Progress Report
Hey everyone,
Just thought I would give a little update on my career/certs. Basically I applied around and did receive a couple of bites, but sadly nothing in the pay range to skill set ratio that would work for me. It really is rough out there in spite of what people are starting to say. I mean NOTHING that would cover the bills. Not sure how anyone is supposed to make it.
Anyhow, my job is hiring on a few people and I am again doing more administrative tasks. Deployed some new switches, XenApp6 (nightmare) a couple vSphere setups and working on deploying a Nimsoft/CentOS monitoring system right now. In the coming month I’ll be pulling out an old static routed network and moving them to EIGRP and then dropping in some Squid boxes.
I also have a project lined up to reimage a fleet of laptops to 7 Enterprise via WDS.
So, over all pretty excited to be doing real IT work again. It had gotten pretty bad. If I had to fix one more Outlook issue.. ugh.
As far as certifications go, I have officially given up on CCNP. The only people who I know personally who have passed the damn thing in person, have all cheated. Honestly, I refuse to go that route. It’s hard to blame them given the market out there. But for me, rent is paid, food’s on the table and I got my pride in my certs, do they? (probably, and they make more money, ha)
Anyhow, gave up on CCNP I must have spent 400 hours on that thing since 2008 on and off. And it’s just too much to remember. I just don’t use it enough for it to stick for any length of time. 90% of the networking I do is just T1s, static routes, Site to site VPN and basic Firewall.
So I am planning on finish my MCSE: Security. I studied pretty hard for it back about, oh? 1 year ago, but never finished it. I expect ISA Server to be a breeze, but the 70-298 might be a challenge. We’ll see. In either event, I am pretty confident even if I have to take 70-298 twice I should be done by year’s end on my MCSE:Sec.
The next step after that is kind of vague. I partially want to snag some virtualization certs, Microsoft and Xen. (I can’t afford VCP) But then again, I think it might be better to drive my effort into something like SQL. Make myself more valuable on the business side?
One last thing I was thinking, CCNA:Wireless. Looks like I can rent lab time cheap, so that isn’t a problem. What sounds like is it’s mainly raw trivia, anyone confirm this? For some reason I just wana “collect them all” at the associates level
Thoughts? Input? Flames?
Just thought I would give a little update on my career/certs. Basically I applied around and did receive a couple of bites, but sadly nothing in the pay range to skill set ratio that would work for me. It really is rough out there in spite of what people are starting to say. I mean NOTHING that would cover the bills. Not sure how anyone is supposed to make it.
Anyhow, my job is hiring on a few people and I am again doing more administrative tasks. Deployed some new switches, XenApp6 (nightmare) a couple vSphere setups and working on deploying a Nimsoft/CentOS monitoring system right now. In the coming month I’ll be pulling out an old static routed network and moving them to EIGRP and then dropping in some Squid boxes.
I also have a project lined up to reimage a fleet of laptops to 7 Enterprise via WDS.
So, over all pretty excited to be doing real IT work again. It had gotten pretty bad. If I had to fix one more Outlook issue.. ugh.
As far as certifications go, I have officially given up on CCNP. The only people who I know personally who have passed the damn thing in person, have all cheated. Honestly, I refuse to go that route. It’s hard to blame them given the market out there. But for me, rent is paid, food’s on the table and I got my pride in my certs, do they? (probably, and they make more money, ha)
Anyhow, gave up on CCNP I must have spent 400 hours on that thing since 2008 on and off. And it’s just too much to remember. I just don’t use it enough for it to stick for any length of time. 90% of the networking I do is just T1s, static routes, Site to site VPN and basic Firewall.
So I am planning on finish my MCSE: Security. I studied pretty hard for it back about, oh? 1 year ago, but never finished it. I expect ISA Server to be a breeze, but the 70-298 might be a challenge. We’ll see. In either event, I am pretty confident even if I have to take 70-298 twice I should be done by year’s end on my MCSE:Sec.
The next step after that is kind of vague. I partially want to snag some virtualization certs, Microsoft and Xen. (I can’t afford VCP) But then again, I think it might be better to drive my effort into something like SQL. Make myself more valuable on the business side?
One last thing I was thinking, CCNA:Wireless. Looks like I can rent lab time cheap, so that isn’t a problem. What sounds like is it’s mainly raw trivia, anyone confirm this? For some reason I just wana “collect them all” at the associates level
Thoughts? Input? Flames?
-Daniel
Comments
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Psoasman
Member Posts: 2,687 ■■■■■■■■■□
I would go ahead and finish up the MCSE:Security. Have you taken the 299? You need that as well. You could hit some of the Windows 7 client certs or do the EDA. -
MentholMoose
Member Posts: 1,525 ■■■■■■■■□□
Check out the VMware Academy program. Schools in this program can deliver the official courses over a regular school semester or quarter (instead of crammed into a week-long boot camp). The courses satisfy the VCP course requirement and include a voucher for 70% off the exam. Foothill College in Los Altos Hills is in the program and has offered the ICM course in the past, so you may be able to take it there. It's a community college so the course and book will cost about $200 for state residents. If you don't buy other study materials you can get the VCP for under $250 (just make sure to pass the course and examThe next step after that is kind of vague. I partially want to snag some virtualization certs, Microsoft and Xen. (I can’t afford VCP)
).
I took the course through a school in this program earlier this year, and I have the VCP, so I know it works. There's no way I could justify paying out of pocket for the official boot camp course, and my employer definitely wouldn't pay for it, so this was my only option, and it worked out great.MentholMoose
MCSA 2003, LFCS, LFCE (expired), VCP6-DCV -
Daniel333
Member Posts: 2,077 ■■■■■■□□□□
@Psoasman, I am going the ISA Server, Sec+ and 70-298 route. Although I did do the course for 299. I won't need to test on it.
@MentholMoose - Wow, I was unaware of this. Alright, I might have next semester planned out.-Daniel