AI Certification in the Thermionic Age

The Test Centre Experience

Adjusting the camera, he surmised that I was a much taller candidate than others who had been there recently. I had just signed on the signature pad, and many unsuccessful attempts were made to capture a picture of my face before I stepped forward a bit, took off my glasses, and he was satisfied with the essential security checks.

Yet he had erroneously added my details to another candidate's profile; we had to do it all over again. I only realised his error when he signed me onto the testing computer. Clicking on the scheduling for the other candidate, I saw a better picture of my visage than the one eventually used for my profile.

How Pearson VUE happens upon these test centres with kit that seems to have been acquired from an antiques shop, in a throwback to a time when computers were powered by thermionic valves, does amaze one. I have been to some dire places, and this tanks the rankings.

A Journey to Altrincham

I was in Altrincham yesterday, some 8 miles (13 kilometres) to the southwest of Manchester, attending the nearest test centre to acquire a new Microsoft certification on Artificial Intelligence (AI).

Whilst I had determined to do this for months, I struggled to get through the material. The German instructor on one of the Udemy courses had a good grasp of the subject, but I could not engage with the accent, the grammar or the delivery. It felt like extreme drudgery, and I abandoned all study with a sense of dissatisfaction and lethargy.

Finding New Momentum

Then, whilst having a long break in December after my birthday and Christmas (I tend to use my holidays for study and tests), I gained some enthusiasm for just completing the cycle and closing the books on this test before the end of the year.

I completed the original Udemy course and took another, gaining the view that I had mastered the material. I then got Google's Gemini 3 Pro AI bot to produce interactive flashcards, along with the code to make them portable and playable as standard HTML files.

However, when I tried the free practice tests on Whizlabs, the gaps in my knowledge were laid bare. I went back to the Microsoft Learn study material, which now included video rather than just text-based training. Where certain concepts were still not as clear, I got AI to provide a layman's explanation with examples and use cases. I use the Poe.com interface to access AI bots, which gives me access to the broadest complement of publicly available AI bots.

Discovering NotebookLM

I discovered Google's NotebookLM in August, but never really exploited it beyond the novelty it provided then. It is a virtual research assistant that takes input from sources you provide on documents and references to turn complexity into clarity.

As a note-taking and study tool, it has amazing benefits of transforming your sources into audio and video overviews, mind maps, reports, flashcards, quizzes, infographics or slide decks.

Curating 50 sources of material, including that which its Deep Research feature was able to gather, I produced an extended last-minute audio overview of about 37 minutes in length that covered every critical idea that might be covered in the test. I listened to it twice before I arrived at the test centre. That was my last bit of revision: listening rather than reading. The leveraging of AI to the maximum to ace an AI test.

I had 45 minutes to answer 46 questions; there were not just straight multiple-choice selection answers either. I got caught out in July 2022 when, having not played in the testing sandbox provided by Microsoft, I wasted valuable time understanding how to navigate the interface, though thankfully, I passed the test. On this occasion, I was done in just over 23 minutes. I rarely ever do a review; I ended the test and got a good passing score.

Looking Ahead

Obviously, there is probably a need for a piece on how I use AI for day-to-day activities at work, for study and other aspects of life, including the grammatical reviews of my blogs.

With the AI-900: Microsoft Certified: Azure AI Fundamentals certificate under my belt, that makes three certifications this year. I can only wonder what next year has in store.

The ordeal of another Microsoft certification test

Sorely tested to the testicles

By the time I clicked on the submit button, I was all shook up in an Elvis Presley kind of way. I had no time for filling out feedback forms, I had been stripped of every dignity and confidence suggesting passing this Microsoft test, I was expecting some bad news.

It was 57 questions in 100 minutes, I barely had 90 seconds to spare at the end. Then, I rarely mark questions for review, my first answer or gut feel response is usually my final answer, no point scraping over sores left by finding out that you’re not as sure as you thought you were.

It is just over three weeks ago that I passed another test with barely a week of preparation.

The preparation never ends

I had painstakingly gone through the theoretical stuff for this one, and attended courses from both Udemy and Coursera, I could even run the latter at 1.5x and keep up with what was being said. Practice, practice tests, even AI producing flashcards for revision. It could easily have been 48 hours of serious study in just over 2 weeks.

What other tips I could get from people who had passed or failed the test were best viewed from Reddit, everything filled the spectrum from a full gloat to despondency at multiple attempts without success. You had to feel bad for them and there was a moment I thought I would be returning as a glutton for punishment in a few days to revisit the site of my drubbing.

My initial plan was to try for Tuesday, but I had a health progress meeting in the afternoon. It wasn’t until Wednesday afternoon that I decided I had done enough, and I booked the test for Friday with hardly any leeway for postponing or rescheduling the test.

Time is not as kind

One new feature of the test is the open book facility, useful for getting exact details, but it could be a time-consuming trap when looking for ideas or processes. I fixated on the documentation section where I needed to and pored through the search results page for clues before clicking on links to dig further. It is helpful, but time suddenly plays like an hourglass; given girth to let the sand through without constraint.

The most important thing is not to panic, get to the direct question asked then walk back to the scenario or setting presented, especially when you are running out of time. Things click better when you know what you are looking for having had a glimpse of the suggested answers.

When the final screen came up, I had not done that well in one section and did much better than average in the three other sections. The most important thing, I had exceeded the passing score, I passed. Amid the shaking and trembling, as I tried to catch my breath, I signed out, collected the printout and called Brian. What a relief and well, it is preparations in earnest for the next certification test.

Looking at the azure skies of success

Passing the test

I have just returned from a Pearson Vue Computer-based testing centre which is just about a 25-minute walk from my home, and I am happy to say I passed the test I took.

Last month, I attended two 2-hour sessions of a Microsoft Azure Training Day: Azure Fundamentals, training day, it was the first time, I had the opportunity to follow the sessions fully. I had been thinking of getting certifications for the Microsoft Azure track for quite a while but could not get myself motivated enough to engage.

This time, after attending the training day which came with a free voucher for the AZ-900: Azure Fundamentals examination which I decided to use. The voucher was to expire at the end of June, I had the feeling I knew just about enough to pass the test, yet I could not afford to be over-confident.

