The new project is very busy. I’m overnight-upgrading usually 4 sites a week, traveling two days and trying to catch up on paperwork and sleep wherever I can. The good news is that I’m still employed, hourly and cashing in on overtime.

We are upgrading so much, and there are so many opportunities for something to go wrong, so it can be frustrating. But then it’s quite a feeling of accomplishment when everything is done.

And of course the moment I start on a two-week, 140-hour marathon my web host decides to blow up, so my web sites were down for a few days, and several sites were down three weeks because I had to find time to update them before restoring them. But that is all back in order now.

I spent last week on various calls for printer and laptop repairs. It’s been a few years since I’ve taken field service calls, and I am must now getting the car organized like I want it and figuring out my company’s ticketing systems and procedures. Next week will be more field service, and then I start the new project April 20.

I’ll be traveling quite a bit, but I’ll be the lead tech responsible for server installs, switch installs and leading a team of 3-5 contract techs who will reimage or replace PCs, and I think we’ll also be installing some multifunction printers. I’ll be doing one site per night, so it’s going to be a challenging schedule.

I’ll learn more about the particulars on conference calls this week, and the first two weeks of the project will be lightly scheduled to allow for on-the-job training.

I passed my Server+ exam today, so I’m CompTIA Server+ certified now!

I had scheduled the test for Sunday, but this morning I was consistently acing the practice tests and getting tired of the same question set. And I had a certain confidence, so rather than random book studying for the next 24 hours I called the test center to see if I could take the test now. 30 minutes later I was sitting at the test station and starting my test.

Server+ demands a lot of specific knowledge, and I was running into two problems. In some cases they wanted pedantic specific knowledge (of ATA and SCSI specs in particular, they wanted cable lengths, connector types, data transfer speeds and termination/master-slave info), and in other cases I disagreed with their answers because I had experience that told me otherwise. For the specifics I was lacking in the practiced tests I went over the various tables of info.

During the practice tests I learned what type of indoctrination I should have to offer the correct answers. In particular there are many projects that run on Unix/Linux to integrate with Windows, but the Server+ exam is from the perspective of the core OS vendor products. Sure you can put a Samba WINS server or use several flavors of RDP clients on Unix/Linux and X, but the answer to the Server+ exam is NOT to use RDP to configure a Windows box from Unix. I also learned what they were getting at when using certain words or topics, like if they mention differential backups the answer is not to worry about tape restore order even though you have two tapes and have to resture the full backup first and then the differential or else it’s not going to work as expected. When they mention tape order they are thinking of incremental, even though tape order is a concern both ways, it’s a matter of context I guess. Tape order is an incremental problem (from Server+’s view), and archive bits are a differential problem.

Anyway, I’m happy.

Now I have to pursue some vendor certifications to be more versatile for my current employer, and I’m interested in Network+ and MCDST because I think I can pass them with minimal review studying. After that I may pick from MCSA or MCSE tests and the MCDBA tests.

My time at the large financial services company is coming to an end April 4, but my direct employer has another project lined up for me to start immediately after that. I gave this site URL to yet another group of soon-to-be ex-coworkers, and I’ll try to update it a little more frequently.

The new project will involve travel, but it sounds like I will lead several other techs which should be good experience for me.

Quite a bit has happened over the past couple of months.

I finally scheduled an insurance inspection for the hail damage from April. In the days before the inspection my car started stalling and got quickly worse so that it had to be started every few seconds to pull it in the inspector’s bay, and then it had to be pushed out. The damage assessment was way more than I imagined and totaled the car! Given it’s sudden lack of reliability I took the money, let them keep the car and bought a new–well, pre-owned–car. I got a silver 2006 Hyundai Sonata, 36k miles, sunroof, v6, power windows and locks, alloy wheels, etc. I used the money from my old car to pay off my credit cards, so now I have no cc debt but have the car loan at a lower rate.

I moved up a rung on the job ladder. I was working for a contract company for a services company for a client, and now I’m full time with benefits with the services company, so even if the client job were to fall through I should have work available with the services company. The client company has a new senior executive that is cutting costs and restructuring everything, and I lost some peers and some others I had worked with daily. But I’m still there and think my position is safe now.

I have new nephew, born last week, bringing the count to two nephews and a niece. I see them once or twice a week.

I’ve been in an apartment for a couple of months now. Things are going well, but I’m still catching up from being out of work so long. Family is keeping me busy.

I interviewed Monday, was offered the job Tuesday and started Wednesday. I’m working for a large IT outsourcing firm onsite for a large financial services client.

It’s good to be working again!

I’m fairly embarrassed to say that I’m still not working. I’ve had no less than three situations where I was fairly certain I had the job, but I barely missed out to another candidate on two occasions and was passed over for a lesser candidate on another because the hiring manager was afraid the work was beneath me and that I’d leave after a few months.

The unexpected upside of this is that I have three separate recruiters who’ve seen that I’m hirable after comments from the client and who are now motivated to place me because of the positive client comments.

I had an interview this afternoon and one scheduled for tomorrow morning. A third recruiter has talked to me about several different jobs and appears to keep changing his mind on which to submit me to, but there is action there.

I feel pretty good about today’s interview and hope to do well in the morning, too.

In other news, baseball-sized hail pounded my car Friday making lots of dents and shattering the rear window. I managed to get the rear window replaced today. I’ll have to see what my options are on the dents as I haven’t made a claim on my comprehensive insurance before. Luckily the tornadoes veered south of me.

Interesting. I just read that my old company is capping traditional pensions. If I interpret this correctly, this means that anyone in the older defined benefit pension plan will be forced into the new defined contribution plan in 2008. I wonder why they gave us a choice a year or two ago if they were going to force hands later, anyway?

Doesn’t make a difference to me. If I were to rehire I would only have the option of the new pension, anyway. At least it looks like my old pension is still secure and its main enemy is the ravages of inflation between now and when I retire as it’s not cost-of-living adjusted.

Oh, as long as I’m posting I should update.

I’m rather embarrassed to say I’m not working yet. At first it was fun, then there was a lot of family drama, then it was holidays, but I really ran out of excuses in January and I still have no job. I’ve been looking more and had about 4 jobs I thought I had a really good shot at, including one last week where it was between me and one other guy, but they hired the other guy.

I hear I’m getting rave reviews from my references, so thank you all. For most of the jobs I’ve missed it seems like my problem was that I wasn’t in the first round of interviews. Last week I’m not sure what happened, but it may have been a price issue as I was actually working through two agencies, so the bill rate must’ve been high and they really wanted a lackey to do menial work while they were handling more urgent matters. But they wanted a lackey who could be productive techically later. I’m guessing the other guy was a lot cheaper.

I had to move away from Dallas for them to hire a real coach, and I had to move away from Indy for them to win a Superbowl.

Or maybe it was just a coincidence.