Speaking from experience here as a recent grad (BS in Math/CS in 2000, MS in Telecom in 2004), I was faced with that decision for a while, and seeing it in hindsight there is one thing you need to realize. The Masters is only going to get you into the door a little bit easier. It might get you to the top of the pile for interviews, but it by no means makes you a shoe in.
After that, you must deal with the fact that it's hard finding an IT company who wants to hire someone as 'green' as a new grad. Use your masters to get contacts in the industry, work your tail off to get a great summer internship if your program is two years long. I was lucky enough to go full time for two years, and wrote freelance for a well-known computer security magazine. Bolster your resume.
Use the masters to bolster your chances of convincing future employers that you are more than just a naive college grad.
College is all about motivation. You have to want to go, and want to kick ass and take names. I was a mathematics undergrad (now getting my masters in telecommunications), and you have to want to do well. I got burnt out from math by my 3rd year, but I still struggled through it. Didn't graduate with a stellar GPA, but still got into grad school, in a program that I know have a 3.8/4.0 average.
Take the harder classes, the more difficult major. I see friends of mine who were advertising and marketing majors, who are living at home with their parents unable to find a job. And these are people who graduated with academic honors and went out every weekend to get plastered. Don't get me wrong, I still had my fun on weekends, but I made sure my work was done.
Swallow your pride and get to know your professors. Email them to chat about homework in their office hours. Shoot off an email if you find an interesting article that pertains to research they are doing. Get yourself known around the professor community, it will help more than you can even imagine.
But most of all, have fun. Explore topics that interest you, audit a course if you just want to sit in on it. Get involved with campus activities and things around the University community. College is all about making connections...the people you meet might be able to get you a job one day.
For a firewall: An old p2/450 running openbsd which i keep at 3.5 current. 3.6 is coming out next month, and i might upgrade if it proves needed.
Desktops: I run linux, gentoo specifically, which i keep patched and updated on all my machines.
I have a WRT54G wifi wap, which is hooked via crossover cable to a seperate NIC on my firewall. the firewall has pf setup so my wired lan can talk to the wap-network, but the wap network cant touch my lan. gotta love "keep state" and flag checking.
other than that, i use spamassassin on evolution and firefox for my browsing. i've never gotten a virus, and knock on wood, never been hacked.
Yeah, and I'll get to experience a dual-G5 when that Brinks truck turns over in front of my house, spewing dollar bills everywhere. Is it just me, or does Apple hardware seem outrageously expensive? I can get a great spiffy new Dell box, or build my own machine, with some nice x86 (possibly even a 64 bit proc) for a hell of a lot less money, and be happier with two mouse buttons!
I have this actual piece of equipment, the WRT54G. Now that I've got this code, what do I do now? I am still unable (as far as i know) to edit this code, and safely reflash my router so i can run snmp off of it, or run snort/acid/etc.
Great, GPL the code. But now make it useful for me.
Have you seen the support? So far they have the card initialized and can flash the LED's. i wouldnt exactly call that support yet. I have this card and have to boot into windows to use it. Thankfully I've kept my Orinoco Gold 802.11b card in the interim.
I've got the Sound Blaster Live 5.1 platinum with the livedrive unit and i use the remote (RM-900). I use it with a program called rcenter
http://rooster.stanford.edu/~ben/projects/rcenter. php
I have scripted it to work with xmms, xawtv, and other programs. Works like a charm!
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Speaking from experience here as a recent grad (BS in Math/CS in 2000, MS in Telecom in 2004), I was faced with that decision for a while, and seeing it in hindsight there is one thing you need to realize. The Masters is only going to get you into the door a little bit easier. It might get you to the top of the pile for interviews, but it by no means makes you a shoe in.
After that, you must deal with the fact that it's hard finding an IT company who wants to hire someone as 'green' as a new grad. Use your masters to get contacts in the industry, work your tail off to get a great summer internship if your program is two years long. I was lucky enough to go full time for two years, and wrote freelance for a well-known computer security magazine. Bolster your resume.
Use the masters to bolster your chances of convincing future employers that you are more than just a naive college grad.
College is all about motivation. You have to want to go, and want to kick ass and take names. I was a mathematics undergrad (now getting my masters in telecommunications), and you have to want to do well. I got burnt out from math by my 3rd year, but I still struggled through it. Didn't graduate with a stellar GPA, but still got into grad school, in a program that I know have a 3.8/4.0 average.
Take the harder classes, the more difficult major. I see friends of mine who were advertising and marketing majors, who are living at home with their parents unable to find a job. And these are people who graduated with academic honors and went out every weekend to get plastered. Don't get me wrong, I still had my fun on weekends, but I made sure my work was done.
Swallow your pride and get to know your professors. Email them to chat about homework in their office hours. Shoot off an email if you find an interesting article that pertains to research they are doing. Get yourself known around the professor community, it will help more than you can even imagine.
But most of all, have fun. Explore topics that interest you, audit a course if you just want to sit in on it. Get involved with campus activities and things around the University community. College is all about making connections...the people you meet might be able to get you a job one day.
For a firewall:
An old p2/450 running openbsd which i keep at 3.5 current. 3.6 is coming out next month, and i might upgrade if it proves needed.
Desktops:
I run linux, gentoo specifically, which i keep patched and updated on all my machines.
I have a WRT54G wifi wap, which is hooked via crossover cable to a seperate NIC on my firewall. the firewall has pf setup so my wired lan can talk to the wap-network, but the wap network cant touch my lan. gotta love "keep state" and flag checking.
other than that, i use spamassassin on evolution and firefox for my browsing. i've never gotten a virus, and knock on wood, never been hacked.
Yeah, and I'll get to experience a dual-G5 when that Brinks truck turns over in front of my house, spewing dollar bills everywhere. Is it just me, or does Apple hardware seem outrageously expensive? I can get a great spiffy new Dell box, or build my own machine, with some nice x86 (possibly even a 64 bit proc) for a hell of a lot less money, and be happier with two mouse buttons!
I have this actual piece of equipment, the WRT54G. Now that I've got this code, what do I do now? I am still unable (as far as i know) to edit this code, and safely reflash my router so i can run snmp off of it, or run snort/acid/etc.
Great, GPL the code. But now make it useful for me.
Have you seen the support? So far they have the card initialized and can flash the LED's. i wouldnt exactly call that support yet. I have this card and have to boot into windows to use it. Thankfully I've kept my Orinoco Gold 802.11b card in the interim.
I've got the Sound Blaster Live 5.1 platinum with the livedrive unit and i use the remote (RM-900). I use it with a program called rcenter. php
http://rooster.stanford.edu/~ben/projects/rcenter
I have scripted it to work with xmms, xawtv, and other programs. Works like a charm!
I've got the Hauppauge bt848 based tv-tuner, but how do I record with Linux? I'm looking to make it almost Tivo-like. Any ideas?
But what happens when all the sysadmins take the day off to celebrate their geekdom?
I can see the headlines now "World comes to a halt because no geek around to press control-alt-delete"
Who are we to tell Microsoft what to put in their own software. It's them that write it. Not us