Materials and practice

There is a lot of study material at my disposal, and this was one I did not think required instructor-led guidance like I required for my PRINCE2 and TOGAF certifications, in late 2019. The Microsoft Learn site is quite useful though it is mostly text-based interspersed with video snippets. I got to Level 7 and completed about 60% of the modules, but it was drudgery all through.

A better resource was John Savill’s AZ-900 Azure Fundamentals Certification Course of a library of YouTube videos of just over 9 hours of material. Thankfully, John has not entirely lost his English accent even if he has acquired some American mannerisms apart from the possibility of being distracted by his bulging biceps, the instructions, demonstrations, and whiteboard depictions are easy to follow to grasp the detail of the course.

I committed time to that, playing back elements that weren’t all that clear to me at first viewing and over 4 days, I had gone through the course enough to have some confidence that I will pass the test. After which I attempted two separate free mock tests and set out for the examination this morning.

Keeping up and current

Thinking about it, I did my first vendor certification just over 28 years ago, then, I acquired the Certified Netware Engineer certification after some weeks of self-study, having paid £140 for two volumes of study material. That was a lot of money for my 1994 salary, but that set my career off on an exciting, fulfilling and rewarding experience.

It is funny that I am still doing vendor certifications in my mid-50s, not that is matters that much, but the sense of self-affirmation and the confirmation of knowledge and understanding is a good fillip to proving you can still keep up with technologies and new developments. I love what I do, and I will continue to challenge myself as much as I intend to improve myself and remain relevant in my industry and career, for as long as I can.

As I left the test centre, I called Brian who constantly informs me that I am more than capable to meet any situation; I can’t distinguish between truth and bias, but I am always encouraged and motivated by him, then on getting home, I called my mum because we had discussed this and there was my concern that I might be tripped by the nuances of reading the context of US English with a British mindset. I got by and that is all that matters.

Azure: A blessing of the bright blue in colour like a cloudless sky

Share the useful things

Just a short note to acknowledge even the small blessings. Last night I happened upon some course material that had been lingering in the background. Microsoft offered a free hour’s webinar that I attended after work two days ago and in that hour, I learnt some things I never knew were possible quite surprisingly.

The technological landscape is changing, just as the workplace is. We are in the constant self-improvement quest to remain relevant and retain prominence. Everything is moving to the cloud. I had the course on playback on my television this morning and it just occurred to me to share it with some friends and on Twitter and Facebook.

See the unlikely rewards

I was gratified to know some of my friends were already exploring the option, others found it could be useful, but most notably, a friend with whom I have had a working relationship as far back as 2004, who had given me some insight in career development many times before, contacted me to offer some additional material and tips from his study programme, very helpful stuff.

Besides finding that it helped link me up with other friends. I liked the feeling that a simply act of dissemination in the hope that someone might gain some benefit has redounded more than could be expected.

I am even more thankful because illustrates the point I am swift to make; an open hand is that is ready to receive. That is how the blessing gets around.

The stuff to play with

If you are interested in gaining a cloud technologies certification in Microsoft Azure, you can start with Exam AZ-900: Microsoft Azure Fundamentals, follow the 3:10 hours YouTube course Microsoft Azure Fundamentals Certification Course (AZ-900) below (There are quite a few training outfits offering the course and some bundle it with a free exam voucher.) then extend your knowledge of Azure with the free Learn Azure in a Month of Lunches book that you can read as a webpage and download as a PDF.

If you do find any of this useful and go on to do the exam, please return to leave a note of your experience. Thank you.

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Old Printers Never Die

Printing desires

My career in information technology does not have office doors or opening hours when I visit friends or relations. There is usually one little problem that requires a good looking at and sometimes I will think up an elaborate solution just because fundamentally I believe using computing tools should be a pleasure to the user at work and at home.

Recently, my cousin just wanted to print to an old printer she was never able to get to work with her laptop – what she wanted was a simple solution and decided to have a look.

Her idea was to connect the printer to her laptop whenever she wanted to print anything but that presented a number of inconveniences I felt should be eliminated.

It’s old but not to be sold

First of all the printer was a HP LaserJet 4L printer, it think a second generation one because it a non-detachable USB cable that went into that back of a not easily accessible old desktop running Microsoft Windows Vista.

Immediately, I thought I could share the printer and that would mean everyone would be able to use the printer over the wireless network.

I have always hated Windows Vista security and the idea of each person having to log on to the system to print was just extraneous, they all belonged to the same IP subnet but each computer was in a different standalone workgroup – all functions of inconsistent installation methods offered by Microsoft.

I shared the printer and then removed password protected sharing which meant any printers and the Public folder were open for usage to those on the network.

Where is the driver?

I started with my cousin’s laptop which was running 64-bit Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate Edition, it saw the printer but could not download the driver from Microsoft Update. Hewlett Packard said the driver was contained in the installation of Windows but there was nothing I could do to get the driver.

I modified the properties of the printer to allow the Microsoft Windows Vista to render the print jobs for all clients and tried again to no avail. Then I got the printer to work from other laptops running 32-bit Windows 7 of various editions – the installation just downloaded the driver from the Windows Vista system.

Now, if Hewlett Packard was saying the printer driver was within the Microsoft Windows version and consequently obtainable from Microsoft Update but during installation it bombed out searching for the driver automatically, somehow, there had to be a way to obtain the printer driver because Hewlett Packard was just not providing one.

What was even more surprising was none of the forums I contacted had any clearly thought through solutions, it all seemed like some trial-and-error activity eventually solved the problem and that was just not enough for me, I had to understand the how and the why.

Aha!

The most persuasive solution offered was Microsoft has my printer driver, so I decided to search for the printer driver on the Microsoft website.

That is how I came upon the Microsoft Update Catalog, it expects you to be running Microsoft Internet Explorer or a browser with IE Extensions else in my case running Google Chrome thanked me for visiting before asking me to upgrade my Internet Explorer installation.

At the Microsoft Update Catalog, you are presented with a text search box into which you can type in your search terms, I was specific – HP LaserJet 4L – and that offered a number of choices two of which were for PostScript drivers – those were not the ones I needed.

