Thursday, September 04, 2008

Good Things Comin' My Way This Time Around

When last I blogged at any length, I told you there were some things happening that I could not share with you. Well, now I can.

If you will notice the time stamp at the bottom of this entry, you will notice that I am blogging during work hours. Normally this is discouraged but I won't be working here much longer. A couple of weeks ago, I was offered a position at Oklahoma State University... I'm going home.

The job means more responsibility in line with my career goals, no more hour-long commutes, and more money (although, I could rake it in with bonuses and overtime where I am now). It also means I will probably be blogging more often - but I'm still going to stay away from the subject of work for the most part. I finish up here tomorrow and start there on Monday. I am excited about being back "where everybody knows [my] name." There are some details about the job that I neglected to ask about but what's the fun of going in with your eyes wide open?

There is an aspect I am nervous about. There is an area that I will have access to that requires an FBI background check and certification. I doubt there will be any problems but not knowing their process I have no idea what they will be scrutinizing and how closely they will be scrutinizing it.

In other news...

About eight weeks ago, I took a certification exam for Symantec Backup Exec 12. If you follow that sort of thing, you know that there wasn't a certification exam available for Backup Exec 12 eight weeks ago. What I took was the beta exam.

What is a beta exam? Normally, when you take a certification exam, you are presented with a fixed number of questions (say, 50 or 60) randomly selected from a larger pool of questions (say, 100-200). If you answer a large enough percentage of the 50 or 60 questions correctly, you pass the test. In a beta exam, the pool of questions is much larger than the pool that will actually be used for the certification exam - in this case, I think it was 250. Instead of answering a limited number of randomly chosen question, you have to answer all of the questions (it took me 3 hours and 14 minutes). Once they have a large enough sample of completed exams, they perform an analysis on the questions, decide which ones they want to keep and which ones they want to throw out, then score you based on how you answered the questions they kept.

This whole process apparently takes about eight weeks because I found out this morning that I passed the exam. I am certified in Symantec Backup Exec 12 for Windows Servers Administration. I am VERY proud of this accomplishment because I also learned that one of our analysts (who was responsible for a large part of my training) and another technician did not pass.

It also looks like our financial burden will be eased a bit. In addition to my new position and lower fuel costs as a result, we also learned about an additional income stream that should start in the next 2-3 weeks. It isn't much but it's enough to be helpful.

So, good things are happening in the Fusco household. Here is to them lasting and more good things to come.

No comments: