Chicken Soup For The Soulless

Now that I am again gainfully employed, I can in good conscience fix your personal computer problems for trade and amusement, My rates are somewhat negotiable, but generally I ask for trade in goods and services equal to half of what i charge in cash. So basically, you get $60 an hour service for around $30 an hour when all is said and done.

What can I do? A lot! I don’t do circuit level repair (I am clumsy with the soldering iron) but I can fix just about any software or hardware problem your home PC happens to have. I can also fix and secure your network, advise you on upgrades, and generally give you the sort of service that your local retail fix-it place can only dream of offering.

The best part? You don’t necessarily have to pay cash!

If you have something interesting to trade (from technology to yummy food to a trade in services) I’m possibly game. If you want to buy me something off of my ThinkGeek Wishlist!

Hit me up if you need something done.

I’ve been bitching a fair amount about the official Microsoft 70-646 course book published by Wiley Press of late. See, I’ve finally decided to go ahead with the Microsoft certification trac

I’ve been working on my MCITP for Server 2008, and I thought until yesterday that I was just about ready to take the first of three tests. I’d taken the Server 2008 Administration Course at TCC, studied the official academic course book until I could honestly claim to know 95% of the material by heart, and took all of the practice tests contained on the included CD. Things were looking good!

Of course, I’m no novice to the certification test arena. More to the point, I know the format of Microsoft’s tests rather well. The tests in the academic book were structured as simple fact recitations, aka:

What over the counter medicine helps you get your Zz’s?

A. Ham Biscuit
B. Viagra
C. Chloroform
D. Nyquil
E. Dayquil

…whereas Microsoft’s questions are more like word problems.

John Smith has been working as a brick mason for 12 years at the Bigass Brick Barn. He is working at a building site when he begins to develop sniffling, sneezing, and coughing. He is sent home by his supervisor, who advises him to rest himself overnight so that he can return to work as soon as possible.

What steps should John Smith take to suppress his symptoms and meet the requirements of his supervisor with the minimum expense and investment of time? (Choose Two)

A. Go to the hospital to be treated.
B. Take a dose of Nyquil
C. Take a does of Dayquil
D. Go to bed.
E. Stay awake until symptoms are clear.

Knowing this, I sought out a practice test from MeasureUp. When I did not only did not know the answers, but I did not know what the questions was referring to, I suspected that the $120 “Academic Course” was a pile of shit. Not one to jump to immediate conclusions, though, I went out and bought the self-paced MS Press course, which had the information that was missing from the other book.

Nice.

A quick minute or five later, and I’d pushed the test back a week and set a pretty rigorous schedule of two chapters a day (600+ pages total) in the self-paced course so I can hopefully be prepared to take the test NEXT Friday. I can always re-re- schedule, but I’d honestly like to move on to the next cert test. :-/

Hey, guess what? I have a new job!

But more importantly, my new file server is arriving in bits and pieces. Now that I have a positive source of income, I’ve decided to suck up the cost of it and ditch the patchwork faux server I am currently using. It isn’t exactly a powerhouse, but it isn’t too shabby either. I’m running a newish motherboard and a 2.5ghz dual core, DDR3 RAM, and a whopping 3TB of hard drive space. My intent is to install Server 2008 with Tversity for media sharing, a local domain, and a centralized antivirus solution. I’ll also likely install Hamachi for my own remote access purposes.

Fun stuff!

On the education side, I’ll be pursuing MCITP as planned, but I’ll also be knocking out Security+ before summer.

This past weekend, I upgraded our network to bring it closer to what I envision it being over the next few months. More specifically, I upgraded all of our client machines to Windows 7, took our acting server and installed Home Server Power Pack 3, and set the server’s shares up to better reflect the way I intend the network file structure to be.

So… my thoughts on Home Server. The good? It works as advertised, and seems to run faster and more efficiently than, say, running windows 7 and setting up a half-assed server. The bad?

Aah, the bad. For some reason, Windows Home Server did not recognize my dynamic drives as being “real.” Being new to the WHS interface, I assumed that adding a drive to the data tab was simply adding it as a listed drive. Alas, this was not the case… and as the drive was not formatted as a basic drive, it just went ahead and formatted the drive without asking.

Have you ever recovered data from a spanned drive? No? I don’t recommend it. Not. Fun.

That was the only major fuckup in the whole process, but there are a few nitpicks I have.

One: I cannot disable the PC backups manually per machine. Not that I will want to when I get our real WHS, but space is at a premium right now. I may be missing the option, though.

Two: Setting up shares is very dumb-proof, but I would prefer to be able to set manual mapping without having to do some Admin Panel tweaking. Along the same lines, I’d like the WHS client console to support mapped drives. My network relies heavily on mapped drives on the client side (it makes managing data deliciously simple.) I can has mapped drives?

Three: WHS does not show the drive space on the data drives properly. This is really, truly a nitpick… but how hard would it be to reflect the correct drive space?

The add-ins installation and documentation could use some work too… and despite promises, I have yet to get my 120 day trial key.

Other than that, I think it’ll be a go. Why not just install Server 2008? Media streaming and the automatic back ups.

I’m taking some time off to reset my life overall. I’ve ceased running for at least a few days, I’m not going to work out… and really, I’m just going to focus on getting my mind cleared of leftovers before I start back up again. Call it silly if you like, but I need to shut down all of those background processes that are left running when life continues unabated.

Sabalo System –> Restart.

Well… I’m not quite done yet. I’m still working on the restart. I mean… I wake up and expect to have things to do. I mean… I DO have things to do, but they’re not the same things I’m used to doing… or… hell. If you get it, you get it. If not, well, you’ve not been between jobs in a good long while.

Me? I’ve not been truly between jobs since 2004.

First interview? Scheduled, so that’s good. I’m spending the day finding solid opportunities, crafting a better resume, and watching that “To Catch a Thief” show.

I mean, uh… being productive for a full 12 hour day.