Getting the driver

The description of each driver is clear enough, with a button to Add [1] the driver require, as indicated in the graphic and once the drivers required are added, click on View Basket [2] to see the added driver(s) with the option to download.

Clicking on the Download [1] button on the graphic below presents a dialog box asking for where to save your downloaded file(s) and the downloaded file is a Microsoft Cabinet file with a .CAB extension.

You can either extract the files into a folder but right-clicking on the file and choosing where to extract the files and then install the drivers from that folder using the dialog that appears after Windows Update fails to find the files needed or use the Windows Package Manager (PKGMGR.EXE) from an elevated privileges command prompt with the command line:

pkgmgr /ip /m:.cab /quiet

This integrates the driver into the system so when the driver is being searched for by the wizard, it will automatically be found and installed.

In conclusion

The long and short of this treatise is, if the manufacturer of any of your old devices suggests the driver you require is available within the operating system or from Microsoft Windows Update but the drivers cannot be automatically found and downloaded – go to the Microsoft Update Catalog and get the driver you need.

Your old devices need not be replaced because of the frustration of not being able to find the right driver or because the forums that should provide clear directions just assume too much of enquirers and their knowledge of these things.

Cancelling Tech-Ed, a considered cut-back

All dark at the morn

It quickly dawned on me this morning when I left home for work considering I had the penchant for arriving at work around 11:00AM in my last endeavour; I find that I am at work before 9:00AM in what constitutes a 1 hour 45 minute commuting journey.

Yes, it did dawn on me that the street lights had been switched off well before dawn; we are in the autumn months and sunrise [1] today was supposed to be 07:51AM, I literally walked in the dark to the tram station some 4 minutes away – it was eerie.

The power to charge

On Saturday, we had a power cut for nigh on 2 hours, no one could explain why, but some including myself would have been relieved for a while that the energy bill black hole had closed its mouth for while.

Even I cannot believe what I pay for electricity and heating, I have just allowed them to claw at my account with impunity, but I am getting to the stage that I find the situation less than funny anymore.

As I got to work, I threw some stuff in the bin only to find that the office bins had not been emptied over the weekend.

No Forte for Fortis

Meanwhile, as the credit crunch swirls around with the menacing destruction of a never before recorded hurricane force, my mortgage bank which at the beginning of last week was partly privatised is now fully owned [2] by the Netherlands government – as I fall into the higher tax band, there is no doubt that even my pennies would go into assuaging the gross offences of those who first laughed all the way to the bank and now are running off with the loot and not giving a hoot.

Microsoft cancelled

I had planned to go to Barcelona in the first week of November and had paid in full for the Microsoft Tech-Ed EMEA 2008 [3] community gathering as a Super Early Bird registrant, my mouse has hovered over the cancel button a few times in the last week – I think, the thought alone means I would not fight the urge to cancel.

I think planning for a decent holiday in December takes precedent over this jaunt; it would have been different if someone else was paying for it and I was still earning something whilst I was away – freelance consultants have no such luxury. Maybe next year.

Just around this time, one would have received an invitation for the once free Best of MMS Roadshow [4] which attracted a cost last year with poorer planning arrangements than when it was free for the two previous years – it would appear, that useful event has been shelved, quietly.

Frugality enters vocabulary

In conversation with a friend over the weekend, I used the word frugal in relation to certain of my affairs, a word that would never have crossed my lips except in reference to others.

In other words, we are all quietly cutting back, ditching the non-essential no matter how thrilling it could be – we are left with one fervent prayer of hope that when the times are hard we would be able to see it through unscathed, and when the times of the good life return, we are left without a care about how to live it good.

What makes one so angry about it all is the guys who created the maelstrom have bolted the endangered airplane in golden parachutes and are literally out of reach of the law – whoever gets caught would most definitely be small fry – Such is life!

Sources

[1] Sunrise and Sunset for Netherlands – Amsterdam – coming days

[2] Dutch part of Fortis is nationalised - Times Online

[3] Microsoft Tech·Ed EMEA 2008

[4] TechNet Spotlight!

A rotten experience of shopping and delivery

Bit System, Bigger Memory

Sometimes, I do not know what it takes to snap me out of a terminal sulk and I had every reason to be quite contrary. This blog is a bit geeky.

I had been thinking of getting my mitts deep into Microsoft Windows Server 2008 but that would have required a reasonably specified system.

With a help of a friend at work who knows a bit more about assembling computers, I ordered a computer from azerty.nl placing each component into my electronic trolley after check that it was available and in stock.

The highlights of this system were the Intel Core 2 Quad core processor, 8GB of Ram and 2 1GB SATA hard disks.

Having the Microsoft TechNet Plus Subscription meant I had access to a good deal of Microsoft software for free, for evaluation and usually as Microsoft expects, we feedback to them issues and discoveries to improve the products.

My plan was to install the 64-bit version of the Operating System and the run 2 virtual machines using 2.5GB of RAM, very few systems at work are that well specified.

Then I also decided to get a lower specification pre-built system, half the memory and hard disk space – this was to run Windows Vista, also 64-bit with one virtual machine using 2GB of RAM, thus, I would end up with 5 logical systems and all the research and development can begin.

Indulging myself, I got a 22” widescreen monitor too

Beginning to fail me

The site offered to means to keep up with the processing of the order after I had parted with a smidgen over EUR 2,000.

In real-time, it then appeared not every component was available, most of the order filled up by the 3^rd day but for the memory which was supposed to be 2 banks of 4GB for 2 slots in the bespoke system.

In fact, it took 9 days for the memory to be signed off as ready and my system went to assembly.

On Tuesday, I received an email with Track-and-Trace numbers that my systems would soon be delivered and I watched the progress through out the day, from site, to office, to chauffeur and possibly my home.

When I got back home as I walked into the atrium entrance of my block, I noticed 2 boxes, I walked up to check and they were my goods.

I was livid, I could not believe that my goods had been handled with such levity and dumped in an unsecure place with no one having signed for the delivery of the goods. This was supposed to be some “professional” outfit called TNT.

Normally, if a delivery cannot be made, a second and third attempt is made before the goods are taken to the local post office for collection – I have done that so many times for good that do not even cost EUR 50.

