Ricky Martin’s Blog

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 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!

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 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.

I think this is fitting given the recent link to Tim Ferriss and his pilot for his show.

Well I am in the beginning process of going for my MCSE. but at the same time I have always been looking at other ways of making money besides working the usual 40 hour week or more…

A such I came across the book the 4 hour work week, which I had mentioned in a previous post. I like the ideas presented in the book still trying to put some of them in practice. As such I am looking at other avenues to generate some income one of them would be this blog, others I am looking at are online photo stock sites, and investigating a few others right now. Will keep you posted with the outcome of what works and what doesn’t.

One of the other things I have come across in my research over time is also the Bank on yourself concept which is something that intrigued me when I came across it, and there is not that much clear information out there. I will go into more detail on that in a future post as it deserves more dedicated space to that subject.

But at this point as it relates to the Blog, I have already signed up with Google Adsense, and am running a feed through feedburner as well. So far have not seen any monetary results from this but if you have any ideas or suggestions please share them with me?

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