Vocera

Am I Overdue My MCSE

When I was previously working for Xerox I got into a great little routine – I would churn out an MCP exam to the tune of one every month or other month. This meant I was well on my way to achieving my MCSE, and with my MCSA already in the bag I had only two exams left:

  • 70-294: Active Directory
  • 70-298: Security for a Windows Server 2003 Network

When I moved to Vocera we all agreed that I could carry on with my training to complete my MCSE and maybe even aim to move onwards to an MCITP for Windows Server 2008 which suited me perfectly as I was planning this all along with or without backing.

It’s amazing how time blazes by you without a second thought until it dawned on me recently!

I was looking at my Microsoft Learning transcript just a week or so ago and I realised that it is now over a year since I sat my last exam – 70-350: ISA Server 2004. This made me realise how behind I have gotten, especially when you consider it may only be another year or so before the Server 2003 exam line is discontinued.

As a result I’ve got my butt into gear and this week I have taken one day’s holiday already, with another to come on Friday with the sole premise of training for the 70-294 exam. After Monday it’s all going well and I was achieving about 80% on the practice exams, so assuming all goes well after more studying on Friday I will be checking myself into the test centre on Monday afternoon to take the exam.

I think that finishing the Active Directory exam will be great weight lifted from me, because I actually started to study for this one prior to leaving Xerox, and having only one exam standing between me and MCSE, I think I should be able to master it up pretty quickly.

San Jose Here We Are

So we flew out of Heathrow Terminal 5 on Sunday at about 2pm, landed at San Francisco about 4.45pm, 8hrs behind UK time after a traumatic demon child filled 10hr flight here, but that said the flight was great. We flew British Airways on a 747 which was an experience being on something that big, and I have to say I was most impressed by their in flight entertainment service which was an on-demand video, music and TV service meaning we could watch what we wanted when we wanted and it worked really well. I’d love to know what they had running that for a media server because it must have had a hell of a lot of horsepower under the bonnet!

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