Well, it’s sure been a while in between posts! The past 7 months have been a whirlwind, but the biggest news by far is that I’ve got hitched to an absolutely spectacular woman who I’m lucky enough to spend the rest of my life with; very chuffed. We had an absolute cracker of a wedding, it was way too much fun, I’d love to do it all over again.

I started work at Accenture in January which is exactly what I was looking for; working for one of the biggest and most respected IT consulting firms in the world on some of the biggest and most advanced technology projects in Australia. I’m currently working on a project for one of Australia’s leading telcos on a cloud based system. It’s a fantastic project, I’ve been learning a lot, able to bring my own insights into features of the project and actually making a difference to the end product. which is very satisfying.

In education I’ve just finished the first subject in my Masters of Technology (Business Systems Design & Management) at Swinburne University of Technology. I’m also looking to do some formal training in VMWare vSphere in the near future and get my VCP certification.

I’m planning to get back on the blogging bandwagon, I’ve got a treasure trove of fixes to a lot of nasty problems I’ve encountered that really should be put down in writing. So hopefully it won’t be another 7 months until my next post..

Woohoo! I’ve finally completed all of my Microsoft exams and I am now officially a Microsoft Certified IT Professional : Enterprise Administrator. I’m very happy with the achievement and have expanded my knowledge and expertise in Windows Server 2008 R2 & Windows 7 in the process. It’s good to be able to put the skills and knowledge learned into practice straight away with some major upgrades at our clients, including implementing new 2008 R2 DCs throughout the organisation; decommissioning all 2003 DCs and then upgrading the domain.

I’ve already had a few brain busters throughout the process, which I will be posting up shortly. One of particular note is with DFS, with PCs connecting to DFS servers outside of their site on slow WAN links. A quick little registry fix sorts out that headache nicely.

I’ve been using VCE (Visual Cert Exam Suite) for a bit under 2 years now for my exam preparation. It’s a simple bit of software that allows you to open multiple choice exams, including drag and drop questions, point and shoot, and questions with exhibits. So it’s a perfect simulation for what you will get in the actual exam room.

They’ve finally released a version of VCE for the iPhone and Windows Mobile. You can find it in the app store…but be warned; it isn’t cheap (for an iPhone app that is) at a price of $12.99. But to able to do practice exams on the go where ever you may be, its a cheap price to pay. Especially if you serious about certifications.

While I’m on the subject of studying for your certs on your iPhone. If you have training videos, you can use an application called AVS Video Convertor to convert your videos to MP4 files with correct aspect ratio for the iPhone. So now you can take your training videos with you too!

Woohoo! I finally finished my New Year’s resolution for 2009 in the nick of time; Get my MCSE. So I’m finally a Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer : Messaging Specialist. Pretty stoked, the last exam (70-297) was a walk in the park to, I though the answers were blatantly obvious; hardly needed to view the reference material for most questions…guess I know the “Microsoft way” now.