MCSA: Messaging

Posted by Ken Thompson in I.T. Certification, Journal on July 2, 2009

MCSA-Messaging

I sat my 70-291 (Implementing, Managing, and Maintaining a Windows Server 2003 Network Infrastructure) exam on Tuesday. I was very confident of doing well as I’ve been using the skills in this cert for over 6 months now. I wasn’t expecting to score 984/1000 though, but obviously very happy with the result.

The best thing is, I have reached a mini-milestone in my Microsoft certifications now. With the 4 certifications I have thus far, I am now a “Microsoft Certified Systems Administrator : Messaging Specialist”. It feels good to have acquired a milestone and looking forward to studying the rest and obtaining the MCSE in the next half of the year.

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Pixsoul.com.au Complete

Posted by Ken Thompson in Design, Journal on July 2, 2009

Well, I’ve been hard at work on the site this past week. I’ve finished the Design page, created a Photography page, installed some widgets (most obvious is the Twitter feed) and some changes to the layout and design. I’m very happy with the result, even if it is all a bit self-indulgent and wanky…but it’s a self promotional, professional blog; so why not!?

Now that I have finished the site and I have Windows Live Writer working with WordPress again, it’s time to get back to blogging. I’ve got some good posts stacking up about how to customise your iPhone ringtones without hacking it, activating tethering on an iPhone 3.0 without paying your provider or hacking it as well as a bunch of problems and fixes I have come across.

Check out the new pages above in the navigation tabs.

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Twitterfying Pixsoul

Posted by Ken Thompson in Journal on June 28, 2009

I’ve just added a Twitter widget which displays my latest posts here on the site, as I tend to post quite a lot on that and not enough here. Also hooked up a plug-in which should automatically post a link on Twitter; this is the first test…

Meanwhile I am collating some old design pieces to add the design page as a mini portfolio. After that I will start putting up my photography…this is way overdue!

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Windows Live Writer LIBXML2 Problem Solved

Posted by Ken Thompson in Brain Busters, Journal on June 22, 2009

So, Brandon from the Windows Live Writer team got back to me super quick, thanks Brandon! He let me know that the problem I am encountering is actually because of the LIBXML2 XML parsing library stripping the opening “<” off code it parses. You can fix it by upgrading LIBXML2 on your server or install a plugin:

You can upgrade your libxml2 (on your server if you have control) as well Wordpress, or you can install this plugin by one of the Wordpress team members.
http://josephscott.org/code/wordpress/plugin-libxml2-fix/
Then you should be back in business!

And sure enough, the plugin works a treat! Thanks Brandon (and Joseph for making it!)!

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Windows 7 Teething Issues

Posted by Ken Thompson in Brain Busters, Journal, The PCs That Kevin Built, Work on June 21, 2009

Well now I have really jumped in the deep end with Windows 7, I’m starting to run into some stumbling blocks. Nothing major, but some teething issues none-the-less. So far I only have 2 issues that are bothering me enough to remember:

(Something to note it is that I am now using 7137 x64 or x86 on all of the PCs)

  1. VPN Connections not saving passwords: When I create a VPN connection to dial in to work, it will never remember the user name or password, even when the box is checked to remember it. I just can’t work it out and it is definitely a bug which I have reported with feedback. It’s a bit of a pain in the ass having to put it in every time (randomly generated password), but it’s doable. It remembers all the other settings, including security parameters though, so not all lost.
  2. Issues accessing domain resources on Windows 2003 Domains: I haven’t looked at this issue too much yet, but now that my work laptop is setup with Windows 7 it is becoming a more prevalent issue. Both at work and home, the domains are setup with roaming profiles and redirected folders (my documents). There seems to be an issue with Windows 7 accessing these resources in a timely manner, there is quite a delay and I am not sure what the issue is, with the Windows XP PCs it works just fine. With my home network, the problem even crashes my server; with lots of traffic from bit torrents etc. I’m suspecting some kind of DNS related problem at the moment, but still investigating.

If anyone has any ideas, I’m all ears!

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Puzzling Publishing Problems – Windows Live Writer

Posted by Ken Thompson in Brain Busters on June 21, 2009

I have been having the most bizarre problem with Windows Live Writer and WordPress recently that has stopped me from blogging at all. It seems I WLW has pampered me too much with all its bells and whistles which made blogging so easy, now that I am without it, it is more like a chore. It’s basically screwing up the formatting in posts ever since a few weeks back when an update was applied to WLW I believe, it does this:

I publish:

Title: test’s
Content: This is an example post with problem’s i am having with WLW.

It spits out:

Title: testrsquo;s
Content: pThis is an example post with problem’s i am having with WLW./p

Here is a link to the sample post: http://www.pixsoul.com.au/?p=287

I have tried re-installing WLW, WP, older versions of WP, different version OS’s with WLW, different blogs, themes etc…it seems to me to boil down to WLW. I’ve shot them off an email and hopefully they can remedy the problem shortly, or tell me if I am being a nOOb! I’ll post up progress when I receive it though.