It is not all there

It took about 2 hours for me to calm down enough to check if my full order had been delivered, though I could not think of 2 computers and a monitor being in just 2 boxes.

Well, the boxes contained the bespoke computer and the other empty boxes of the components used to build the computer. It did not dawn on me then that I was missing the monitor until later.

Imagine the thoughts that went through my racy mind all night, someone might have waked away with the lighter goods and I had to chase down the whole delivery process to prove that the goods were not in my possession.

I had paid for delivery so it was not like I was being done a favour, I believed I had an implicit contract that ensured azerty.nl after nicely pocketing my money would ensure that goods were properly and professionally delivered.

Hello?

The next morning, I called to complain and remonstrate, no one knew what had happened to my full order, it was not till the afternoon that I was informed that the goods were still on location and arrangements had been made to get them out to me the next day.

I also received a Track-and-Trace number which I did not try out till the next morning only to find that the number had one character missing.

Akin had to calm down seriously when composing an email to demand the exact number because I wanted to be at home to receive my goods.

Afterwards I called azerty.nl and for 30 minutes I went over my story as if in a recital and could not get a Track-and-Trace number for the life of me.

I was just assured that my goods would arrive, I had no problem with that, but if they were user a professional delivery service there should be a record of the transaction somewhere – well I could not get the information at all – it was frustrating, but I decided to work from home in the hope that their assurances would be met.

Not what I ordered

Meanwhile, the night before, I have powered up the beast of a server and slapped on Microsoft Windows Server 2008– Enterprise Edition with Hyper-V all 64-bit.

Then I ran Everest tools on the system, this is software that takes off the bonnet of a system better than any assembly engineer can do. I had suspected the memory I asked for was not what was installed.

Lo and behold, the system has 4 banks of 2GB RAM instead of 2 banks of 4GB RAM, not problem, it just means I cannot upgrade the memory, but then the motherboard can only take 8GB of RAM – fair enough.

However, should I not have been informed that one of the components I ordered could not be sourced and it had been substituted with another?

Given that the price of the 4 modules is higher than installing the original 2 modules I ordered, there was a whiff of hanky-panky and dishonesty in this situation, I was not being given what I paid for and something else was passed off to me as what it was not.

I was not pleased at all and I mentioned that to them, apology precipitates excuses but this was really a process gone wrong.

Arrived and dumped at the door - AGAIN!!!

At just a quarter to 4 my bell rang at the delivery courier said he had 2 boxes for me; I let him in and made for the entrance, 7 floors down by elevator, before I got there, he had disappeared and my boxes were just by the door on the inside.

I found out from a neighbour that the boxes delivered on the Tuesday were placed in the same place and someone had moved them further into the atrium. I was already too exhausted to be very angry, it was completely unacceptable.

How can a firm deliver EUR 2,000 worth of goods and not require signatures of proof of delivery?

I wrote to azerty.nl and told them I would never shop with them again and I would shop them to the computer consumer site called tweakers.net and vent my spleen on my blog.

Apparently, they do have good consumer ratings – Murphy’s Law just seemed to exact a gravitational force on my transaction.

I received a profuse apology by email and they said they were going to lodge a complaint with TNT.

Don’t keep me waiting

So, I left work early to get a KVM (Key Video Mouse) switch to link up 2 computers in my office, I already have one linking up 4 computers in my computer room; none of the shops had what I wanted and when I got to the other side of town all had closed but one.

I bought a cable off them but it took probably ten minutes to process the order because the mouse on their computer was playing up – then I paid, but the boy at the till could not make out that if I bought stuff for EUR 16 and gave him EUR 51, he should give me EUR 35.

The innumerate are taking over the world and that is probably more catastrophic than the illiterate.

Then he offered me a bag, but got distracted trying to fix their computer with a colleague, another 5 minutes that I slapped the shelf with my palm and asked that the customer be properly attended to regardless of whether their system works or not – it is not my business if as a computer store they cannot replace suspect parts.

Basically, I am a customer who does not like being kept waiting – nothing vexatious, just as the boy was about to raise his voice to me, the calmer heads in the place called him to order – I was just about to get really pissed off with computer people.

Anyway, I think I feel a lot better now; I am off to play with my new toys.

Microsoft: Give me English in the Netherlands

English still matters

I have endured this for quite a while that I have now decided it is enough. I live in the Netherlands but professionally my business language is English.

Now, I know that my grasp of Dutch is not that strong having spent a good few years here but that is beside the point – correspondence that I receive concerning my private life usually arrives in Dutch which I can read and sometimes get a friend to help with the context and interpretation.

However, as many companies have their European or Global Headquarters in the Netherlands, you can have the choice of either English or Dutch as the language of correspondence in mails or emails.

They speak English

The interesting thing is a majority of the local supply companies for energy or services have staff that are multi-lingual. I have perfected my second sentence after my “Hello” greeting.

Ik spreek maar een beetje Nederlands, kan ik met Engles spreken? The quality of my Dutch is bad, can I speak in English?

Most of the time, the people are quite obliging and the business gets done, where they have not been able to raise an English voice, I have sometimes muddle through if I have a request or closed the call especially if it was one of those cold calls.

Technical speak favours English

My crusade is now on a war-path with Microsoft, a company that has a global reach beyond any other that tries to localise its content based on the country of operation and tailors its services accordingly.

However, I have worked for a good few “Dutch” companies that have plumbed for English concerning all their software. Whilst Dutch might help people understand processes, most of the technical terms are in English that technical experts seem to prefer English.

With my Microsoft Hotmail account, I have found it impossible to switch the language of communication from Dutch to English; my emails have ended up in some communication black-hole in that behemoth.

Dutch privately, English professionally

This is considering the fact that I am probably one of the rare fee-paying users of Hotmail and I have been for many years for all sorts of reasons including being able to expect a level of customer support and service.

I have endured that, but after joining the technical forum called Microsoft TechNet, I was not going to keep receiving stuff in correspondence I barely understand, this considering the fact that after the façade of Dutch emails you ended up one websites that were in English.

So, I asked that I receive my correspondence in English and an email ping-pong ensued where first I was told it could not be done because the content was tailored for the Netherlands.

