Xerox

Am I Overdue My MCSE

Richard Green on

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.

Lonely

Richard Green on

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.

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