fouldsy.com

Since Apple kindly updated my transcript profile to show the world + it’s wife my failure on the OS X Server exam last week when I know I was more than capable of passing it, re-sat the exam this afternoon. Questions were harder than the first exam, though more direct and clearly-worded, allowing me to score 81% this time and comfortably pass. As for Open Directory which gave me 5 near-identical questions in the first exam when it was clear my first answer was wrong? 9/9 this time, 100%. Also upped account management to 8/11 rather than 4/11 as this time the questions actually gave you sensible options for your answer.

You’d think I’d be more happy with passing, but I’m still a little annoyed at the whole thing, though at least it’s proven to Apple and (more importantly) myself, that I am good enough to pass. Also means I hadn’t completely wasted my time + money in the first place, though the extra exam fee + studying time wasn’t much fun.

Least it gives me another title to add to the resume now - Apple Certified Technical Co-Ordinator

Thought the Microsoft exams were bad at times, but this OS X Server one was terrible - failed with 63% when the passing score was 65%. Got 5 identical questions, just worded differently, on OpenDirectory passwords and fine, I answered it wrong the first time, but with it being an adaptive test it fired 5 questions all the same. At least 10 questions were hazy where there were technically 2 right answers - at least with the Microsoft exams there’s the ‘real world’ answer and the ‘Microsoft’ answer, so you go with the Microsoft answer that’s outlined in their training courses and books, which is one of the problems with the Microsoft certs - you simply learn the answer required for an exam, even though it’s not what you’d actually do in the workplace. Here, there was no distinction as I’d gone through the Apple training course and didn’t point one way or the other, so it was 50/50 on some questions which defies the point of the exam if you’re just guessing.

Ended up with 4/9 on OpenDirectory meaning apart from those 5 identical questions, I was spot on, and 4/11 on account management, as pretty much every account management one was hazy. Asking whether you’d see a logon greeting from an AFP server when ‘logging onto the server’ or ‘connecting to the server’ (other two answers completely wrong) was an example - by definition you’d need to logon in order to connect and could argue either was correct. A lot came down to wording like that, not testing your actual knowledge of OS X Server - I don’t mind the questions that give a load of irrelevant information to make you read right through it to understand it, as that’s to make sure you’ll always pay full attention when solving problems and not jump to conclusions, but this wasn’t one of those occasions.

Network services, gateway services, authentication + authorisation, print services + deploment solutions all 100% correct. Apart from the OpenDirectory and Account Management topics, I only had 7 wrong questions in total on all 7 other topics so would have passed comfortably.

Pretty disappointed would be a polite way of expressing things, as I basically got one wrong question on OpenDirectory which I now know the correct answer to, and could go back over the chapter on account management to try and figure out if Apple lean towards a particular answer, but other than that I’m going to have to fork out an additional £80 for an exam I’ve scored 81% on all but 2 topics on. Might sound nice giving 25% off the exam in the first, but the cynical side point at the need for a retest and ending up making an extra £60.

Honestly, I’m probably not going to pay the £80 for a resit and jump through Apple’s hoops. I’ve never looked at certifications as the be-all and end-all, just as a way to backup claims of my knowledge and experience to any potential PR-bods that don’t actually understand anything but qualifications. I know perfectly well my knowledge of OS X Server is more than adequate to manage them on a daily basis, and am more annoyed that dirty/stupid tricks long the bane of Microsoft exams have presented themselves from Apple, a company I used to quite admire.

Admitedly, I’ve been a little slack in keeping up the studying for the OS X Server exam after passing the OS X Support Essentials exam 5/6 weeks ago, but I got round to going over all my course notes today and booked in for the exam on Tuesday afternoon.

Feeling pretty confident again as there’s not been anything too tricky on the review questions in the course materials or from Apple’s website. It is more challenging than the Support Essentials exam as there’s more new content to take in, but nothing new in terms of functionality I wasn’t already managing on the Windows networks I’ve ran.

But, as a nice little bonus for being part of the Apple Certification Alliance since passing the first exam, you get provided with a voucher code for 25% off further Apple exams, which brought the price down to a more reasonable £60. From what I gather, upon passing the Server Essentials exam, another voucher code is sent for the next exam, meaning all future Apple exams are discounted. Nice touch - certainly makes you want to keep going, and comes off nicely for Apple as they have an increase in the number of certified professionals managing their systems, thus keeping the end-customer happy.

Will see how the exam goes on Tuesday!

With a break in the weather yesterday afternoon, I went for a wander to try out the Nike+ iPod Nano gear. I was taking the iPod anyways with going for a walk, and thought it would be cool to give the Nike+ kit a try too. Just set it up to go for 10 minutes (although I forgot to stop it and let it run a bit longer since I was enjoying the Danko Jones track!), then got home and plugged it into iTunes to see what happens. Zips you off to register at nikeplus.com (though it is optional), then brings up a very flash website to display all the data:

Granted it was only 10 minutes on + off (I ain’t built for running’!) so covered about 1.37km, but for more serious runners this would be pretty serious piece of kit. Even just in terms of their website and how it handles the data was pretty impressive from a coding + design point of view (see, there’s the real me - none of this running malarkey!).

It maps out your pace, timings, distances travelled, etc. so you can clearly see in the screenshot where I was jogging for a minute, walking for a minute, jogging for a minute, walking for a minute, etc. Doesn’t seem to play nice with Firefox for setting up goals, but you’re meant to be able to define what you’d like to achieve, and it then compares your workouts against what you should be achieving at intervals to reach your goal which could be fun. It’s a neat piece of kit, and might encourage me to start jogging, but even just as a way to track my walks it’s cool, and sure Kat will find more of a use for it since she’s into her running (though maybe not in Alaska…).

