Subj : Windows 2000 MCSE Upgrade Exam To : Steve Quarrella From : Lawrence Garvin Date : Mon Apr 02 2001 02:16 am Steve Quarrella said in a message to Lawrence Garvin: SQ> VUE. I have nothing but good things to say about their service SQ> and their centers. They've always been very accommodating. Thanks for the tip.. and the recommendation. SQ> What I will mention, though, is that if you test with them after SQ> having tested with Sylvan Prometric, you may need to get with SQ> Microsoft about combining your two transcripts. In the instant case, since what is now on my transcript is 2 expired exams and one about to expire (Win95), there's probably not much risk for me in this scenario. lg> Well, I sent an email to prometric, microsoft, and MCP Magazine. lg> No response from any of the three. SQ> I have found the associated customer service with all three of SQ> these to be less-than-intelligent, but I would have picked up a SQ> phone and called to say "I'm not taking it in the backside because SQ> Sylvan Prometric couldn't get their act together for me to take my SQ> exam on time." I thought about that... but reality also tells me that there probably isn't much going to be done about it anyway. SQ> Oddly, given my language background, they WERE willing to finance SQ> some foreign language classes that I had in mind for this summer, SQ> despite the fact that speaking Russian would have nothing to do SQ> with my job Go figger. My previous employer sent me to a week long Character Programming class so that I would have the skills to write query/report code in our database environment... and then never gave me a task assignment involving that skill. lg> On the other hand, I paid for my Microsoft guy last December to lg> sit in both the NT4 Core and NT4 Enterprise courses. He never took lg> the exams. SQ> Did you expect him to take them? Well.. I did.. but I must admit I may have been deficient in expressing my expectations, though we had several conversations prior and after about the MCP/MCSE deadline date of 12/31 and it's extension to 2/28. No matter.. I ain't there now anyway. :-) SQ> I'm looking at taking the Exchange 5.5 test, given that my biggest SQ> exposure to BackOffice is to this, but it's hard to get excited SQ> about it. :-) That one was way up on the top of my list also, but I was having trouble getting near a functional Exchange installation to 'play'... whereas IIS4 was ubiquitous on every NT Server. I'm running IIS4 and Exchange 5.0 at home and I'm about to do the upgrade from Exchange 5.0 to Exchange 5.5 -- if I could get a handle on the expected survival of the Exchange 5.5 certification, I might consider still taking it.. otherwise, methinks I'm going to go concentrate on Exchange 2000. lg> Incidentally, I was forced to install NetBeui on my home lg> network as it's the only way my OS/2 Fido node could see the lg> NT Server! SQ> No IP connectivity? Oh, definitely! But the IBM OS/2 TCP/IP file/print sharing services won't talk to the Microsoft TCP/IP file/print sharing services. I believe this is because on OS/2 they only run via NetBIOS/NetBEUI over TCP/IP thus the NT box has to have NetBEUI installed to facilitate the file sharing. SQ> I think something the tests should be able to test, but can't, is SQ> resourcefulness. Good point. One of the most useful things I learned from my military service was the ability to "find the answer", as opposed to "memorize the answer". I've continued to employ that skill ever since. The downside is that it's a lot harder to be pedantic with people expecting you to be -- on the other hand I've been able to retain a lot more basic knowledge about various subjects by not cluttering my head with B.S. that I know I can look up when and if I'll actually need to use it. SQ> I remember a Supernetting question. You ever done that? In a roundabout way. University of Texas, (THENET), who was the ISP for the Health Department, uses CIDR. We had a block of 8 Class C networks at the Health Department that were routed upstream as a supernet. SQ> I think, based on our conversations in the past, you have much more SQ> experience than I do, but I did think they could have picked SQ> something a little less arcane for that question (I think they SQ> should test about WINS <> DNS...I've had to set that up a few SQ> times, and it just -stymies- people who don't have a good knowledge SQ> of these.). It'll be interesting to see how that all washes out in the Win2K installations. From what I've studied so far, DNS is a very critical skillset in setting up a functioning AD system. For those interested.. the O'Reilly & Associates book "DNS and BIND" is the premier volume on describing everything one needs to know to understand DNS. I believe the 4th edition is available now, I have the 2nd. Cricket Liu told me in an email a couple of years ago that the 3rd edition would contain an entire chapter(s) on NT DNS and WINS. --- * Origin: lawrence@fido.eforest.net | The Enchanted Forest (1:106/6018) .