Woohoo! I just completed one hundred push-ups.

Thank you Hundred Push-ups Program!

Big changes coming up, just not sure where, or how. I always hate reading cryptic posts but now feel obligated to post one. Hopefully, though, this will end with bye-bye Arizona for good.

Yesterday and today I took the upgrade exams to transition my MCSE to the MCITP: EA. Passed all three exams with 800+ scores on each of them. So I am now fully Microsoft Windows Server 2008 certified! Let's see if the employers noticed.

I'm another statistic now. Time to update ye olde resume and start anew!

Oh yeah, forgot to mention it earlier, I turned 30 last month.

I'd been meaning to post about this for a while just so everyone else can "benefit" from the wealth of my bookmarks. I set up a del.icio.us account! So here is the link that everyone can look and laugh, scratch their head, or perhaps even look at my bookmarks.

http://delicious.com/undomielelelome

Well it seems to be going along pretty well. I like the new job and the new job likes me. Though not everybody there likes me since apparently I'm rather bossy. Who knew?

So this week I'm starting my first major assignment. I'll be virtualizing the entire production environment. That'll be fun! I am enjoying the challenge including fixing a few of the mess-ups that Dell made in setting up VMware Infrastructure in the first place. Having some Linux knowledge has already come in handy. So the downside of working for the government? Meetings! Oh there are swarms of them. I feel as if I could cut the number of meetings in half and increase productivity 200%. But it's ok, I'll live with it.

I'm finding it a bit hard to adjust to working with a team. I keep seeing things that could be done faster or better and it is hard to not just jump in and take over the controls. It's also difficult though to know that one of the guys lies to you. I didn't call him on it but I definitely saw what he did and he has lied about it saying he hasn't. It doesn't help that he's one of the ones who doesn't like me now either. It's ok, I'll just work around him. Anyhow, I am enjoying the job and for once am not dreading going to work when I wake up in the morning. Though I would still rather stay home and play Harvest Moon. ;)

Well it is time finally for some good news on this journal! Well ok first the bad news. The previous week my hours were cut in half. Lots of badness around that including being lied to about my scheduling options. But that's all in the past now. On Monday I will be starting my new job! I'll be working for the state as a senior network administrator. Huge leap in responsibilities as well as pay. It will be very exciting times to come! I'm a bit nervous about having to live up to the senior level responsibilities since I have only been doing server administration for a short while now but they were the ones that scouted me out so I'm sure that I will be capable of the job.

I quit the old job on Friday which went surprisingly well. Everyone including my boss was really happy for me. Which was odd as I was fully expecting my boss to be really upset since she yells at people a lot really easily. I wasn't expecting or prepared for happiness. But I am now glad that it is all over with! Hurrah for new jobiness! Now I can get my wife a new pillow!

I finally caved in and learned how to play Sudoku.

I just achieved my MCSE! Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer. Time to put this baby to work and find a new job ...

It's rough taking two tests on the same day though. I'm not sure if I want to do that again any time soon.

"Hey Jeff we are having problems with our e-mail so we called the system administrator from our sister company to come over and fix it. Could you give us the administrator password so we can give it to him to fix things?"

Umm. Let's try. NO.

When there are problems with the servers you call your currently employed system administrator and let him know there are problems. That is what he is hired for. He fixes things. Generally faster than you can get a guy from across Phoenix too. And especially do NOT ask him for the administrator password. While you may not have heard of security, best practices, and social engineering, he has. He is there to know these things. Just like he is there to fix things when they break. He also can very likely fix the problem from the comfort of his own home lounging around in his comfortable clothing in his comfortable chair. If he can't, then most likely neither can the guy from across town instead of the employee who lives five minutes away. Why? Because the guy from across town does not have a key to open up the servers in case of hardware failure.

Really now what the heck were they thinking? They are getting charged for the 3 minutes it took to fix things. If I could I would bill them double for this idiocy.

Baka!

Yesterday I learned how to change the spark plugs in my engine. This is exciting!

Today maybe I should rebuild my engine. Ooooooh, that sounds like fun!

Just finished my second 5k. Walked the first one with the wifey but this one I decided to run. I did pretty pathetic. I ran it in 38 minutes. Results aren't posted yet so I don't know the specific time. Oh well, guess I need to start training for the next one! Gotta get ready for a marathon one of these days!

Update: results were posted so I got to see my chip time. So I actually ran it in 36:30.

I passed the 70-293 today! It wasn't as easy as the 70-290 but wasn't anywhere near as difficult as the Security+. It was a fairly fun exam though I had it crash on me right at the very beginning. I scored an 805 so it was a pretty decent score too. Looking forward to the 70-298 now! Can't wait to knock that one out as from what I hear the 70-294 is a pretty easy exam. Yey! I passed!