Let us say, if the content was tailored for Dutch-speakers that would be a valid point, but if it is for residents of the Netherlands, whilst Dutch is the predominant local language, it almost shares an equal footing with English in businesses that have an international focus.

It is a request not a complaint

I informed the responder that I would be publishing my concerns in a blog, interestingly; this request which should make business sense to any company doing business in the Netherlands has now been pushed to the complaints department within the behemoth.

Are they now going to send many other people like me who live in the Netherlands on Dutch courses or just translate the stuff and give us options on the Microsoft portal to receive correspondence in either the local language or English?

It makes you wonder how they handle Switzerland which is a country that has the option for 4 languages and where a German-speaker lives in a French-speaking area having only learnt German, Italian and English in school.

Basically, I am not impressed at all.

Techies have kids too

Without a bang!

One cannot say that Microsoft TechEd IT Forum in Barcelona ended with a bang, the last session stretched to 16:30, everyone collected their bags and many had checked out of their hotels in the morning and made their way to the airport for their flights back home.

There was no social after-party and it did not appear any had been arranged impromptu; I can understand that many companies having lost the physical presence of their techies for a week but kept them on leash through their Blackberrys, phones and ubiquitous laptops would not countenance the idea of a free weekend in the beautiful city of Barcelona, especially if they are paying.

Many were missing their young families already and that is if they did not have duties stacked up for them to do the moment they land back at home.

There were some that brought their families but they never had them for company except after the sessions which ended late every day.

Techies have kids too

One sight that impressed and amused me was a session called Internet Safety for Kids delivered by Laura Chappell, usually, when a session is full, the spillover is a monitor outside the door with probably 3 people observing the session, I even attending one like that.

This session had a large spillover, with people sitting on the floor outside, I would suppose this means a larger forum and place needs to be set up for such a seminar, next time. More importantly, if no one has ever noticed, techies, geeks, and propeller-heads are flesh and blood, like you and me, they breathe, they feel and they are human-beings affected by everyday things.

Wait for it! Techies have kids, nieces or nephews and they are just as concerned about technological advancements at work as they are about the safety of children when they roam the Wild-West of the Internet.

Besides, many are engaged in other activities as de-facto consultants at home, to neighbours, to schools and other community services that require learned people pro-bono to ensure their systems are safe and the users are even safer.

Internet Safety for Kids is where you can find information, material and detail about this presentation.

Server Core Command Prompt

I have always said I cannot be a UNIX geek because I do not have long enough hair to grow a pony-tail if any at all – Windows Server 2008 is taking us back to the days of the command prompt with a lightweight but extensible base installation called Server Core. [A new URL for the Server Core link was posted 02/04/2019 as I was informed of a broken link by Naomi Vojt of CompariTech. Thank you.]

Yes, you get a command prompt, you can use a Graphical User Interface if you elect to install a fuller version of Windows Server 2008, but this was geeky and we all need to dust off our command-line skills as a demonstration of edlin showed how long we had been in this line of work.

Anyway, it means respect has arrived at the door of Windows experts and now Linux town-criers who think the world revolves around their geekery might suddenly find themselves grudgingly admitting Microsoft buffs to the fold of nerds.

Advent of the management techie

If anything, all that I learnt at this forum was everything we do from this time on requires serious planning; point-and-click does not deliver solutions and technical people need to take on a management perspective of business needs and goals, and then tailor solutions to meet them.

Well, that has never been far from my mind and perspective, but there are many technical people who need to review how they see ones and zeroes and what makes a business gain competitive advantage through IT solutions.

Preparing for Microsoft TechEd IT Forum 2008 already – over and out!

The Vista from my Windows

Melee with meals

The past 5 days, one can say life has revolved between the hotel and the daily conferences which could be exhausting to say the least.

Despite the issues I have with the hotel I ventured into the hotel restaurant last night for a meal because I could not be bothered trawling the whole of Barcelona for a restaurant and a table for one.

As I got there, there was no way of knowing that one room was meant for groups and the other for non-groups, waiter spoke no English and reeled out probably 20 sentences to me on Catalan and I just looked at him like I had just seen an alien.

Eventually, someone came round to show to be some nondescript room with no atmosphere and left me there as if I was in detention. I managed the entrée and touched the main course, refused the desert, which left them worried that I did not like the food nor the service - this time someone from reception came up to chat and find out what was wrong.

Well, what I hated was the fact that being a lone eater the room should have had a bit more atmosphere, a waiter about, probably some music and maybe more people - in the end, eating alone takes away from the pleasure of dining and definitely, in my case, the food would not go down.

It is amazing that one is in Barcelona, an international city that once hosted the Olympics and has quite a big tourist throughput but very few people in the hospitality industry speak any English.

I believe

I attended 4 sessions again and Microsoft might just have won a convert and that is what I said about these events. They are like evangelistic crusades with apostles, prophets, teachers, evangelists and pastors preaching the gospel of Microsoft and performing miracles in the name of Microsoft.

The wonder, the excitement and hypnotism - you get carried along, carried away and voluntarily brainwashed as the mass hysteria consumes every opportunity to resist the urge to succumb - when I get back home, I would be installing Windows Vista.

I came here a sceptic and would be returning a believer; the cynicism has been cast out with evidence of glorious vistas of operation, performance and technical goodies you cannot ignore.

The jewel of the conference has to be Mark Russinovich; a super-geek that looks nothing like the geeks you know - the man knows the internals of Windows and how to look under the bonnet better than any Windows mechanic I have ever seen - he makes tools for every single thought or idea he might have had about extracting information from Windows about what is going on.

He leaves you wanting to go home and get your hands really dirty, solve problems by really finding out why the problem is there, break it down and then fix it up nicely, whatever session he has going, I think I would be lapping that up.

Blogging for whatever

I attended an afternoon session about blogging, and I have been thinking about how to do a bit of technical blogging and veer a bit away from the general stuff that I regularly write about.

I have not decided if I should host that on a separate blog and leave that in this setup; the panel views differed on that matter, but the most important advice was to keep your personality within what you do.

