Sun Solaris exams -- The rest of the story

Ok, so I just posted that I passed the exam, but I might as well tell my story here so that I can look back and remember what I went through to do it.

Firstly of all, this all started about a year ago at work. We wanted to do ASIC design, wanted to do it using Cadence software, and needed to run Cadence software on Red Hat Enterprise linux machines. I knew nothing about Linux. I had installed it a few times and clicked on all the pretty icons, but could never do much with it. The "ls" command was a foreign term for me.

Ok so this was going to happen and it was either going to be me who would admin this system or someone else. And I am a computer control freak so it would be someone else over my dead body. So I decided to take some classes.

First, I took Intro to UNIX with Dr. Sengupta. He was a very knowledgeable instructor and I learned a lot from him. But it was really tough learning all these commands. Tar, grep, ls, etc. etc. Then all the paths, and scripts, etc. It was a really hard class but I survived. In fact, I got an A in the class.

Next I took Shell Scripting for UNIX. So we take it up a notch. This particular class I will never forget. I can't even tell you how many weekends I spent pacing around my apartment trying to decipher this foreign language. If, else, for, while. Whatever. I would literally spend 4-5 hours per night reading, writing and on the computer typing and learning. Then on weekends get up around 9am and study until midnight or even 2-3am. Anyway, I passed that class too. Got a B in it.

Ok, so now we get to the good stuff. Intro to Solaris Systems Administration. Mr Campbell is a really nice guy and very professional and knowledgeable. And he was patient too. Every Saturday for 10 hours we did this class. It was like boot camp. But it was a compelling class and again I learned a lot. Started getting into the nuts and bolts of Solaris. Ok, so aced this class too.

Now on to Advanced Solaris Systems Administration. Yadda yadda. More of the same. But again aced this class and then it was time to move on to the certification. I took about a month off after finishing the advanced Solaris class. I needed time to clear my head and go over what I learned in Intro in order to prepare for the exam. So I sign up for the exam.

The days leading up to the exam were the worst. Nervous, couldn't sleep -- all I could think about was this exam and just wanting to pass it.

The morning of the exam I got there very early. It was scheduled at 9am but I got there at 7am. My thinking was that I would just sit in the car and cram. But that was no good. I couldn't sleep the night before and after drinking that venti mocha, I was both exhausted and a bit wired. Weird feeling. There was a deli that was open so I kept running in there to go to the bathroom (my nervousness made me have to pee a lot -- TMI, I know). Anyway, finally 8:45am rolls around. I walk in. Nervous, jittery and took the exam. At the end it spits out the percentages. I add them up and -- Oh no! I failed! Or did I? Evidently I added them up wrong. I came out of the room, head slung low. Guy comes up to me "how do you think you did?" Me, "I think I failed". He says, "Good news, you passed!" I did??? Awesome!! And life was good.

Fast forward another month. Went through the same routine, but this time things were different. A lot had happened in the last month. A lot of bad things. Real bad things. So many bad things that I was very distracted. The morning of the exam it was raining. Just a light sprinkle but just enough to disrupt power throughout the bay area. So it's 8am and I'm on my way to the testing center. The receptionist at my work calls me to tell me that the servers are down. We had a power outage and it fubarred things at work. So now on top of everything else, I have this to think about. I went in, and failed the exam only to have to go back to work and deal with some very serious issues. It was a dark time.

This was the last mile in this marathon. I worked so hard and came so far. I couldn't give up. And I didn't. I regrouped and got everything back on track. Sun was good enough to let me retake the exam for free. So I scheduled my retake. Got a different study guide and just methodically went through it all. This morning was the day to take the exam. This was it. I could not fail a second time. 58 questions, 105 minutes and I needed 65% to pass. Went through the exam,.. went back over my answers a couple times and finally at the end, clicked submit. It was do or die. After I clicked submit the percentages in each category came up. I quickly wrote them all down and tried to calculate my score. I came up with 62%. I thought I failed again. Came out of the office and the lady says "I'll be right with you". But it didn't matter. I sat down, planted my face in my hands and felt floored -- again. Then all of a sudden she comes out "You passed!" I thought, "huh?" "Are you sure?" She shows me the paper. I calculated my score wrong. I got my 65%. I thanked her and left. I just stood by my car for a few minutes and tried to just soak in the last year that I spent working on this. It was over.

