In the last three weeks I’ve worked for different parts of the same financial services group, in Edinburgh, in Dublin and in Halifax. It has been interesting to see the similarities from the sector, but also differences due to history and business practices in the locality.

I’ve also been to Leeds Bradford Airport for the first time, and been introduced to Halifax, Leeds and Bradford the towns.

It has been a bit of a whistle stop, but some fascinating looks at scalable .net web architecture. And had the opportunity to work with one of my fellow colleagues from down South. He has a Lotus Elise, so I can now say I’ve travelled in one and know the technique for fitting my 6 foot 5 frame of ahem weight through the passenger door and into the seat. All i can say is that it involves winding the window down.

I met Alan Ramsay while working in the IT department of a certain Bank’s Corporate division. He had met Martin after Cedalion, and is a top Contractor developer type dude.

Go on Alan, put more on your blog 🙂

Way back last year I posted a quick summary of the work situation. I’d gone from technical development consulting to being based on site in the IT department of a Scottish Bank. From an original 6 month stint, I ended up being asked to stay and finished up being on site with them yesterday. I’ve learned a whole lot about the workings of a Corporate Bank, a fascinating experience and given me lots to think about. I’ve also learned one or two things about Business Analysis, reinforced certain views I had and confirmed a few others.

The people there were great, and coming to an end there has been like changing jobs, which is a major event for me. I’m sure I’ll be glad I made the decision, at the moment I’m a bit overawed by the whole thing.

My technique of booking the exam before I’m entirely comfortable has worked, the nerves are beginning to kick in and I’m getting a bit of tunnel vision which is building as I get nearer to the day. I’ve also got a daily entry in my diary saying how many days to go to the exam, so due to the all day event I’ve put in Outlook, my M600 buzzes at about midnight every evening to remind me I have, for instance, 6 days to go.

I’m at the stage when I use Transcender test software to poke holes in my knowledge, and then scour the resources for the proper answer. At the moment I’m needing to get a bit more of the variants of unattended installation into my head, and final tweaks to the different volume options available. There are a number of scenarios for multi-disk volumes when failure occurs in a disk, and how to get it back, or how to add it in.

I’m working away on basic IP routing too, which I suppose I should know after all these years doing web development. It helps me to realise what a simple view I had of such, and the headache that proper routing and subnetting has in just the basic config of IP networks. Although not really covered in any depth in this exam, the power of Active Directory is beginning to dawn on me, and again is leading to a bit of appreciation at the job Infrastructure engineers have doing the design work. Planning out the organisation to make the most powerful use of the Group Policies is an impressive feat of skill. Hat’s off to my colleagues who consult on such matters.

Working away at this exam has been a good eye opener, and I’m increasingly impressed at good old Windows 2000. Windows 2003 must be really good, and we have Longhorn on the horizon!

I applied one of my personal motivational techniques at the weekend and used the online facility at 2 Test to book my next MCP exam. When I get to the stage when I think I am refining what I know rather than learning new material, I give myself focus by booking the exam. Although it is possible to reschedule, i have never used that facility and gear up for the exam. And it tends to work for me, giving the last four weeks before the exam a bit of a boost.

At this stage in my process I explore the edges of the curriculum covered by the exam by using Transcender test exams. These are regularly updated and in my experience have served to be a more accurate coverage of the source material than the exam related reading material you see on Amazon. Don’t get me wrong, I use such books as the first stage, as most are structured in the best way to approach the material.

My use of Transcenders is to check my incorrect answers, and read all of the referenced material. To this end I’d like to recommend Microsoft for their open approach to product documentation. For the exam I am preparing for, the online help and Windows 2000 Server Resource Kit are both available online.

Both of these are invaluable, and I am already finding material that I have had access to but never used. Something I’d never quite got about AD design clicked yesterday when I was looking into Group Policy Objects and Organisational Units. Excellent.

So, a few weeks after I started the process, I’ve completed my book.

The last part of the book deals with Windows 2000 recovery, and I expected to have problems with this. I’m not sure why, but I had the feeling that any of that Operating System Stuff comes down to a rebuild. I can get IIS back up and running in most instances, but dodgy boot stuff (as we saw earlier) is a bit out of my league. I’ve still got my DC lashed up with a boot floppy so it will start.

And don’t ask me about hardware diagnosis – I’m even worse at that.

8/15 in the test questions at the end of the chapter – my worst score (blush) of all the chapters.

But now on to the Transcender tests – woohoo, I’m chuffed I’m at this stage already.