Employment, Housing, Beer, and other things.

 

Picture of me taken by my wife at a keg tapping of Hop Silo 16 beer by Tampa Bay Brewing Company last night at Craft Street.

     Very recently I moved yet again to another spot in Florida, this time leaving my job of 5 years with an Anheuser Busch distributor. They sold their brands and distribution in Florida to other beer distributors, which left me empty and losing faith in the business that brought me up in this state.. Beer. Low on energy to do this all over again, I knew I had to change things up.

     As outlined in some other posts from long ago, I've worked in Distribution for almost 20 years in one way or another. Sales, marketing, events, administration, operations, finance, and national accounts most recently. I've managed brands and developed programs for breweries for the last 11 years of that 20. I had the urge to work with the people that have always been great to me and been the most fun to work with; the local guys, the ones who made really good beer and fought the good fight in the market to do different and interesting things. I wanted to make the change over to the Supplier side of the industry for the first time since I worked for Molson/Coors in 2010.

     You have to have a job right? I applied for any and everything to get an idea of what people would be interested in as far as employment. I don't know if you have been looking lately, but there are a ton of jobs out there. I started in distribution and started applying for supplier and local level positions right out of the gate before the other 190 employees being laid off would get there first. I secured some decent references and worked in for a week straight, at one point keep a spreadsheet of all my applications and interview processes. I had two and a half months to make something happen.

     Offers started coming in first from distributors from people that know me or I have worked with in the past, which kind of surprised me at first. The company that sold offered me a transfer out of state, and the new regime that took over offered me a position as well. I was waiting for one company in particular to call me back, so I told everyone else to hold the line, as I have severance coming and they would need to wait. Eventually that call did come, and my dream job in the supplier world presented itself. A local legend in the industry, someone known to make things happen, take risks, and well known to be very good to his employees reached out to me and I couldn't say YES fast enough. I said goodbye to the severance, moved to Tampa and started my new job the very next week. 

    The rest is history! I'm settled in my new place, already love the people I work for and with, and made some friends with some really talented people in the industry. I've already started my book blog back up and made my first post, and there I've outlined the timeline of my 5 moves in 4 years. 

Cheers!

"You can't install Windows 11? Who cares!" - Microsoft, probably

 

This is everyone's level of frustration with Microsoft at the moment.

     The above screen shot I took today, when just going through my computer and catching up some updates. I did not want to update to Windows 11, but When I saw the popup prompting me to download Windows PC Health, I was a little worried. Is my PC too old? When googling for PC Health Check, some Windows insider program and some garbage clickbait links showed up, nothing you could click on to get this program needed to see if I pass the fabled Windows 11 test. Spoiler: It's in the Windows Update Tab, or you can just click this. Already I'm more annoyed than when my wife asks me to get her something when she is physically closer at least 13 times a day.

Circled in yellow, TPM 2.0 is some mystery bullshit no one cares about.

     I'll admit, it's been a while since I just went thought and cleaned things up and installed some new drivers, and did the required Windows Updates. In a future post I'll go over some of the personal stuff that lead up to that, and why I've been so lazy with it. For example, I updated my RTX 2080 video card drivers today, and I was 20 versions behind. Oops! I did turn on the GPU Hardware Scheduling (HAGS) for the first time, but I haven't played anything to see the difference. Anyways, I followed their instructions, downloaded the PC Health Check, and low and behold, I actually do have the system requirements to download and install Windows 11. Hmmmm. 

The game is afoot Windows!

     I figured since I have all the other requirements as outlined on my manufacturers website, It must be this TPM 2.0 garbage that is holding me back. What is TPM do you ask? It stands for Trusted Platform Module, and it's really just a security protocol that Windows 11 and some hardware requires. Do you really need it? No. Some older mother boards made you buy an external module that plugs on to your board to handle the security it provides. There is no actual standard of what it's called, what it actually does, and how it's enabled. It's so badly described, that even Microsoft's own website describing it, does not  even try. They mention it could be called by all these different things, and when you click the external links, they go to unhelpful click-fucks that just make you go back to the way in which you started. On it's own site to guide you how to fix this issue, they don't actually tell you how to fix the issue. "Vague idea" is more accurate.

Literally their page is full of spelling errors and misinformation. I just can't.

     I'm going to try to end this on a good note, but I can't. The problem is still there, I have TPM 2.0 enabled by default, and in the security settings in my BIOS it's enabled. Windows simultaneously says I can and cannot install Windows 11, and their own company hates that we are asking. Of course, my mind goes to the hacking part of it, of someway you can bypass the TPM check that is not needed anyways.

Of course you can bypass it. Silly me.