2003 December Additions of (two) Other SortsFirst and foremost, October saw the addition of a new member to the family. Matthew Alexander Friesen was born on October 17. You can read about it in the corresponding journal entry. In other news, I've decided to include some slightly-long-lost creative work of another variety. I've always been of the opinion that nobody should be allowed to write free verse until he/she has demonstrated the ability to write a sonnet. Here's my passport... 2003 September Incremental ChangesBack in June, I updated the Japanese fonts, changing the keyboard layout and providing both hiragana and katakana in one single font. It's not elegant, but it does get all the characters into a single, relatively accessible file. I added support for Solaris (I think) and OSX. I just posted a fix that may have affected OSX clients. The CCNP certification quest continues, with the Switching exam being passed in August and the Routing exam coming up 'real soon now'. Switching was much tougher than I thought it would be, largely because of the additional weirdness of multilayer switching. I think it's a lovely concept, but it's going to take some time (and practice) before I'm really comfortable with it. By comparison, Routing is coming across in a much more manageable manner. This may be because I'm utterly lost, but I doubt it. Data comes in, data goes out. I've also uploaded a Cisco device template for the very lovely OmniGraffle application. It's a charting program with substantially more power than Inspiration, and substantially more elegance than Visio (although it can import/export Visio XML files). A big thank-you! to all who write in with suggestions, kudos, and comments. News: The updated (2001) UNIS-Hanoi TechPlan is now available.Of course, the original 2000 TechPlan is also still available. * contact me at michaelf at wavestormits dot com
2002 December: I've more or less finished writing a series of course books (textbooks?) on a slew of Microsoft apps and general PC/Network stuff. In the end, it wound up being really lousy cash (on a per-hour basis), but the work was pretty interesting. Besides, now I get to guffaw at anybody who purports to teach a class in creating PowerPoint presentations. The C++ teaching was okay, but it's not really the way I like to work: hanging on by a thread, just barely understanding the material well enough to stay a few weeks ahead of the kids is NO WAY to teach. On the other hand, I was the best teacher they'd had in a year -- which may say a great deal about lots of things, but I'm much too involved to be clear on the issue. Of course, the Advanced Placement folks have decided to go with Java for next year, so my learning investment in C++ is somewhat diluted. All in all, though, I'll happily trade a few dribbles of unnecessary C++ code in exchange for teaching the much-saner Java. 2002 March: I've just been hired for a term contract to teach C++. Ummm. Uh-oh. The really good news is that this will add AP C++ to my resume as well as IGCSE. If only they had already switched to Java!! 2002 February 15: After five weeks of study, I just passed my CompTIA Linux+ exam. It was an interesting exam, and I must admit that my preparations for it were far more entertaining than the event itself. However, it's another cert in the bag, and it's a bunch of new information that should be of reasonably good assistance to a future employer. An interesting note: I paid an organization called "TechSkills" a tidy sum to help me prepare for the exam. For more information about this organization, its methods, and its materials, please email me. 2001 December 15: The latest (and fairly great) job news is that, as of December 14, I have become Cisco certified under the CCNA program. This means that I have demonstrable skills in the design, implementation, and management of modest computer networks. To be honest, I had much of this knowledge before I took the exam -- but it's nice to have independent verification of the fact. Coming up next on my study roster: either Cisco's CCNP examinations (starting with Routing) and/or Sun's Solaris. My interest in UNIX has many dimensions: apart from being the great-granddaddy of operating systems and the conceptual foundation for most of the advanced features of server OSes, there's also the fact that it has a wealth of industry-standard software that runs pretty much everything except the average desktop. There's also the delightful irony in the fact that (arguably) the world's slickest OS has met with (arguably) the world's geekiest OS in the form of Macintosh OS X. |
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