Finally achieved -- MCSA certification. I may expound upon this more later. But for now is the bed.

I'd been meaning to update for a while but things have just been very exhausting lately. But I have good news to update with! Let's start with the latest news. I passed my next exam! I took the 70-290 exam yesterday and passed with a score of 842. Which is a lot better than I did on the 70-270. I also felt better about this exam as well when I was taking it. I'm very excited that I passed that one fairly easily! I can't wait to do the 70-291 next. I will need to study a whole lot better for that one though. Brush up on my subnetting as well. So the score stands as I have one exam to go for my MCSA and three exams to go for my MCSE. Then one exam to upgrade my MCSA to an MCSA: Security and then another exam to upgrade to MCSE: Security. That's about as far into the future for my certifications that I've looked. Maybe do the two exams to get my Messaging designation as well.

The other news. I have a new computer! I received it Thursday of the week previously and wow does it really help with running all of these virtual machines. Dell was running a really good sale so I ordered a headless 530 with a q6600 and 4 gigs of ram. Going from single core to quad core definitely feels great! The 4 gigs of ram definitely doesn't hurt for running lots of VMs as well. I never saw how Vista performed on the machine as I immediately put openSUSE on it which is performing wonderfully. Oddly enough Gentoo didn't like the G33 chipset at all when I gave some thoughts of installing that. I probably could've gotten around that but didn't feel like taking the times away from my studies.

So that's all the excitements from around here. Oh, and one other thing. We picked up some Veggie Tales last night to entertain the niece. Yey! Veggie Tales!!!

Our big kitties got their first baths today. They were out on the porch and decided that they wanted to wander into and try eating a web that had been sprayed with raid weeks earlier but never cleaned up. Oops! So they got their first baths of their lives with us! Less than appreciative were they. Fiona took to it better than Susano but I still ended up with a ripped up hand. But they now look like drowned rats! He he he! I take great delight in this. Susano can't even keep his tail in his customary question mark poses because it is too heavy now. Very funny stuff. Take that you cats!

I've been coming home on my lunch time to feed the kitten, since you know hungry kittens need many feedings they do. So yesterday I came home as I always do to feed the hungry kitten. Came in the house and thought that it looked a bit weird. Susano was staring at the kitchen in a very weird way. I didn't think too much about it though. Flipped on the light and went into the kitchen to heat up the kitten's milk. I hear this ominous buzzing and it sounds like it is coming from all around me, but I figured that someone had probably just left the kitchen window open. It kept getting louder though and it was really beginning to feel like I had stepped into some horror movie because the buzzing was very disconcerting. I decided to look at the window and close it so that the buzzing would go away. No dice there! The window was already closed, but there were a number of bees running along the edge of it. Very unhappily on the inside part and not along the outside part. It was at that point that I heard some loud thwackings of plastic. Taking a look up and guess what there was to see? The kitchen lights filled with angry bees that were now bouncing up and down very rapidly! This definitely did not make for a very happy Jeff at all. I quickly notified management who the lady at the desk didn't seem to understand the dire need for immediate resolution of the problem. She was trying to schedule for the weekly Thursday exterminator cleaning. Fortunately the really cool manager was there and immediately chimed in that she would get the bee keepers out as soon as they can make it. This worked for me! I quickly fed the kitten and locked all the cats up in the bedroom away from the bees. Then it was back to work for me. Came back after work just in time to meet up with the bee cleaner. He sprayed stuff into the crack that the bees came in through and then it was just a matter of time. Now there are an enormous amount of bee corpses hanging in the lights over our heads in the kitchen. It is kind of gross.

For my precious white fluffy ball of doom and cattiness there are only two classifications. Food? Toy? Everything falls into one classification or the other, and sometimes possibly both. Paper bag? Toy. Pink mouse? Toy. Cheese? Food. Kitty food? Toy/food. Owners? Toy, with possibility of food characteristics.

Well a week ago on a Thursday this simple kitty very abruptly experienced a change to his ethos. A third classification was forced upon him quite entirely against his will.

Kitten?

I did not do any real studying for this exam, and it showed! I can claim some extenuating circumstances but still the burden is upon me. Especially today since I blew off most of it playing video games instead of doing any actual studying aside from flipping a few pages here and there.

But anyhow, that's all water under the bridge. I passed!

Score: 731

Passing is at 700, out of 1000.

Ouch. But a pass is a pass. Yey! I'm now an MCP. On to the 70-290!

Though it was really demoralizing to look at my score sheet and see that Implementing, Managing, Monitoring, and Troubleshooting Hardware Devices and Drivers I scored absolutely horrible on. That should be my best area!