🎉 Enter My Latest Tech Giveaway – Win a $50 Amazon Gift Card

I’m excited to announce my latest lovemytool blog giveaway! 

As a thank-you to everyone who follows my blog, YouTube channel, and social media content, I’m giving readers a chance to win a $50 Amazon gift card. If you enjoy a scavenger hunt, troubleshooting networking, Wi-Fi, and hands-on technology content, this is a great opportunity to enter and win something so you can buy a little something for yourself. Its meant to educate while you have a 'bit' of fun.

FYI - I had my non tech wife try the quiz out as a test and she got 5 ballots. I honestly think Sunny, our cat helped her out. ;) And just because you get more ballots doesn't guarantee a win.  The last winner only had 2 ballots, but the one before had a perfect score, so you never know.

Tessabyte Throughput Test: Finding the Breaking Point Before Your Users Do! (Carlo Zakarian)

Navigating the sheer volume of network performance utilities can be challenging, given the massive ecosystem of generalized CLI and GUI tools available today.  On this particular morning day, I was on the hunt for an application that could give me a visual representation of the network performance, while executing bi-directional TCP and UDP throughput testing across a customer's network.

When the Cable Talks Back And Understanding Your Tools

One of the most valuable skills any network technician can develop is learning not just how to use a tool, but how to understand what the tool is actually telling you. Modern test equipment can provide a wealth of information in seconds, but those results only become useful when you know how to interpret them. A tool is only as effective as the person reading the screen. The more familiar you become with your test equipment's behavior, capabilities, and limitations, the faster you'll be able to diagnose problems and avoid unnecessary troubleshooting rabbit holes.

New York High School Deploys $57,000 Humanoid Robot "Sally" to Teach AI, Coding, and Robotics

As artificial intelligence continues to reshape education, Salamanca High School in New York has become one of the first public school districts in the United States to introduce a humanoid robot into the classroom. The robot, named Sally, was purchased for approximately $57,000 USD and is designed to assist teachers by helping students learn coding, robotics, and artificial intelligence concepts. Rather than replacing educators, Sally serves as an interactive teaching assistant capable of recognizing students through individual logins, responding conversationally, and even speaking with a Western New York accent. The deployment represents another step toward integrating AI-powered technologies into everyday educational environments.

Linux Essentials for Cybersecurity PDF: Free Comprehensive Guide with Labs for Aspiring Security Pros

If you're trying to break into cybersecurity, sooner or later you're going to hit a wall of Linux — and honestly, that's a good thing. Most security tooling, from SIEMs to pentest distros, runs on it. This free "Linux Essentials for Cybersecurity" PDF is built to get you past that wall fast, covering everything from basic shell navigation to the deeper security-relevant stuff like SELinux, TCP wrappers, and kernel security parameters. Whether you're a total beginner or already comfortable in a terminal, there's enough depth here to level up your workflow.

What makes this guide worth grabbing is the sheer scope — it's not a quick cheat sheet, it's a full 33-chapter curriculum spanning distros, user/group management, file permissions, storage (including LUKS encryption and LVM), automation with cron and shell scripting, networking services like BIND, Apache, and SSH, and a dedicated security section covering firewalls, fail2ban, GPG encryption, and intrusion detection. Basically, if it touches system administration from a security lens, it's in here.