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I was on a business trip to Denver Colorado, USA.

So I searched for a hackerspace in Denver and there is a hackerspace in Denver, called denhac https://denhac.org/ so I filled the contact form on the website and got a quick response from Digi.

At that moment this guy was on holiday in The Netherlands, but he told me that every Tuesday evenings it’s open house. That is a coincidence, because that’s also the case at revspace (hackerspace Den Haag).

So I went there on Tuesday evening and meth Digi, he gave me a tour of the space and we had a nice chat.

Here some pictures of denhac:

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It doesn’t surprise me at all, but a weaknesses was found in Wifi with WPA2, this is named KRACK

 

Fortunately ubiquiti quickly released firmware updates for their products.

I recied an email with links to the newer firmware (v.3.9.3.7537) in which this issue is fixed.

But I noticed this text in that announce email:

This firmware has been pushed to all recent 5.6.x controller builds, as well as on our community blog. We will be rolling out to other controllers in the near future.

 

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As some of you might have read in a previous post, which can be found here, my experience with recruiters are not always the best.

But a few weeks ago, I was called by a recruiter, which politely asked if she was disturbing me. She wasn’t.

So we talked for a sort time on the phone and she was asking me (again politely) if I was interested in a new job.

As I’m working for a company which is very close to home and has nice co-workers, I wasn’t particularly available for a new job.

But my motto is “If you can do better, you should do better”. So I told her my motto, she had a open position in mind for a company and asked my for a updated resume.

I was quite busy during that time, so I told her that I could arrange that in a few days maybe earlier, I told her I was busy and didn’t want to make any promises I couldn’t make.

So I updated my resume and mailed it to her. We had some more conversations by phone and she matched me also for another company.

She matched me because I sounded like I would fit that company.

During the conversations she expressly told me, if I have any doubt tell me, then we will stop this recruitment process.

 

She asked me if I was willing to go for an job interview, without any commitment to these companies or her. I agreed on this.

This was very convenient and comfortable for me. I noticed that this is a recruiter that does know her job!

And it gave me potential some stress because I might have some choices, which is (of course) a very luxurious position.

I went for a interview at the first company, it felt like a match, the people were nice and we shared interests.

After that I went for a interview at the second company and guess what, the people were nice and we shared interests.

So both companies felt great to work for, the technologies they use etc.

After the interviews I called the recruiter and after the recruiter talked to the companies she called me. We kept each other up to date.

Then appointments were made for a second interview, this time they should asked me more about me and “test” my technical skills.

Company A did a really good job, gave me a test setup and an laptop to fulfill the assignments, which was first a clear question, the next one was more open / “vague”, just to provoke me to fill in my own ideas how to fix the assignment.

Company B did also a good job, asked me a lot of technical questions. And I noticed by the feedback, the my answers were in the excepted range. Technical answers are not black and white, there are often (maybe most of the time) more solutions possible for a problem.

It went all OK and I had the strong feeling that both companies would like me as a new employee.

Then a appointments were made for a third interview, this was, at both companies, with higher management.

At company A I spoke with the director, nice guy, seems to know what they want with the company.

At company B I spoke with a C-something officer, but he was very rushed. During the interview he was already packing up his stuff and put on his coat. This made me a bit in doubt about this company, well actually about this guy in this company.

After the interview the manager of the department were I was matched to told me that the whole company was busy with a potential big new customer and therefor he was in such a big rush.

And it happend… Both companies offered me a job…. Both within a good distance from home, both futher away of the employer at that time… Both a good salary offer…..

So I talked about this with friends and family…. Also talked about my thought of both companies with this recruiter….

And finally I made a decision…

This is months ago and this article is finally finished… I will not name company A, B or the recruitment agency. Because my current and previous employer can read this. Maybe I will publish this with the name of the recruitment agency in the future after I discussed this with them.

Conclusion of this story, the recruiter in this was aware that she worked with people and not some product. This was by far the best recruitment process I was involved in! It wasn’t fortunately not the only good recruiter I ever met.

The Dutch are known for complaining about everything and sometimes we forget to focus on the good things…

So after a bad recruiter experience were I wrote about, now a good recruiter experience….

18-09-2017 tiny update: The recruitment agency called me today and were pleasantly surprised about this article. There are ok with the article and agreed to add their name to this article therefor the name of the agency, this is Starapple

 

This is me at a F5 VIPRION….

me-and-the-viprion

That’s a big ass F5 load balancer, which is nowadays (also) called an Application Delivery Controller (ADC).

During the time I took this picture this VIPRION was just racked and not even powered on, if you take a closer look at this picture the protective plastic is still on the display.

The picture is cropped by LinkedIn for this post, but I’m there with my thumb up.

I deployed and installed this machine, what a lovely piece of hardware and I must admit a bit weird too. It has differences with “normal” F5 BIG-IP hardware, but that’s why it’s a VIPRION 😉

I also prepared vcmp instances for this machine and even migrated some instances. Unfortunately I left the company where this hardware is used.

I miss you dear VIPRION, a little… Fortunately I still got a BIG-IP VE LAB Edition, provided by ION-IP after attending a workshop, in my own environment to play with…

This article was also posted on LinkedIn and can be found here

It’s quite rare but sometimes you ran into a real blunt person…

Like what happend to me recently…

Sometimes I get a lot of connect requests from LinkedIn and if I know you and I’ve met you… I’ll connect….

If not, I ask “do we know each other?” .. Sometimes I just forgot the person who is trying to connect or it was my name that showed up in a company because my (previous) employer is a customer of that company…

And then there are those recruiters, they can be very useful people but some are really blunt or have an attitude that give me some itch…

The last kind of recruiters are too cheap to pay for a subscription to LinkedIn to post open positions to you as a LinkedIn member, instead of that try to connect to you and typing the open position where they recruit for… Or they just try to connect…

So I received a request to connect to an unknown person to me, so I asked him by InMail “do we know each other” just in a polite way. This guy replied to me in such a blunt way that I’m writing this article…

I think he lacks some good nurture to be polite to people who ask a normal question.

I.m.h.o. these people shouldn’t be doing this kind of work, if you can’t communicate in a normal polite manner .

Don’t get me wrong, I have some good experiences with recruiters and I do think they are useful people… But I also have some bad experiences with recruiters,  fortunately most of the time the experience is not bad…