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Since I have not gone to a major convention in several years, it made me realize just how important they actually are. There are many reasons to go to a convention, but primarily an IT Professional should be interested in…
1) Exposure to the latest technology.
2) Learning about new products from vendors.
3) Networking, and no not just Facebook and Twitter.

Exposure. This is critical. Sometimes, doing R&D on a new technology to deploy in your environment can be exhausting. Conventions help with this by providing you with seminars. The seminars, in some cases, are hands on. But, usually they are just a room with a bunch of other IT Professionals looks to learn what is out there. Usually the people in charge of talking about these new technologies are a mix of sales and engineer staff from the manufacturer. They give you an insight to best practices and allow you to get a grasp on how others use it in their environment. Not to jump too far off topic, but I was at a VMware conference many years ago when they were becoming a huge player across all industries. I was able to meet with one of the senior engineers of the product, and gained a wealth of information from it. It’s amazing how far they have come since then.

Vendors. Most conventions charge vendors a fortune to set up shop in a big room with a small display area to reel customers in and show off their products. Vendors are not just there to give you free shirts, pens, and useful things to place on your desk with their name on it. Let’s face it, some have drawings to win big ticket items! All jokes aside, meeting vendors and seeing their showcase first hand could be enough for any IT Professional to pull the trigger on a product and try to sell it to the company.

Networking. I’m not talking about lurking through social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. I mean building professional contacts. Contacts for what you might ask? Career opportunities, technical resources, professional resources, take your pick. It’s hard to build and maintain your career path if you’re not interested in building professional relationships.

So if you can take anything away from this blog, it would most likely be that conventions are a great place to learn about new products, connect with peers and vendors, and even take him some free stuff. I’m not going to get into the major conventions to goto, you can figure that out on your own. What I do recommend is that you make it a priority to get to one at least every year. Going to conventions shows your employer that you are serious about your career, and how you are looking to better yourself as a professional. It’s a Win-Win situation, and I encourage all of you to do so!

Please feel free to lurk around and keep checking back for updated blogs!

I applaud those who stay clear of social networking. In the same aspect, it’s almost like those who can go on without any kind of cellular device. I have family members who have sworn never to own a cell phone. Once they get a little taste of being bound with one, they conform immediately and could not imagine life without it. Come to think of it, it’s the same deal with those who get a little taste of social networking. Suddenly, you want to see what everyone is up to, where they were, and what their weekend plans are. You also have the ability to reconnect with people you have not communicated with in a very long time. Bottom line is – no one cares unless you have something useful or witty to say.

What goes around comes around.

The last five years have been pretty interesting as far as social networking goes. I was once a non-conformist in the social networking plague that seemed to be rapidly approaching around 2004-2005. It seemed like everyone had a Myspace account. But, there was this exclusive “other” site called Facebook that was geared more towards college/university students since you needed an official college email to register. Over time, Myspace started dwindling down, Facebook became less exclusive, and other companies like Bebo, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc came into the mix. Now that Facebook has dominated the world of social networking, you’ll find that the “competitors” redirected their goals and purpose. Now another giant emerges to eventually give Facebook a challenge: Google+. As the battle of worthless features continues, the question you have to ask yourself is, “How much is too much?”

The funny part about all of this is, when you boil them all down, what do you get? A website to post status updates. And the bottom line will inevitably always be that no one cares unless you have something useful or witty to say.

I apologize ahead of time if this blog, being the first and “official”, turns into a rant. However, it needs to be said. Now, to keep your interests peaked here I am not going to get into specific drives, but rather my experience with them in the last year.

What is effected:
No matter what the brand might be, I have had to replace newer hard drives ranging from low end/budget models to high end gaming platforms. It seems that anywhere from 1.5-3 years, the cheap little drives that manufacturers use tend to fail. Some of these drives appear to just have a corrupt Master Boot Record (MBR) that fails to load Windows. Some drives just die when they spin up near their max RPM. Others just crash completely. It amazes me the sounds that some of these drives can make. I am especially a fan of the “box -o- rocks” sound of a dead drive. You’d think in a 2.5″ hard drive that there aren’t too many clunky movies parts. Let me reassure you, there are!

Why them?
Oh, many reasons. Typically manufacturers use a “budget” hard drive so they can maximize revenue on their sales. I’m all about saving a buck, however when you’re dealing with crap you should expect crap. The $300 Black Friday special is not likely to last even the novice user more than it’s shelf life. Don’t expect to get 8 years out of it. Anyway, before I derail any further, some laptops may have been dropped, thrown, lit on fire (see Dell Batteries), or have simply been idling for too long at high temperatures. Hot temperatures are not very ideal for any kind of hard drive disk.

Solution:
Several things to keep in mind to prolong the life of your laptop hard drive:
- Ventilation. The inside of any computer, whether it is a desktop, server, laptop, or thin client, is typically set up to prevent overheating. It does this usually by a heatsink/fan setup. The design inside the device is similar to an exhaust system on a car or an HVAC system in a house. Just simplified. The device pulls air in from one place, and disperses hot air to another. Do not block the entrance or exit of air and you will maximize the life of your hard drive disk! This means do not rest the laptop on blankets or pillows.
- Do Not Drop. Sure, a lot of cutting edge laptops have software that practically shut down the hard drive from spinning if it detects movement. I don’t recommend testing this technology out by throwing it across the room or dropping it. Dropping a laptop will likely make your hard drive implode.
- Upgrade? Sure, you can upgrade. Some people prefer specific brands. I’ve had a 20GB Maxtor 3.5″ 7200rpm drive since the late 90′s that still works flawlessly. Seagate and WD have treated me pretty well over the years, as well. Lately, I’ve been recommending either WD or Samsung drives. I like their customer service and the quality is pretty average.

But, what if my laptop hard drive is already dead?
- Verify it’s dead. Try plugging it into an external hard drive enclosure to see if it spins up and allows you to copy data.
- If it is indeed dead, try the freezer trick.
- Buy a new drive or get a new one under warranty

I am sure there are things I forgot. I just wanted to make a quick blog to demonstrate just a portion of what I will be blogging about and this came to mind. Thanks for reading. Or should I say sorry?