Obviously, people blog for all sorts of reasons, some are fully technical and others are light-hearted - there is a broad spectrum of opinions and views.

Quality and quantity really depends on what you are writing about and they are relative issues, it appeared my blogging frequency was a lot higher than those on the panel, but then I suppose if I had to write purely technical stuff, I might not be delivering stuff with this kind of regularity.

Someone asked about blogging trolls, people whose existence is exemplified by rotten commentary and rude inserts - we agreed that each person's blog space is purely theirs and people who do not respect that principle do not have to be acknowledged.

Whilst I accept anonymous comments I expect people who leave negative insulting comments to also present an identity, if not, I just delete the stuff. If you cannot stand by what you have to say, you are a non-person and non-entity - whilst I would know your IP address, it is a waste of time giving such people time.

If I do go technical with some of my blogging entries, I would suppose it would still revolve around my experiences with analogies, allegories and inferences - I suppose that is the best way to blog - your views and well-researched opinions about how you observe things or how things affect you.

TechEd IT Forum a must

On already with the last day of Microsoft TechEd IT Forum and I am already planning for next year - thankfully, I do not have to run the gauntlet of corporate inertia in arranging for these conferences, I would expect any technical mind that manages and builds infrastructure in the enterprise should be here.

If only CIOs and IT Managers realised that this is no freebie holiday jaunt but an essential element career development that their staff should enjoy. I mentioned this at work months ago, but it all fell through for them and many other projects do because of the lack of adequate exposure to how things are done implemented elsewhere.

References

Mark Russinovich

Four stars or four tries

Four starts at nothing but annoyance

As you approach the main entrance to my hotel you see a sign that appears to have 4 stars, well, do not be cajoled into thinking you are in a 4* star hotel because that sign could have easily fallen off a lorry or been acquired at a car-boot sale.

Seriously, I am now under no illusion about that as I returned from a long day at the conference, I was in the lift with one of the housekeeping staff at about 19:30; little did I know that she would bound out of the lift and make a bee-line to my room to clean it.

So, for 15 minutes I waited for the lady to do what she should have done before 14:00 whilst the reception commiserated but had no clue as to how a room vacated at 7:30 in the morning only saw the feather duster 12 hours later.

Four sessions of info-drowning

It was 4 sessions again out of 5, though many were caught out by a session that indicated something about infrastructure but was entirely about something else called Groove 2007, we should read the small print a lot more - I made my excuses and left to catch the tail-end of something more interesting.

The country parties sealed up the day and I went to the Netherlands drinks when with hindsight I should have considered alternatives not so much related to where I live but other parts of my heritage, like the UK party being English or the World party for counties that did not have critical mass - at least everything would have been in English.

I am getting embarrassed about being an Englishman abroad and I am not as responsive to hearing things said in Dutch, it would have to be more lessons or a new location.

Once again, I see solutions and new problems, it is all going to take a lot of thinking about before anything gets rolled out - play, I must, learn, I should and I must avoid the dangers of information overload.

Skirting the issue

Ladies and Gents

I once was in an office block where the gents and ladies alternated on each floor just in case one column of drainage went out of order, however, there was once a time when some playing a prank switched the signs between the ladies and the gents.

Being one to check the signs even though subconsciously one knows which is which, I ended up in the ladies that was the gents and wondered what that extra bin was about - it took a call to facilities management to sort it all out.

So imagine when the big sign outside shows gents and you find that there are no urinals and all the cubicles have those extra bins apart from the fact that each door to the cubical has the internationally known sign for the lady and definitely, it looks like one is really skirting the issue of gender representation.

Expect Windows Scenic

That is not all, we have Windows everywhere but looking out still, not one is keen on the vista at least not till it gets quite scenic and that would not be for a while. Every time a speaker asks if there are Windows Vista installations out there, nary a hand goes up.

Well. Everyone is wary of that thing, in fact, much as the trumpeting of the features and qualities are almost too deafening to hear anything else, I learnt at the beginning of my IT career that I do not want to belong to the group of those they call "Fools Rush In". Basically, when it comes to operating systems, the smart money is not to boldly go where no one has gone before, but to see from afar the ones that have fallen and then chart your course round their mistakes and experiences.

Let someone else find out if the world is flat before you get on your boat and fall off the edge, I would be rolling out Windows Scenic when it arrives as an update to Windows Vista - meanwhile, I would toy and play with it.

Tradeoffs with the Taliban

The day was quite eventful and I attended 4 sessions, I failed to get into a hands-on lab for a product I believe solves a lot of my problems but there are other things I want done that it does not cover. It is strange to witness the fanfare accompanying one product and then hear questions that make the product look almost half-baked, that is life.

In lieu of the hands-on lab I happened upon a security treats and trade-offs seminar and boy, that was engaging, entertaining and enlightening - who would have thought with the Security Taliban I grapple with at work, security could be so refreshing.

This morning, I am numero uno for the hands-on lab. Off I go.

Beating the hands in Barcelona

Into the groove

What an eventful day it has been, so much information and what one would do to absorb it all and be able to apply it to situations and circumstances one finds back in the wild jungle of work.

I arrived at the conference centre more or less better prepared for the journey and since the keynote address was in the afternoon, one did not have to run the gauntlet of rush-hour traffic or crowds.

I must say the issue of seating has really not been addressed, there were lots of people sitting on the floor and sometimes it was like a rush for seats, for a person like me who uses a cane, there are times one was tempted to put on a poor puppy face to create the compassion that allows others to yield their hard-earned comfort for my pleasure.

I saw some old work colleagues and even joined one for lunch which started quite early and in the middle of lunch a drummer team started a cacophony I initially did not appreciate.

Having lunch early was essential because the keynote speech was going to attract the largest audience of the conference and in our seats were these coloured "scroll-holders" which had me thinking we would be asked to look through one end and see the narrow perspective of our objectives - I found out a lot more, later.

Drums from Africa

The drummers then took the stage, I am always amused when African percussion is offered as entertainment in Europe without the accompaniment of dancers and I was quite impressed with the two Caucasians in the ensemble who gave quite a performance considering I have never thought my white brothers appreciated tribal or native rhythms - I must now disabuse that thought.

