Behind the Scenes: What's the point with the Quick Look posts?

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You, my one reader, may have noticed that my Quick Look posts come in bursts. The reason behind that is actually a simple one. I tend to get job interviews in bursts. I'll go months without hearing anything from any of the gigs I apply to and then suddenly, I have 6 interviews in 2 weeks. Often in nearly all of my interviews, there's one thing that I get asked about and I bomb hard. I remember an interview a while back where I was grilled about SysPrep, a tool that I haven't had to use in my experience (except for once some months ago). During that same interview, I mentioned DFS without being an expert in it, which was a mistake. The interviewer promptly asked me to explain DFS and what I could do with it. It was bad. Also in that interview, I found out that I didn't understand the difference between replication and backups. That interview was the worst one, but even my best interviews will have one tech question that I'm not sure about.



Making mistakes isn't terrible but, in my opinion, repeating them is. So, when I have these moments where I have to admit I don't know something that somebody with my experience should have at least a basic understanding of, I research it and write about it. Personally, what really helps me lock information in is to be able to put it into my own words. If I can teach something to someone else then I know that thing. So when I write a Quick Look post on Kerberos or Exchange DAG or how NTP impacts AD, it's probably because I had an interview and had to admit that my experience hasn't exposed me to that area yet.

Too often in IT do I meet people who refuse to admit that they don't know something. Not knowing is never a weakness. Being unwilling to learn is.

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