Well As Promised I am giving you all an update. Unfortunately things did not go as well as planned with my Exam. I did not dedicate enough time to study and prepare as I should have or have done in the past and the results show it. I again missed it but not by much. As far as writing the exam I did it quickly as I usually do, only took about an hour and fifteen minutes to complete. the longest part of the 40 questions was the initial 10 or so were all simulations which were a little hard to gauge as they didn’t allow you to click on many options and it was hard to know when it was completed for those items.
At least it is Friday and I have the weekend to look forward to now. I can plan on how to schedule my time to dedicate enough time to preparing to write this exam again.
Well I was an early adopter of the apple TV and tweaking it with Boxee. Now there is no official release of Boxee beta for the apple TV as of yet but some creative people out on the net have taken what is available and tweaked it to work with the apple TV.
I have to say I liked the alpha version but really love the interface of the beta version. I find it a lot more polished and user friendly. The UI really takes advantage of the resources available you get access to online content for TV shows if they are available or local content as well if you have it mapped out.
Now From the alpha to the Beta there was not an easy way to get it installed. For the initial install of Beta on the Apple TV you had to follow these instructions which involved using SSH to log into the apple TV and run several commands to install various components or with the script linked above managed to automate most of it. Which is how I got it working at first, but now the great people that work on the ATV patchstick and Launcher have managed to get it working from the launcher, so if you have the Alpha installed on your apple TV you can upgrade the launcher and then you can update Boxee from the launcher as was done in the alpha versions.
Now this install method does not install some of the additional features such as flash or Firefox which run in the background and allow you to use some of the Apps that are designed for the Mac version that this is ported from. you can get the additional instructions by clicking on the link if you use the Launcher method to upgrade to Beta on the apple TV.
Well the Olympics have come to a close and as many would agree they have been a great showcase for Canada and Vancouver.
And surprisingly the ‘Own the Podium’ Program that was introduced in Canada seems to have paid off as we have set a new Olympic record for most gold medals in an Olympics and most gold medals by a host country as you can see from the table below. Although we don’t have the most medals overall but we do have the most Golds, and as most Canadians would agree we got the all important Gold in men’s and and women’s hockey, in an especially dramatic fashion for the Men in overtime against the USA on Sunday.
Well As I had mentioned Previously as part of my goals I have scheduled my Exam for this Friday. From the report from my last attempt on this exam I missed it only by a few points so I am brushing up on the points that were a bit weaker according to the report. Right now I am going through all the documentation I have on those topics and reviewing them and any scenarios where they may be used in the exam.
Will post an update this weekend after I complete the exam. Wish me Luck!
While watching the Olympics these last couple of weeks I have had to watch commercials as opposed to my usual commercial free experience with Boxee on the appleTV.
As a result I found a few that caught my attention as being unique and had a Canadian theme to them.
Here are a few of them. Let me know what your thoughts are? The first one you have to open in you tube they don’t allow embedding it here.
So one of the many things that come with being the family IT person is that whenever something goes wrong with any digital device family members turn to me to try and fix it. I usually will take a look within reason and see what I can do or suggest a solution if it involves too much time or may be costly to repair.
Well today we had such a request. My sister in law and her boyfriend just came back from their first vacation down south together. And as is the case there were a lot of pictures taken with their digital camera. Only problem was on the last day they got an error on their camera and it was only showing their last 30 pictures from that day, the other 270 or so pictures had vanished.
Well after doing some research I found the highly recommended Zero Assumption Recovery Tool . The have a free utility for recovering digital images and a paid solution for other recovery options.
They even have a very easy to follow tutorial on how the product works. you can find it here.
The Tool works well, takes a bit of time as any recovery tool might, and end result managed to recover 306 pictures for them after it ran for a couple of hours. there were some pictures that did not recover completely but in the grand scheme of things a few pictures missing is better than all of them. They were happy with the results which is what always counts.
Well I have been kind of lazy of late with vacation and just life in general taking it’s tole on me. Maybe it is being back in the winter after so many years I am suffering from SAD. I don’t know but I am working on getting out of it right now.
And a couple of the goals I have set for myself are to write my next exam for the MCSE and get in the habit of writing a post at least once a day. Nothing fancy or too deep. But something interesting and of value.
Well that is my little post for today. I have scheduled my test already. And I am working on a couple of post that should be ready in the next few days.
Well the Olympics have started. And I am proud to say they are in Canada and more specifically Vancouver. Both Karen and I liked Vancouver a lot when we were there. Just happened that the situation at the time was not great which is why we left.
I really enjoyed watching the opening ceremonies on Friday. One of the things l liked the most was the poet. His poem really hit home and really captured a lot of what makes Canada Canada.
Looking forward to seeing the men’s hockey. As for the women’s hockey don’t think there will be much competition except maybe from the USA but after the first game that they had an 18-0 win and set an Olympic record for most goals in a game, I think it is a safe bet they will get a medal.
Here is The medal Standings (This should update as it changes):
And to keep up on the Ice Hockey action here is the Schedule and the results:
Just wanted to wish happy holidays to everyone who reads this. All the best for those who celebrate Christmas today and tomorrow. Looking forward to the new year and all the opportunity it will bring.
Well as I had stated before, I have been working on getting certified. With several different ones in mind. But given my new position, I figured the Microsoft route would be most beneficial right now and would apply most to my current environment. That and the fact my exposure to network infrastructure in this position is minimal to non-existant the Cisco certs can be put on hold a little while longer. But with everything that has happened in the last 6 months that was kind of hard.
But I took a big step towards my goal about 2 weeks ago. I wrote the 70-290 Microsoft exam, and I passed! It was funny after reviewing the transcript online I realized it has been almost 10 years exactly since I wrote my first certification exam for Microsoft back in the days of NT 4.0.
So with that feat done I have my goal of writing 1 to 2 exams a month does not seem so hard I took about 3 weeks of prep for this exam by reading the ms press book and preparing with simulation exams. That seemed to be what worked best for me as I wrote the exam in about 1 hour.
Now on to the next exam which is the 70-291. I have already booked it for December and am working on prepping for it now.
Will keep you all posted on the progress and outcome.