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Exchange Certified & Jumping In The Deep End of the Win 7 Pool

Posted by Ken Thompson in Brain Busters, I.T. Certification, Journal on June 8, 2009

Windows 7 Mania

Well it has been a while in between posts as I have been trying to work out why the hell posts using Windows Live Writer are now putting in weird formatting. Starting to think it’s something going on with the site rather than Windows 7 now as have tested on numourous Win 7 PCs (could be a Live Writer specific problem also though). Going to hang out until WordPress 2.8 is released this week and do a fresh install of the website and see if that knocks it on the head.

Well I successfully passed my 70-284 exam last week, Implementing and Managing Exchange Server 2003. From memory I got 843/1000, so happy with the result, even if it did take me 2 goes. But it has sparked a new motivation to get my next certification as I released that I only need 1 more (70-291) and I will be a Microsoft Certified Systems Administrator (MCSA). So getting back on the books in a big way as I am very keen to acquire that title on my way to MCSE and other certifications in the later half of the year.

This week I jumped in the deep end of the Windows 7 pool and installed it on both my netbook and my work laptop. I did it via USB and it was super simple (I’ll post a how to this week sometime, I promise!). I’m having some issues on my work laptop connecting to the Windows 2003 domain at work, the same symptom I had at home with slow folder redirection for My Docs etc to a Windows 2003 server. At home I ended up just turning folder redirection off for the moment, but definitely need to get on top of it at work soon as it won’t be too long until we are getting new PC’s shipping with Windows 7. I’m looking forward to the potential problems ahead though so that after using it so much on a variety of systems I will really get a handle on it for successful implementation at work.

Daemon Tools have released a Win 7 compatible version of their program also which I am wrapped about as PowerISO which I have been using slowly decides that one virtual drive will never work again; you create another which works; same thing happens eventually and so on!

Anyway, back to basking in the glory of 3 Windows 7 PC’s and behaving like a Octupus multitasking on all of them!

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The PC's That Kevin (finally) Built

Posted by Ken Thompson in Brain Busters, Projects, The PCs That Kevin Built on May 25, 2009

View The Destroyer (Gamer) & Mordor (Server)

 

Well it has been a bit over a month since I upgraded my little beasts and I have been slack and not uploaded any of the photos I took. So here they are, a little story board through the stages of building and customising the new computers.

Some highlights:

  • Silverstone TJ07 with customer painted satin black interior
  • Custom mounted HDD on case panel of an Antec Minuet 180
  • Thermalright CPU & GPU Cooling with Zalman fan controller and Coolermaster fans

 

I was planning on putting my Intel Q6600 in to my server, but it just would not play nice with the GA-EG45M-DS2H motherboard, so I ended up sticking with my Intel e7300 and just installing Server 2003 with Exchange on to it. The plan was to run a VM server but the e7300 doesn’t have the VT (Virtualisation Technology) on board support to run VM’s. I plan on getting an Intel Q9400 and maybe 8GB of ram for it in a month or two, at which time I plan to put on Citrix XenServer, which is another free alternative in the VM server market and looks superior to VMWare ESXi and Microsoft Hyper V Server 2008.

Anyway, enjoy the happy snaps!

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Life's Lessons

Posted by Ken Thompson in Journal on May 25, 2009

Well, the Pixsoul airwaves have been rather quiet the past couple of weeks because I have been super busy at work and the rest of the time studying for the Microsoft Exchange 2003 certification. I sat the exam last Monday and knew perfectly well that I lacked knowledge on some key areas that I don’t utilise in real world practice (Security and Routing Groups). But Microsoft have their Second Shot offer still running, so I figured I had nothing to lose by sitting it; at worst I would get a gauge of where I am at.

So I went in, knowing that my current preparation was half-baked but I still had a chance of passing. After the test, as I was running through my answers and figured out from the questions I had no idea about in comparison to the ones I was confident that I was going to be cutting it close to passing or failing, it could go either way.

So I pressed submit and waited for the words to flash up on the screen…”EPIC FAIL!”. Ok, so it didn’t say that, but it was still disappointing! As expected I came close, getting 648/1000, 52 shy of passing. But I know where I need to work on and I am already back on the books and mucking around on my exchange server, ready to dish out some punishment to the exam PC in a week when I re-sit.

It kind of woke me up a bit though, I need to get focussed on the study and not sit an exam until I know I am ready; rather than when I want to achieve each certification. I’ve been too focussed on time and not on quality and it would be good to hold on to my current GPA of 91% rather than throw it away in order to get some certifications more quickly.

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28 Days for the Body and Mind

Posted by Ken Thompson in I.T. Certification, Journal on May 11, 2009

Well this year is absolutely zipping on by, I can’t believe it is almost half way already! It has been a great year thus far, but I am falling behind in my certification and education warpath. So this morning I have set myself a target to achieve my next 2 certifications in the next 28 days. I have also decided to tie in a de-tox for this period as it surely can’t hurt the study efforts and my body has definitely earned a break.

The rules are simple, in the next 28 days:

  • Obtain 70-284: Implementing and Managing Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 Certification (I have already booked in my exam for next Monday morning and have got Friday off for a 3 day study-a-thon weekend)
  • Obtain 70-291: Implementing, Managing, and Maintaining a Windows Server 2003 Network Infrastructure Certification
  • No Alcohol
  • No Junk Food

This will bring me back on track reasonably well and I plan to do my 70-293 before the end of the financial at least, maybe another…but the de-tox will definitely end at 28 days…it’s going to be a long 4 weeks!

Back to the study….

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