The drumbeats almost had me getting up to dance as I feared the gods might be angered at the absence of human frenzy and festive hysteria to what might have well been the call to animist worship, but with no Shamans, no witch-doctors around possible wrath loomed.

I recollect that the music playing before they arrived on stage had a Nigeria flavour to it, with some lines in Nigerian Pidgin English and other words in Yoruba giving that crude feeling of being at home but still far away in Barcelona.

The gods would have been pleased when those scroll things were inculcated in the entertainment as we held them in one hand and hit the other to a rhythm dictated (conducted) by one of the white drummers, then it began to make sense and rhythm too - there were six colours and of different lengths arranged along different columns of the auditorium creating a phonic atmosphere and the game began.

We could all have hit our hands sore in self-flagellation thorough the willingness to participate and it was great fun that came to a crescendo with an emphatic and loud YES at the end of it all.

Suddenly, you see that a lot of planning does go into these participatory things and the more fool for those who refused to join in the almost juvenile atmosphere.

Talk sweet talk hoarse

The keynote started off nicely with quite a number of demonstrations of the future as Microsoft presents it, then another session to detail how the implementation of the new server software would affect our infrastructure.

I felt sorry for the presenter of the session on Microsoft Forefront a security product which I strongly feel should be integrated in other robust security platforms, he must have had acute laryngitis, after many sips of water, it appears he just downed his cough syrup like I do; bottle-to-mouth and gulp till you have but a drop to spare. Well, not as much from what I could see.

The welcoming reception was in the exhibition area as we walked past another group of this time, Spanish guitar players doing Catalan folk songs where my lesson in yo-yo manipulation still had this old dog unable to learn new tricks, the canapés and finger-food was quite nice and I think it is time to call it a day - tomorrow starts at 9:00 and it does not end will the sun is down.

Microsoft does micro-courtesy

Do Not Disturb!

If I ever have a tombstone, it would probably read – He always expected …

I expect that if I put a “Do Not Disturb” sign on my hotel room door that is exactly what it means – the sign is even generous enough to announce that stated intention in Catalan, Castellano and it defaults to English, just in case the housekeeping staff forgot.

Having burnt my candle on three ends last night, the last thing I wanted was for some stranger to walk in on my sleep and wake me up for reasons other than if there was a fire that required evacuating the building.

It transpired that I was disturbed twice and just as I was about to remonstrate, I found that my “Do Not Disturb” sign had disappeared.

In fact, I spoke to at least 3 other guests on my floor that had these bizarre walk-ins upsetting their Sunday morning lie-ins, just because the signs they put on their doors had evaporated, self-destructed or for some other funny reason like a kid collecting door signs.

I would hate to think that the housekeepers took it upon themselves to become this villainous beside the fact that the lady tried that English trick on me too; speaking Catalan slowly with a very loud voice; I did not understand a word but she felt she was communicating loud and clear – she should try that trick in English.

Open for seating at least

Organising a conference for 5,200 delegates in a foreign city can be a logistical nightmare, and from tomorrow the Microsoft TechEd IT Forum for Europe kicks off in Barcelona and we were advised to visit the conference centre to register from 10:00AM on Sunday – smart idea.

However, I having arrived the day before, I was not that travel weary but finding the place was not as easy as it should have been, the organisers assumed everyone would approach the conference centre from one direction, I happened to come from another angle, so the signs to the registration area were not that evident.

So, I got my conference kit and wanted to look into all I had collected, I saw quite a few people sitting on the floor, which I felt was just not on. I then asked the registration desk if there was some place to sit down and I was told the conference was not yet open and they did not have full access to the building till tomorrow.

Tosh! You cannot invite people to a place to register, some of whom are on the tail-end of a long journey and not provide seating – it should not be a requirement per se, it is just a matter common courtesy. I am sure there is a breach of certain health and safety rules in that framework as there were some areas cordoned off for seating the speakers but none for the delegates.

You could see the organisers speaking into their walkie-talkies and scrambling to arrest an uncomfortable situation, in fact, I am surprised no one else had asked that this be done or considered.

I expected something to be done about it and then I was offered the “favour” of being allowed in the speakers corner; sometimes the most mundane things get overlooked when even in Jesus’ time, some cities risked the wrath of Sodom and Gomorrah just for not being good hosts.

When I left the centre, there were more people allowed into this “hallowed corner”, but for all Microsoft’s greatness, this aspect of micro-courtesy or the lack of it is a structural logistical error and leaves much to be desired – I hate to think of what might have happened had I the need of the lavatories.

I must be getting old-fashioned, I probably am too staid in those ways, but common courtesy costs nothing, generates goodwill and keeps people happy; when we begin to lose that from the big picture of all our activities, a whole chunk of humanity deserts us.

Coming out of it a human-doing

Thanks

First I like to thank those who have dropped by with comments which have served as comfort in a personally tumultuous time.

It is strange that my discomfiture has been worse when I have had a second to think at work rather than when I am in the safety and warmth of my home.

What has surprised me is my delayed reaction to this matter, it happened almost 4 weeks ago, but it was only at the beginning of this week that many of the implications started to sink in.

There is anger, self-pity, loss of control, a fuzzy focus and denial but one must needs gain focus and assume control of these affairs – my head cannot afford to cede control to my heart for too long – meanwhile, I have a life to live and too much energy to going into autopsies and hugging cadavers. Yuk!

I find myself agreeing with an analysis made on the My Family sitcom, I am not only a human-being, I am also a human-doing, I have to be doing something and hopefully something exciting, challenging, new and different. I still need to learn to be a proper human-being regardless of what I am doing. [Context of human-doing here is not hedonism or materialism but elements of being a control freak – I honestly do not think I am a control freak, just as a drunk would not confess to being an alcoholic.]

Getting into exciting stuff

We all have to find ways of dealing with these matters in our different ways and I see some major decisions coming because I need new compelling challenges not distractions to close this chapter properly and open a new one.

Again, it is work related but it would be mixing work with pleasure, I would be off to Barcelona in November for the annual “religious” camp-meeting of senior geeks in Microsoft tools and software – I would not say I am a geek per se, but I do think geeky stuff and sometimes do geeky stuff.

