Certification testing

I made a new year’s resolution to study for, and pass, the CCNA exam so I can get my Cisco certification. It’s not going to be easy but I’m going to do it so I can move up at my employer. Plus, I’ve always wanted to get more in-depth with networking and setting up more advanced LAN’s and WAN’s.

I can’t thank the teacher, at one of the schools I work at, enough for giving me his old Cisco training material. They actually teach CCNA at the high school! It’s a four semester course so the students have to start it their junior year. Even though it’s not the most current info, it covers the last test released by Cisco. It is very in-depth and covers everything about setting up and configuring Cisco routers and switches. The training material even includes virtual labs. The virtual labs are pretty nice since I can’t get my hands on any real Cisco routers/switches to practice on.

Pretty soon, I’m going to have to update my MCSE+I (NT 4.0) certification to Windows 2003. I may try to go with MCSA instead of MCSE. Go here to see the difference between the two. Basically, MCSE’s are certified to plan, design and implement Windows 2003 server solutions. MCSA’s are certified for all that and to manage and maintain Windows 2003 networks. Managing and maintaining is what I am interesting in doing.

I also know that I’m going to have to upgrade my MCDBA from SQL 2000 to SQL 2005 in the future. Those test are going to suck because the SQL certification tests (two of them) were the hardest certification test I had taken. It took me almost an hour to take each one and I was sweating it the whole time. The SQL trainer didn’t help much when he announced that, “About 60% of the people that take the test fail it on the first try.” Thanks. I studied my butt off and passed them both the first time. I’m not going to say I was lucky because it wasn’t luck, it was persistant studying.

Studying for the CCNA isn’t easy but it will definitely pay off in the long run. At the same time as studying for that, I am also trying to learn to code PHP pages. I know some HTML and ASP but I want to create dynamic pages using PHP because they operate much faster than ASP and work in all browsers. Sometimes, ASP pages don’t seem to render correctly in non-IE browsers. If it gets to where I have to drop CCNA training or PHP training, I’ll drop PHP training temporarily because the CCNA certification holds more interest for me.

06.Jan.05 Life, Technology

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One Response to “Certification testing”

  1. Zarggg | January 6th, 2005 at 7:35 pm

    Good choice. Really. I’m currently working on my CCNA (I start semseter 2 of 4 on the 19th), and it’s kind of fun. A little hard for me to grasp at times, but that’s my ADD talking. :roll:

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