Joined Channel: [1: Blog - Joe Gough]

In the spirit of the popular Wack’a’Mole game I am just on the train trying to “wack” an internet connection. It comes and goes – you need to be quick, you need to be fast. If you’re not 100% committed then don’t bother trying.

Trying to download a file at the moment and finding myself in an epic battle between good and evil. But I know I will prevail in the end… hold on – maybe if I hold the phone to the window…. Hmmm people are staring….

I may well moan about it now, but I guess once the network gets better and there is a stable 3G connection it will almost take the fun out of it… almost.

Ok, I had hoped to go into more detail on my choice of laptop, but hey – life got in the way. I have been busy enjoying a nice little holiday from work and decided that I would focus on resting up before starting my new job in London Village .

I originally decided it was time to try a 17” MacBookPro and as Apple are kind enough to offer a 14day money back returns policy I walked into my local Apple shop and picked one up for the horrendous price of £1,889 incVAT. It is expensive, but Apple charge a premium for their brand so I decided to test it for 14days and see if it was really worth it.

I didn’t really spend much time in OSX, I tried to install a few basic apps for work and as soon as I found they didn’t have OSX variants I lost interest. I needed to do some “actual work” so installed Win7 via boot camp immediately. Once I got Win7 installed, I was pleased to see windows update found almost all the drivers, but for argument sakes installed the driver package from the Apple CD. Even with their own tools installed I immediately had issues with the keyboard.

The first thing I did was join my domain and reboot…. upon reboot I went to press Ctrl-Alt…. erm…. there is no Del key?! Fantastic. How do they expect me to log on then? After sourcing an external keyboard for the Del key, logging on and checking the web for a solution it became obvious I wasn’t the first with this issue. I ended up using an old Windows Server 2003 resource kit tool to remap the keys in the registry. It worked but still wasn’t ideal and if I didn’t have an external keyboard handy I would have been well and truly knackered.

There were a couple of other issues as well, the laptop gets hot and I’m not just talking about warm. I’ve had my share of hardcore gaming laptops in the past and this thing was right up there in the “I used to have skin” category. Some of the reviews mentioned it gets warm – they were being very generous. Especially on the left palm rest.

Despite this, I did really like it. It is thin, light and the battery life is amazing. Despite being based on the old dual core Core2 technology it was quick and the graphics were acceptable. Credit where credit due Apple have really done well on the drivers and the system just works. That said, with the new model just around the corner I just couldn’t justify the massively inflated price for under powered last generation hardware – so I took it back after the 14days was up.

Back to Dell for me….

With some free time before starting my new job I have compiled a list of jobs that need doing around the house (oh the glamour!). One of them was moving the hallway light approx 30cm left to accommodate a new light so the front door didn’t smash it when opening!

The reason I bring this up is because as my good lady will attest, my (lack of) DIY skills are legendry.

Exhibit A – The mirror that I wanted to put up “quickly” using a piece of string to measure the distance between the screw holes (6 holes for 2 screws = WIN!) and the phrase “yeah that looks about level….”.

Exhibit B – The Clock that required a single screw hole, that took over 30minutes to put up and ended up in more plaster on the floor than left on the wall….

Anyway – check this out! two screw holes perfectly placed and a single hole for the electrical cabling, plus a junction box in the loft wired to give additional cable length covering the distance.

If ever the phrase “BOOM HEADSHOT!” was to be used – this is it!

Screenshot or it didn’t happen? See below:

http://img442.imageshack.us/img442/9238/capturewz.jpg

Let the applause begin.

Edit – Yes I do plan on sanding down the Polyfiller and painting over it! First thing Julie said….

About 2.5 years ago I went on the VMWare VI3:Install and Configure course in preparation of designing and maintaining my previous company’s ESX infrastructure. The course was good, I designed the infrastructure, implemented it and it has been happily running ever since, with upgrades to the latest versions (ie VI3.5, etc) along the way.

I was the only IT admin at iMeta at the time and things were exceptionally busy. I finished the project, everything was working and people were happy so I immediately moved onto the next. Sounds good right? wrong!

I was in an interview Monday afternoon and was asked the question: “Do you have your VCP qualification?”

In total confidence I immediately answered yes and didn’t give it a second thought. It wasn’t until the drive home that I had a very disturbing thought – I did the course, but I was so busy I never actually got around to taking the exam!

While taking the course is arguably the important part, especially considering that VMWare won’t let you take the exam until you have done the course – technically I wasn’t actually qualified in VMWare and I just told a potential employer that I was….

Panic.

Wait a minute, VSphere has been out for about a year now – what if they have retired the VI3 exam?! VMWare only let you take the exam if you have done the course, so if they have retired the exam I will need to take the new VI4 course before I can take the exam.

Panic.

Get home, browse web. The exam was due to be retired on the 31st December 2009 but they extended it to the 31st March 2010. Pearson Vue shows the last possible exam as Wednesday at 2pm, which was 36 hours away! Fail and I can’t retake. Fail and I’m not VCP qualified. Fail and I need to take the VI4 course in order to take the VI4 exam. Good thing I work best under pressure.

Fortunately I took the exam yesterday with just a few hours revision and passed. Phew!

EDIT – There was another person just finishing the exam as I went in. He failed with 69% – ouch!

EDIT2 – This is *not* an April fool! ha ha