Got myself a proper workspace......at last!

Well over the last couple of years whilst I've been gaining my certs, I have been living in rented accommodation renting a room in a shared house, and all of my study has been done sitting in bed or on the sofa and crouching over at funny angles to plug in console cables to routers & switches / tweak my Windows 2k3 DHCP server etc etc that are just sitting on the floor.....

I got myself on the property ladder in May this year and bought a 2 bed flat so after 7 months of the spare room being full of just boxes, at the weekend I took the plunge and bought myself a sweet corner desk for my spare room / study along with a swivel exec type chair lol. I also got myself an Epson Stylus SX200 printer which prints an impressive 34ppm in black and in colour - not bad for £39.99 if I do say so myself!

So the majority of Saturday / Sat night was spent in IKEA getting my new desk (which nearly never fitted into my car!) and chair, then building them.....my Dad gave me a hand with the lifting but it was pretty easy to put together. After that was done I had a few well earned beers and watched the Hatton v Malignaggi boxing on PPV

Tonight is the first night I have actually had time to sit down in my new workspace after clearing all the rubbish and organising the room as I wanted it.

I think it will definitely make a big difference to my study techniques having a dedicated work surface with adequite workspace to have my laptop / routers / switches /pen & pad for note taking etc etc and to be able to print out any documents I need to use a highlighter on or whatever when studying as opposed to staring at books or the screen.

I am now thinking of doing some funky stuff with my home network so watch this space (techy toys)

Just thought I'd share with the community that I'm quite chuffed with the new workspace and it's taking pretty good shape

......So back to the study for the Nortel Certified Technical Expert certification in Converged IP networks (exam scheduled for on 2nd December), followed by the NCDS in ERS in early January.

Happy study to all!

Cheers
Malc

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Comments

nel

Ha! nice one mate!

It will make the world of difference too man. i have to study on my dining table - which is actually in my sittingroom next to the tv

!!! haha. so easy to get distracted man!!

Good luck with the certs man.

mamono

Congrats!!!

Don't get too comfy, studying on the floor is still acceptable. I do it all the time. :P

kryolla

IKEA thats funny. Here in the US IKEA has a rep for being cheap goods but me and my wife love that place. What are your thoughts being outside the US of IKEA. Also congrats on your new place or flat

Where did you get the study material for Nortel? Was it provided by your work. We use Nortel for our VOIP between end offices i.e PSTN trunks from LEC to us and then if we have to hand off to another office that is within our company we use VOIP and the other end converts it back before it goes to PSTN.

malcybood

Cheers nel

mamono, I am certain that I will not give up the floor studying when the novelty of the desk wears off

kryolla wrote:

IKEA thats funny. Here in the US IKEA has a rep for being cheap goods but me and my wife love that place. What are your thoughts being outside the US of IKEA. Also congrats on your new place or flat

Thanks kryolla.

In general people rave about how good IKEA is, whilst at the same time they slate it for being "cheap crap".

I think my desk is great, extremely sturdy and easy to put together. Very reasonable price for a corner desk, compared to other places I looked which were really probably not any better quality other than the finish.

I probably wouldn't buy a sofa or something out of there, well not one of the cheap ones i.e. £60 as they ar not comfortable at all (or the one I had in rented accom I stayed in previously wasn't!).

I guess it depends on what you buy, I think for most stuff it's great and it's cheap enough if something breaks or you fancy a change, you can do it without breaking the bank.

malcybood

kryolla wrote:

Where did you get the study material for Nortel? Was it provided by your work. We use Nortel for our VOIP between end offices i.e PSTN trunks from LEC to us and then if we have to hand off to another office that is within our company we use VOIP and the other end converts it back before it goes to PSTN.

We use nortel CS1000E v4.5 call/signalling server and I do some of the administration on Element Manager. We also have a complete Nortel LAN infrastructure which I look after on a daily basis with my colleagues.