I still have a long way to go and a lot more to learn, but for now I accomplished something. One of the biggest things I've ever accomplished in my life. I set a goal and just did it. The journey doesn't end here, but for now it sure is a good feeling to succeed at something.

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Sun Certified Systems Administrator

Today is the day. I finally finished it. There will be more exams down the road, but for now I am happy to say I finally passed and am now a Sun Certified Systems Administrator. Hooray! Here's a picture of my pile of notes that I finally get to put away as I prepare to start a new batch. HA!





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Shrute Bucks!

Get your shrute bucks here!




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Megatron!

Faster Windows XP = Disable Automatic Updates

For months now it seems like I've been hearing more and more people complain that their Windows XP computer is running slow. And whenever I hear about this, svchost.exe seems to be involved. But when you analyze svchost.exe using Sysinternals Process Explorer, usually nothing seems out of the ordinary.

Let's say you just installed Windows,.. everything works great. Fast, speedy, high performance. But then after just a few weeks or even months, the computer slows to a grinding halt. Takes forever to boot, takes forever to login. Takes forever to launch applications. All your geek friends tell you that you probably have spyware and that they will format your drive for you (everybody is an IT guy these days because they all know how to point to spyware). But the truth is, there are two things that you can do to improve your performance dramatically.


1> Disable Windows Automatic Updates:
First, there are two forms of this. There is the website (http://windowsupdate.microsoft.com) and then there is the Microsoft Update software. (This of course requires IE to view the page). Anyway, If you have the Microsoft Update installed, do yourself a favor and uninstall it. It's just an additional burden on your PC that is unnecessary and just uses resources needlessly. Typically, if you go to your control panel, you'll see that Automatic Updates are set to automatically download/install your security updates and whatnot. If you have it set this way, then svchost.exe just gets bogged down pinging the Windows Update website. It's like this:

svchost: Hey, any updates available that I should know about?!?!?!
WindowsUpdate: No, not at the moment. Check back in about 5 minutes.
svchost: Ok!

And then one day..

svchost: Hey, any updates available that I should know about?!?!?!
WindowsUpdate: Yeah, I have 5 security updates, 1 Windows update, a few patches, and a service pack for you.
svchost: Great!

Then svchost packs up all it's stuff and travels down the background intelligent transfer service highway to go run back and forth doing this work of downloading and installing -- in addition to all the other stuff it normally has to do. Many times, even if there are no updates, svchost will max out your cpu at 100% just out of shear boredom.

So anyway, go to Control Panel, locate the Automatic Updates icon. Disable Automatic Updates. Now if you do this, beware that you will have to go out of your way to visit the Windows Update website a couple times a month to be sure that you have all the latest security patches. But wait, now there is a new problem. There is an annoying red shield icon in your system tray.

2> Make annoying red shield icon go away:
Go to start and click on run. Type "services.msc" and hit enter. Locate the service called "Security Center". Double click on it, "stop" it, disable it and click OK to close the window. Bang, annoying red shield icon gone. But beware, if you do this, then Windows has no way of flagging you for security related issues. However, think about this,... when was the last time you ever relied on annoying red shield icon to warn you of security dangers? I'm guessing never.

3> Final notes:
1> There is an alleged "hotfix" for the svchost problem. Although I can't say if it does more harm than good or vice versa.
link: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/916089/

2> I don't know too much about this, but evidently the BITS is a security hole. I believe you can disable it and not ever notice a difference. But if you do, then you might not be able to run windows updates. So disable it but keep an eye on it just in case you need to re-enable it.