So it’s Thursday evening, and by this time me and Nicky would have both finished our respective days working from home, and looking after Maddy for the day, except this day, there’s no Nicky. She’s out on a work do which they call an off-site. I call it a glorified team-building / skyve day but hey, but see this is where is gets worse – She’s gone tomorrow too. Thankfully she’ll be back tomorrow night, and hopefully before Maddy goes to bed otherwise she’s not going to get to see her little girl until Saturday morning.
Maddy’s been really good today, and hasn’t done anything that naughty which has made today easy for me, and has meant that I’ve been able to get quite a lot of studying done towards by next Microsoft exam, which hopefully won’t be too long around the corner, although this exam is probably one of the toughest to that I’m going to be doing as part of the Microsoft qualification so I need to make sure I’ve got it all covered properly.
Me and my boss (day to day) Colin went through my training plan a couple of days ago, and I’m going to be with Xerox now until at a minimum of 2012 due to all the training I am doing, so I could be up for a long service award before I know it :). For those of you who are interested, I’ll be finishing my Microsoft studies next year which will make me a MCSE 2003: Security and an MCTS: SQL Server 2005. Once all that is finished, I’m enrolling on a degree course through the Open University. Once that’s finished, I will have a BSc Honours degree, so I will become one of those geek people with far too many qualifications.
While on the subject of training, there is something really getting on my nerves at the moment – IT Training companies like Computeach etc. I’m not sure if it’s because I’m watching more TV in bed at night, or because there is actually more of them, but a lot of the adverts I am seeing on TV at the moment is for these training firms that offer to provide you with training in IT and get you certified in things and then say they will get you a job at the end of it also. The worst one, is the one with the people who talk about what there doing now, and how they had nothing before. If these companies can actually do what they say, then fair enough, but I personally don’t believe a word of it. Yes, I may be young which was always my downfall in the job market, however getting a job in IT isn’t just a simple case of being the most certified, as after all, there is 12 year old kids with Microsoft certification, but if you actually sat them in front of a PC and asked them to do something like configure a Remote Access Server, they couldn’t do it I bet – Same case here. These people are known as paper-MCSE’s because they know nothing about the real world, and only how to pass an exam. The funniest thing is that all of these people seem to be under the impression that if you get your certifications, so company is instantly going to give you a job like a Network Administrator or something and you will instantly be on big bucks, however that is just not the case. What will actually happen is that if you apply for a job like a Network Administrator they won’t even look at your CV let alone laugh at you in an interview room, because you have no experience. What will actually happen is that these people will be offered jobs working on a 1st line helpdesk, or maybe 2nd line at a push if they are good in the interview room, and will probably be on £20k if they are lucky. One of these adverts showed someone who was a Senior Technical Architect within a year of completing his training….really? No, I doubt it, but I’m done moaning now.
As for the website, it’s really coming along now, and I think I will have the completed and new version of the site live and running by the end of October, so that it is ready ahead of schedule for the new baby to have images uploaded etc, so I hope you can all take time to look over the new site once it’s ready, as I think you will all really like it.
The three of us went to the Zoo on Tuesday as a days holiday from work – Whipsnade Zoo to be precsise. We all really enjoyed it, although me and Nicky where cream crackered by the end of the day. There is some really nice video and images from the day which will be going on the new site once it’s up, so make sure you take a look at them.
Have a good whatever your doing, and I’ll blog again soon x