I got the VoIP technologies book from nortelpress. www.nortelpress.com which covers the NCTS and NCTE 920-803 & 920-804 respectively.

I can become NCDS if I pass one more exam. I got a few years experience administering Passport 8600 ERS at work so just going to brush up on that and should be able to pass the 920-220 for NCDS and 920-221 for NCSS in ERS.

The Nortel ERS book covers you for both these exams but not purchased it yet. Will do the NCTE first as I have the material to study, otherwise too many temptations to "certhop" lol

nel

I probably wouldn't buy a sofa or something out of there, well not one of the cheap ones i.e. £60 as they ar not comfortable at all (or the one I had in rented accom I stayed in previously wasn't!).

Couldnt of said it better myself!!! we've got a settee (sofa/couch for those in the US

) in our rented flat...what a piece of sh*t it is. Most uncomfortablist thing ever! would rather wipe my arse with razor blades

...so in other words...dont buy one kids!!!

For someone outside the US i think ikea is a place of hit and misses - it has some great stuff but it has sum rubbish stuff too. All in all i think its not bad at all especially for those first starting out with decking out there furniture.

LifelongLearner

Good work buddy. You must be feeling great (and I can feel what you feel!). I started out by studying in my room. Back then I didn't even have a desk. I had an old computer which stood on milk crates. Being poor sucks.

Years later (ok many years later), I've got a room just for my lab equipment. It's my play area, my study area, the place where I go to relax - It's my room of achievement. I've got all my certs on the wall, letters of appreciation from companies I used to work for, and equipment that I didn't think possible I would ever own.

You can go really high in IT if it's really what you want to do and work hard to achieve your goals.

mikej412

kryolla wrote:

IKEA

I always thought IKEA was Swedish for "Americans will buy anything".....

bertieb

kryolla wrote:

What are your thoughts being outside the US of IKEA.

IKEA meatballs rule

It's the only way my missus can get me in the damn place, promise me a huge plate of Swedish Meatballs

daltec

mikej412 wrote:

kryolla wrote:

IKEA

I always thought IKEA was Swedish for "Americans will buy anything".....

And here I was thinking IKEA was the Swedish word for "particleboard" hahaha!

Note that as I type this, I am sitting at my wife's Ikea desk, with a big stack of "Ivar" shelves along the wall, having lately finished our dinner at out Ikea dining room table...

The Ivar and dining table are solid wood though, and if you look you can definitely find some pretty decent stuff there.

vCole

daltec wrote:

mikej412 wrote:

kryolla wrote:

IKEA

I always thought IKEA was Swedish for "Americans will buy anything".....

And here I was thinking IKEA was the Swedish word for "particleboard" hahaha!

Note that as I type this, I am sitting at my wife's Ikea desk, with a big stack of "Ivar" shelves along the wall, having lately finished our dinner at out Ikea dining room table...

The Ivar and dining table are solid wood though, and if you look you can definitely find some pretty decent stuff there.

Yeah I have an original IKEA Jerker desk. This thing is solid.

drthtater

Pics or it didn't happen

daltec

drthtater wrote:

Pics or it didn't happen

Hey drthtater you are not by chance the same DarthTater from WWA are you? Just curious... thx

nel

bertieb wrote:

kryolla wrote:

What are your thoughts being outside the US of IKEA.

IKEA meatballs rule

It's the only way my missus can get me in the damn place, promise me a huge plate of Swedish Meatballs

No way man! the hotdogs are clearly topdog when it comes to ikea food...thats the only reason i agree to go with the gf

TechJunky

Pics!

Congrats.

JDMurray

bertieb wrote:

kryolla wrote:

What are your thoughts being outside the US of IKEA.

IKEA meatballs rule

It's the only way my missus can get me in the damn place, promise me a huge plate of Swedish Meatballs

Oh you know it! Ikea's "Manager's Special" is one of my favorite lunches. Can't get enough of those Lingenberries!!