There's a little more blood on my knuckles.

 I've been busy at work and home.

 Last Friday I completed a production Lion Server with Profile Manager as a Mobile Device Management server. It pulls users from Active Directory and allows enrolling iOS devices and downloading of configuration files.  I will be speaking at NERCOMP in the Spring about the experience and process. After that seminar I will try to publish my guide here for other folks trying to do the same thing.

These are the most boring teaser pictures, I think.  The least glamorous display of 10 iPads and the other picture is $20,000 of them.  Now when snarky students ask "Is this what my tuition is paying for?" I can say it's for iPads.

Today I passed the CCENT. This is the first step in realizing the CCNA, a certification I started but never finished 10 years ago in Blacksburg. The test was brutal and I'm not proud of my score, but if they want me to wear 25 pieces of flair then they should make the minimum 25 pieces of flair.

I could not have done it without my friend Greg who also earned his CCENT a week ago.  In a couple of weeks we'll start the INCD2 books and work toward the CCNA together.  This has been a really beautiful chapter of our friendship.

In middle-school I was into Led Zepplin, high-school was Nine Inch Nails, 'college' I found hip hop. Now I can't stop listening to dubstep.  What's next?

I'm also studying for the CCENT and then the CCNA. $25 for two text books and I'm off and reading. A friend is also studying for his, we Skype on Sundays and review our reading. It keeps me honest and motivated. Study buddies are the best.

Jessie has been feeding me salads for lunch and al fresco for dinner. It's amazing.

Last night we canned blueberries with our friend. We made 4 jars and they're beautiful black gold.  A coworker was really blown away, when he realized what he was looking at I could see memories flooding his brain as he talked about canning with his grandmother as a child. He looked and me and said "this is an lost art!"

That's my life right now.

The name and the grade are the same!

I passed my A+, It was a certification that I didn't really need, work wasn't asking for it, I don't think it's ever closed any doors for me. A couple of months ago I got my NSC Defensive Driving Cert but otherwise I haven't added to my resume much in a while.

CompTIA will change their certification policy from lifetime to renewable every three years starting in 2011 so it made sense to get certified before that happened.

I've been studying intermittently since the spring but seriously since Thanksgiving. I had an A+

For Dummies book which was really thick, used a confusing font and was the wrong choice for me as it was written for a dummy, or someone starting from scratch with no experience. I have experience and don't want to be patronized with little jokes. I should have gotten a more advanced book.

The most advantageous resource was a Pearson practice exam. Despite its flaws pictured here, several of the questions were word for word with the actual exam and it was a great resource.

Jessie quizzed me on port numbers, 802.11x standards and the laser printing process and I crushed the exam.