I’m currently about half way through the prep for my 70-291 exam and its hard going. The third and fourth chapters were on subnetting and dns – both subjects I was reasonably comfortable with until I started reading the book – they seem to make the explanations really complicated and there are a lot of formulas to learn (in the case of subnetting) and that is not something I’ve done for a long time. Even my GCSE’s at the age of 16 had limited formula learning needed. It’s also hard to come home from a long day at work, have tea and then start on 2 hours of studying each night, but unfortunately it’s the only possible way forward at the moment 🙁
Yesterday Kristen and I decided to go to the Ohio Music in Education Association Marching Band finals held at one of the local High Schools. We were there for a couple of hours and got to see several bands perform and march. As it was the State finals, the standard was really good. I had never been to one of these shows before but Kristen had participated in them so we both enjoyed the experience from different perspectives. At the awards presentation each of the drum majors would do a salute when their score was announced and I’ve included a quick video of one of them – it made me think of the characters in Camberwick Green
A couple of the bands had costumes, the last band we saw did a Pirates of the Caribbean theme and the flag bearers were dressed as pirates. Another theme was on insects with the band playing Incy Wincy Spider (among other tunes) – each of their tubas were decorated with a spider motif which was pretty cool. We had a great afternoon out, the weather was fantastic, really warm and lots of people were out wearing tshirts – in November!
Information Improvisation
Since anyone can download ringtones now, there is a huge range available. There are ringtones of movie soundtracks as well as funny ringtones. Plus we have now free mp3 ringtones as well as wav files to choose from.
I needed to read a Word2007 document on my home computer this evening and had to download the following files to read the document –
- Word 2003 viewer – 12MB
- Word Viewer 2003 Service Pack 3 – 12MB
- Office 2007 compatability pack – 28MB
52MB of download and three installs seems a bit of an overkill to read one office document!
The 120 day evaluation of Windows Home Server is now available for purchase from Microsoft. Technically the eval is free, but they charge $5.99 for shipping (in the US). I’m not sure why they are not just making it available for download – maybe that comes later. Unfortunately they are not making the full version available on MSDN or Technet Plus Direct (for the first version of the software) which is a real shame – I’d have probably purchased a subscription to Technet Plus if they did. I’m not sure whether I’ll get the eval, I’ve been less than impressed with the performance and reliability of the system so far. After my recent backup corruptions I reinstalled the clients on all of the pc’s but now only the desktop and laptop will backup – Kristen’s pc refuses to do a backup.
The photos from our Canada trip are now uploaded. I haven’t entered any captions or explanations yet though – that will take some time to do. I had hoped to use Zooomr to host the photos but their infinite upload program just doesn’t work. It has uploaded a lot of the photos but a lot of them also come up as “Sorry this photo is currently unavailable”. I’m about to give up on Zooomr as there seems to be no interest in fixing the problems that have existed ever since the botched upgrade to version 3 took place back in May sometime. Unfortunately the head of Zooomr seems to be now focused on the Japanese market and gimmicks and less on the multitude of fixes. A real shame as they had a promising product. So, my pictures are hosted on my website for now and I’ll update the descriptions soon – honest!
According to several sources, it appears that Windows Desktop Search may have got pushed out to a lot of machines on Wednesday…Interesting that one of my SQL Servers has been very slow since Wednesday – I’m off to take a look at this today! Thanks to neowin
There is now a SBSC group on LinkedIn, details at Tim’s blog. I’ve requested that I be added to the membership. If you know me and are also on LinkedIn then feel free to add me to your network, my userid is Helsby.
Coming out of the Shadows this October 24th (tomorrow)…Fiends in Tech present our 3rd Annual Halloween Special:
“It’s the Great Server Chuck and Kreg”
Convinced that the Great Server will be making its yearly appearance, Kreg refuses to go Trick-or-Treating with the rest of the FiT gang and instead pulls an all-nighter in the server room.
Don’t Miss it!
…and while you are waiting, be sure to revisit our earlier Specials
– The Server Room of Horrors
– The Server Room of Horrors 2006
This is the second year that I’ve played a part in these specials – they’ve been really fun to do. I’ve not actually listened to the whole thing yet either as I’m waiting for the official release to come out tomorrow although I know it will be a good show. Don’t forget to keep an eye out on the main Friends in Tech blog for the release.
We had a great time in Canada visiting Niagara Falls and Waterloo where our friends lived. Had a very relaxing week but a long drive home. When we got home, we opened the tons of mail that had arrived during the week – tonight I get to pick up my new ipod from Key Bank for opening a new account. We also got a letter from our insurance company, Hartford, that said they had mislaid 3 backup tapes and that Kristen’s data was on the tape. They are providing the usual 1 year worth of credit monitoring for free (which nowadays seems like a cheap fallback option with no care being taken of the data) but the concerning thing is we were told a month after the tapes were lost and only her data is on the tapes. I’m not convinced this is accurate as surely my SSN is also on the data for the car insurance? We’ll be calling today to get the credit monitoring service set up, setting up a credit freeze and seeing about getting my data included too.
Having a great time in Niagara Falls – whose tagline should be “Tackier than Blackpool
Today we’re leaving Niagara and are heading out to Waterloo…now where did I put the Abba collection?