Ricky Martin’s Blog

Well what can I say. I have been here for a week, and can honestly say there is not much in Tulsa, even the people here say nothing exciting happens here. I had been here for a week about 6 years ago for training as well. And we did not do much that time as we were here with Management of the division I was working for at that time, turns out there was quite a bit of animosity between the dvisions and there still is.  I have had a very different experience this time given I am now working for a much closer linked division and the sharing of knowledge is much more free. There is really no major attractions here, unless you are into the extreme religious thing you could check out Oral Roberts University, but I can say I am not one of those people. The basic break down is there is no major league sports team, they do have minor league hockey, but coming from Canada I would be weary of calling it good hockey, no offense to Tulsa but I was blessed enough to grow up in Hockey heaven, Montreal. But on to other things about Tulsa, as far as I can tell the biggest attraction here is College Football, and there are 3 big teams here, you have Oklahoma University, Oklahoma State University, and Third would be Tulsa University. Other than that there is not much else going on in Tulsa, Except if you like to eat, there is probably about 20 restaurants on each corner as far as I have seen. But if you are coming from any other major city in the USA they will all be familiar as most of them are the same chains of restaurants that are spread out across the US. One thing they are proud of here is there steaks, and there is probably more steakhouses than you would see in some other cities. As far as the people go one thing I do have to say is they are very friendly which may be a shock to some people, especially coming from larger cities such as Montreal, London, New York, etc… Where people usually are not that friendly, here people will strike up a conversation with you while waiting in line, on an elevator, etc…

But given the facts I would probably not want to live here personally. but that is just my personal preference you can make your own decisions.

This is a book I picked up on my trip to Tulsa. I started reading it as it was referenced in a couple of other blogs i have read such as GET RICH SLOWLY. One of the things that interested me was the reference to the true cost of things and how much you really make per hour.

So as I mentioned earlier I am in the process of pursueing the MCSE 2003 Certification. I had previously Completed the training for the MCSE on NT 4.0 but never finished all the exams. partly because I had already started to work in the field and found that at that time the certification helped but experience counted for more. I had also completed the training for the CCNA course back in 2003 but that too I did not have time to take the exams as a result of my work schedule. In My current position, the management goal is to have our whole team (approx 10) people trained and certified on MCSE 2003, CCNA, and ORACLE DBA by the end of next year. The schedule is quite aggresive but the plan would be to attend 2 week bootcamps for each of these certifications. unfortunately one of the drawbacks is that the company would like us to sign an agreement to the effect that we wont leave after getting the training, or else there will be a financial penalty. With that in mind, hence I am starting to pursue the training on my own, I have usually managed to read the books and do the practice exams and that usually prepares me enough to take the microsoft test. Hopefully that will still be the case