Archive for the ‘Computer’ Category

Certifiable 2.0

Tuesday, July 8th, 2008

I took the Mac OS X Server Essentials v10.5 this morning, again at Parkland’s Prometric testing center.  Things went much more smoothly for this test and I was in and out in less than an hour.I bought the Peachpit prep book for the exam and I have to say it was pretty comprehensive (at least in terms of preparation for the exam).

I got a 97.22% on the exam so I can now officially declare myself an Apple Certified Technical Coordinator. You only need a 69% to pass the exam, so you could miss 27 questions and still pass.  I’m certain I could have passed the exam based on experience, without the prep book, but I know I would’ve been making a lot of educated guesses on portions of the OS  in which I have limited/no experience.

Now I have to decide if I want to fork over another $600 to Prometric to take the remaining three exams to get the Apple Certified System Administrator certification.

Posted in Apple, Computer, OS X | 2 Comments »

Certifiable

Wednesday, February 27th, 2008

I took the Mac OS X Support Essentials v10.5 exam yesterday at Parkland’s Prometric testing center. After waiting an hour and a half for them to get the testing workstation set up, I cranked through the 90 questions in 40 minutes. The test was pretty fair, but a couple of questions were ambiguous and one I SWEAR had two correct answers. I’m somewhat embarrassed that I missed 8, but you only need 73% to pass, so my 91% was more than enough. I’m still trying to get the details from Apple, but its safe to say that I’m now an Apple Certified Support Professional

Posted in Apple, Computer, OS X | 3 Comments »

Leopard Quirks

Tuesday, October 30th, 2007

I’ve been running Mac OS X Leopard for a few days now and I’ve run into a few quirks/bugs.

  • Quicklook previews with inconsistent locations

I’ve haven’t quite sorted out where Quicklook stores its prefs, but I’ve had Quicklook throw its little window up in unexpected places. I can’t seem to make it “stick” where I want it to. Anything that I “quicklook” from the Desktop gets shown on my secondary monitor, while anything I “quicklook” from elsewhere shows up on the primary. The locations also seem to be different among other applications (location for Mail is different from the Finder). (more…)

Posted in Apple, Bugs, Computer, OS X | No Comments »

Dreamhost… ugh.

Monday, October 29th, 2007

So, I finally decide to register and use the altgilbers.com domain and I shop around and decide to use dreamhost. I knew going in that it is shared hosting and that performance of the server is very much dependent on the usage of my neighbors.

(more…)

Posted in Computer | No Comments »

How not to do it…

Thursday, October 25th, 2007

At work we have a (necessarily) complicated printing system for the student computer labs. Mac and PC workstations print via LPR to Windows print queues. On the Windows Server 2003 box Pcounter takes control of releasing jobs and charging student/faculty accounts for the prints.

Most of these queues feed the jobs to various laser printers throughout the building, but several of our print queues are for wide format inkjet printers, so the queues pass the files off to other 2003 Server boxes running ColorBurst RIP software. ColorBurst has its own printer port (CPT1: ColorBurst Port Monitor), so all incoming print jobs are handled by a Windows print queue using this port. ColorBurst runs as an application, not as a service, and it unfortunately crashes quite regularly.

(more…)

Posted in Bugs, Computer, Windows | No Comments »

Leopard Server

Tuesday, October 23rd, 2007

Last week I went over to ISU in Bloomington for an Active Directory/OS X integration seminar.  It was 99% stuff that I had already done, but Mike Bombich shared a couple of hints of what was coming in Leopard Server dealing with folder redirection.  I’ll get another look November 1st at the CCSP conference.  I’m hoping that we can finally find a way to have network home directories for students.  Currently its just not possible, since we have no control of the user objects in the campus AD. What I really need is an ADC membership to get pre-release software, if anyone wants to sign me up. 

Posted in Apple, Computer, OS X | 1,476 Comments »