The camp-meeting once called Microsoft TechEd and now called Microsoft TechEd IT Forum is a big tent meeting of technology movers, designers and architects using Microsoft solutions, you can imagine that apostles, prophets, teachers, evangelists and pastors of the Microsoft doctrine would be whipping up hysteria and excitement sharing the purposes and strategies that people like us have contributed to the pool of knowledge that Microsoft adapts for local, enterprise and global solutions, it could be great fun.

An enduring experience

I was last at a Tech Ed event in Amsterdam in 1999, it was year of great change with SMS 2.0, Windows 2000, Active Directory and .NET being introduced and made accessible to us.

This year in Barcelona, it is Microsoft Vista which I believe is not ready for enterprise deployment for many reasons including the fact that the support infrastructure is not wide enough to handle user issues and enquiries, System Centre which covers all management and administration issues – these are the areas I am quite interested in.

At the end of the forum, I should be buzzing with Microsoft miracles to unleash on projects under my remit – I am definitely looking forward to that, 5 days of camp-meeting out of a 9-day holiday.

My revival has begun!

Font Annoyance

Today is Patch Tuesday in Microsoft parlance; the second Tuesday of the month is the day Microsoft releases a whole set of patches, fixes and cures for the annoying bugs or the presumed inscrutable vulnerabilities on Microsoft Windows systems and products.

So, the shield in my System Tray came up and I always use the Custom Install at least to see what is being thrown onto my PC.

Well, somehow, I have a critical patch to install because some symbols in the Bookshelf Symbol 7 font have been found to be unacceptable.

How Microsoft could have been complicit in offending the sensibilities of whoever discovered that flaw escapes me.

For all intents and purposes, someone should have told the person to Get A Life rather that have millions of PCs touched to remove seemingly salacious fonts – some minds are just so below the sewer, they will see shit in almost anything.

Exasperation - an anger fuelled emotion

Swing low, swing moodily

After the project I am currently on, I do wonder if I would have to take an Anger Management course or Exasperation Curtailment Therapy. Because in the past few weeks, my moods have swung between anger and exasperation, in some cases, I expressed both emotions simultaneously that the pain of it all leads to almost hysterical laughter.

If things could get worse, this project has the propensity to plumb the depths of of everything bad about project management.

Microsoft Church

Yesterday, I took the day off to attend a Microsoft jaunt, basically, every April; highly technical people meet at some expensive hotel somewhere in America for the Microsoft Management Summit (MMS) which could pass for a big-time religious camp-meeting.

There, Technical Evangelists prognosticate and almost outdo Nostradamus about where we are at, what is being planned and what to expect. These meetings afford the opportunity to engage the people who know about the problems we know and seeking radical thinking for effective solutions.

Six months after that camp-meeting, Microsoft sends out a couple of missionaries with the precious bread-crumbs and news of those events, only this time, we are much more closer to the timelines that were first mooted in April.

Besides, we have what they call Technical Drilldowns which are talks and demonstrations which make complicated things look easy; we are more than an appreciative audience when these super-gurus visit us.

Breadcrumbs worth gold dust

So, this was my second Best of MMS Roadshow which took place just outside Amsterdam – we get invited and it is free – a day of just catching up with what is going on and after the one last year, it is the most valuable knowledge enhancement activity you can participate in, if you manage systems with Microsoft products.

One of the highlights of the day was when we were told that application dependency chains have been improved upon in a product I have worked with for the past 10 years.

Application dependency which is the way you install applications in a pre-determined sequence has been hellish to-date – you had to make changes to each application in the chain to create the desired sequence. In one of my projects, the chain was 24 applications deep; it got me thinking seriously about what could be done about it.

For years, experts in Microsoft Systems Management Server soon to be called System Center could wager that the product was developed by hired hands that had no concept of the way Microsoft did things – the interface was both stodgy and lacked intuitiveness.

Anyway, I fired off a wish list to Microsoft about Application dependency, combining ideas of different technologies that Microsoft would be aware of; well, just as I was preparing a question to ask the speaker about it, he launched into this new feature that could be found in System Center – my wish had been granted and the implementation so well thought through, it was like 3 wishes in one humongous delivery.

Rotten act after class act

The day drew to a close with a delivery from one of the local partners which was not just appalling it was outrageously lack-lustre, I scored the presenters 1 on a scale of 1 to 10 where excellent was 10 and believe me, that was generous.

How could they unleash on us such tripe after 6 hours of listening to other exciting people speak about interesting things a sloth’s equivalent of a car race?

At the Q&A session, my question just like last year, won me this time, a pair of System Center headphones and a 512MB USB flash drive, previously, I had won a pair of noise reduction headphones.

Just a little issue

The day closed with a call from work that the desktop prototype we were about to launch had an application which should not have been installed as part of the core list of applications.

Well, I would not go through the whole story of how I tried to get the people in charge to make up their minds about what applications should be where – that is however not the painful part – it is the fact that this prototype was the 17^th and people have been testing this things for almost 2 weeks, online for some Smart Alec to find this issue now.

No, I did not go into apoplectic rage, I was more reserved in the I upbraided all involved; when I tried to remove the application, I found that it had been so messed up with, I decided it would have to stay in the prototype.

Basically, if the people I work for cannot be decisive or make decisions that would help experts like me achieve the goals I have been hired for, well, I would make those decisions and those decisions would be the prevailing decisions.

Somehow, one just has to take the bull by the horns and wrestle to the ground and subdue it completely – where resolution is lacking, the hired hand gains ascendancy – that is the law of the technical jungle to put it blandly.

Breeding 101 for coat check assistants

Well, really, my job as an expert is to bring it all to a head and deliver a solution.

It was time to go home and I went to the coat check to collect my things – bag was fine, umbrella was dry, overcoat was OK, and where was my hat? Tucked into the sleeve of my overcoat. Sacrilege!!!

I understand that not everyone wears hats, in fact, I have only seen a few places where the concierge knows what to do with a coat, a hat and a cane – my own personally designed hat ruined by some uncultured cretin of a coat check assistant – I was livid, but for the quality of the material, I would have had the manager of the hotel ordering a new one from my milliner’s in Cologne. Struth!