of documents that were created or copied by a computer. In today’s market, much of the in person work can also now be done virtually via computer. The majority of agents hire camera professionals to ca...

Ping! Ping! Ping! We Have a Winner! Traveling Through a Network

Packets of information travel through and bounce around to multiple different routers as it travels along the network to its final destination. The exact route it takes will vary due to internet traffic conditions and may even fail to get to its intended destination. If a packet fails to get to its destination or you wish to just test or troubleshoot connectivity, you can run a Ping and Traceroute commands in command prompt.  In pinging a US based Google.com, the average round trip time was 7ms and in pinging a Japan based Auone.jp the average was 113ms. Traceroute on Google shows single digit round trip time through nearly all hops but when tracing the Japanese hosted site, single digits until around hop 10 where it jumps to the 100s. The 100ms RTT jump is likely when the packets starting hopping to servers in Japan. Therefore, geographical location plays a big role in round trip time of packets. The closer you are the quicker data will be transmitted between computers. Ping an...

Lazy Sunday - A Day in the Life

Have a Lazy Day coming up? See what I did on my Lazy Sunday - also includes a fresh Pico De Gallo recipe! Sundays are usually my lazy day to recharge and refresh before the upcoming work week. On the Sunday right before Halloween, a few things changed with my morning routine but it still was overall relatively relaxing. As an adult you realize that many lazy days aren’t always able to stay lazy days for long. Between house and family responsibilities, a lazy day can quickly fade away. Follow me on today’s journey. 1. Dog Duties – 7:30am I wake up bright & early to take care of my dog Nacho. As soon as he senses me getting up he’ll jump of his bed, stretch, and start walking towards the bedroom door. We both go downstairs and he waits eagerly as I fill his water & food bowls. I let him outside in the backyard to relieve himself, after a few detours around the yard to smell everything of course. Back inside, I clean his feet and he starts to eat his breakfast. 2. B...

YouTube Music - Another Music Streaming Service...But This Time, Good?

  Reading about some of the early audio streaming services this week prompted me to review and write about YouTube Music. Let’s explore the application together.   A YouTube Music subscription allows users to search for and play specific songs, entire albums, curated playlists, and user uploaded music. It also allows users to view music and listen to music videos. You can also save music to your devices for offline listening where service is limited. In 2013, YouTube accounted for nearly 20% of all internet traffic with much of the content consumed being music (Vahid et al., 2019). With access to an incredibly vast library, YouTube music is a great option for those seeking audio streaming services.   Upon launching the app or visiting the site, users will be greeted with a home page curated specially for them based on their usage. The “Mixed for you” icons are playlists that are generated by YouTube music for you from your listening history. Its logic isn’t perfec...

It's all Greek to me! A Programming Languages Reflection from Scratch

Interested in learning about coding? Scratch is a great place to start! Follow me as I experience using Scratch for the very first time. Scratch is a drag & drop based coding application designed for children and those new to the world of programming. Instead of typing code, this program allows users to visually see commands and coding tasks. Scratch introduces the user into the world of coding and promotes computational thinking and problem solving skills (Scratch, n.d.). As it is designed for children, this program offers users with novice experience to practice basic coding commands. It still requires a level of critical thinking and problem solving to get your program to work correctly and has been a great introduction for me into the world of coding. I decided to dive right into Scratch without looking at additional training materials or guides. Upon getting into a new project and seeing the cartoon cat and a list of commands that looks sort of like puzzle pieces, it became ...