Got all excited when I had something through from Apple in the mail today. For a company that prides itself on it’s UI and has probably made billions of dollars from the look of it’s hardware + software and associated pro-tools for audio visual stuff, their Apple Certified Help Desk Specialist certificate sucks!

Still, didn’t take long to get here, and a cool benefit of getting signed up to the Apple Certification Alliance is that you receive a discount code for 25% off your next Apple exam. Certainly takes the sting out of £80+ for a single exam! Been lazy the last few days, but hopefully will have completed the OS X Server Essentials training materials within the next week. Guess I can look forward to another of these delightful certificates once I pass that exam (wif me 25% off code, of course!)

As I head out and do quite a lot walking and stuff, thought it would be cool to play around with the Nike+ gear for the iPod Nano. The idea is a little sensor sits in your shoe, effectively acting as a pedometer, which relays data back to your iPod to calculate distance travelled, average speed, total time, calories burned, etc. For runners, it seems very popular as it’s able to track up 1,000 workouts, with the ability to sync back to iTunes and also to nikeplus.com so your times can be shared and let you compete against friends anywhere in the world. I ain’t quite daft enough for that kind of running though!

Kat got me the cool armband for the iPod for my birthday rather than having it sitting my pocket and banging against keys + money when I’m out + about, or you can wrab the band back on itself and works like a soft case to fit in your pocket or whatever. The Nike+ sensor fits nicely into the Nike running wallet (with a bit of padding to stop it sliding around) which clips onto the shoelaces of your shoe, and doesn’t look as daft as it might appear!

Tempted to go out and try it this afternoon, but am knackered + feeling very lazy today! Think I’ll just leave it until tomorrow, do some studying for the OS X Server exam instead, and give it a whirl when the birthday cake + sweets have worn off

Looks like my Apple Certification profile has been updated - shows which exams you have passed along with the score (which is cool - the Microsoft certification center didn’t do this IIRC), and automatically displays relevant exams where your current certifications are core requirements to aid planning out your next steps.

So, with the OS X Server Essentials exam being next (which I started the studying for today), it’s already showing what I need to do in order to be classed as an Apple Certified Technical Co-ordinator (pass the server exam basically…). It’s also showing that since I’ve done the OS X Support Essentials exam, I now have a core requirement for the portables + desktop hardware certifications. I like it, as the Microsoft certification centre had a planner, but it was quite clunky and didn’t display things anywhere as cleanly - that said, I haven’t logged in to that for a couple of years!

All good fun, and I’m pretty proud of it

Didn’t take long I suppose, only started 4 days ago. Have gone right through the OS X Support Essentials training book from Apple, and it all seems very straightforward. A few new things such as the startup sequence, but most of the networking, peripherals, printing, troubleshooting, account management, command line interface, etc. isn’t anything new from my Linux + Windows background. If you were just jumping in with this training, then it probably would be quite a bit to take in, and I’m sure the server essentials will be a bit more challenging having not worked with OS X Server, so I don’t feel that I’ve just skipped through and think I know it all, honest!

So, booked in for the exam on Monday afternoon - may as well give it a go since it’s all so fresh. None of the self-test questions in the training book have caused problems, and the dozen or so example questions from the Apple site didn’t either. I definately feel prepared, so we’ll see how it goes

I picked up on this a few weeks ago, but since it’s getting closer to the date and I got e-mailed about it within the last couple of days, thought I’d post it up.

The Free Software Foundation, who I’ve been a supporter of for quite a while now, have been pushing for protests against DRM including clauses within the GPL v3 which has been causing plenty of debates for months now. But, they’ve picked my birthday (hint hint!) as a major focus point for protesting against DRM. Check out their announcement on “Day Against DRM” to find out more, including how to sign their petition and anything you can do help out.

No wise comments about how I own a MacBook and an iPod - you’ll find no iTunes-purchased music on the iPod as I abhor it, it’s all podsafe music on there or music I’ve imported from my own CD’s. I support the FSF on this one, especially since it’s clear the kind of problems DRM causes when you look at what will happen when Microsoft’s Zune played gets released - that doesn’t look it will even play it’s own Windows Media encrypted formats!

I’ve been looking at studying for some further certifications since I have plenty of free time now, as before I wasn’t that motivated or energetic enough after doing a full day working with computers then having to go home and get the books out for a couple of hours.

The Microsoft Certified Professional exams I did a couple of years back were nice at the time since it was relevant to work, but then I didn’t see the point in studying additional areas I wasn’t working with. The same with the Cisco Certified Networking Associated academy course + exams I did through college. Most people know my feeling towards certifications - if they’re relevant, fine, but a long list of bits of paper needs to be backed up with hands-on skills + experience!

With moving up to Alaska and the school district exclusively running Apple systems, I’d looked at Apple training a few months back, and with the MacBook really impressing me, I’ve been keen to learn more.

So, I’m starting out with Mac OS X Support Essentials exam which gives Apple Certified Help Desk Specialist (ACHDS) status once completed (sounds fancy!) and then adding on Mac OS X Server Essentials exam to bring it up to Apple Certified Technical Coordinator (ACTC) once completed (which sounds even fancier!).

The Support Essentials looks fairly straight-forward from using the MacBook on a daily basis or just basic common sense on networking + peripheral questions, with the Server Essentials exam adding on further networking and server topics (funnily enough!). The two of them together work quite nicely and should hopefully give a very rounded grounding in being able to look after desktop + server support.

The only sumbling block is lack of experience on OS X Server and now real availability for playing around with one, but so long as I can keep myself motivated I’m planning on having both the exams completed within a couple of months - feel free to keep e-mailing me, bugging me to get back some studying!