Exam Passed! (part #1)

 

It was exam day today - Installing, Configuring, and Administering Windows XP Professional.  OK, so Windows XP is now kinda old... and yes, Windows Vista has replaced it a year ago.  But better late than never!  Actually, it was a requirement for the University program so I couldn't really argue there.  The good news is that I passed.

But I fear it won't be the same storey next Monday... I have another exam, this time on Windows Server.  It's going to much harder and much longer - 4:15 hrs!!  So, no free time this weekend - study study study.

On the lighter side, as a reward for my good result, Cristina and I saw "No Country For Old Men" tonight... brilliant!  Disturbing, bleak, depressing... but a wonderful storey nonetheless. 4 ½ stars

Making wine in France

I'm attending the Novo Nordisk International IT Managers Conference in France - in a Chateau about an hour south of Paris in a village whose name I can't even begin to pronounce, let alone spell. A beautiful location in the French countryside with perfect weather the help frame the scene.

The conference has been very interesting... lots of buzz-words flying around like consolidation, virtualisation, synergies and so on. Still behind all this fluff is quite a lot of work for me. My role in Novo's head office has changed from being IT Security Focused to more IT Infrastructure focused. So when we start talking Consolidation of IT operations, building new centralised Data Centres... a lot of that falls on my desk to initiate and pursue. Interesting times ahead. And busy times!

It hasn't been all work though... we've had purely social evenings with lots of network and discussions being held over a fair few glasses of wine. Speaking of which, as you can see we had a crash course in wine making French-style. Which involves pretty much taking a splash of several grape varieties, throwing a teaspoon of "Tannin" and a quart teaspoon of "Acid" and voila... French Wine! I can't say we made a masterpiece, but it wasn't actually too bad. Drinkable anyway. Not that we did... we preferred the local Chateau Emillion wine.

Irish Cookies

Well... not exactly Irish!

Cristina and I are spending the weeekend in Mullingar, Ireland at the "World Wide Widdis Family Reunion, 2008". There are a LOT of Widdis' here... a lot more than I knew existed... and only 3 from Australia - well and truely the minority. The other Widdis' were fairly evenly split between Canada, USA, UK, NZ and Ireland (although the UK, NZ and Irish Widdis were almost direct family).

Although we couldn't find the uniting bond between the four "clans" (CAN, USA, AUS, NZ/UK/IRE), we feel that we are only one generation from finding a common relative. I can proudly say that the Australian research (mine and Des Widdis') goes back the furthest - to the 1780's - whereas most of the others only go back to the early/mid 1850's. So if we could get them back one more generation, we might find some brothers & sisters. There is one possible connection between the Australian and USA Widdis clans... possibly John, a brother of Charles Athur (who came to Australia), is the same John that went to USA. Same year of birth. Worth exploring.

The weather was not so great, but very fitting to Ireland - wet and cold. Perfect weather for kicking around in old cemetaries trying to read 200 year old tombstones. No success there. In Ireland's climate, even tombstones that are only 100 years old are quite difficult to read - overgrown with lichen and moss, and the enscryptions worn away. Oh well, the quest goes on.

Skiing European Style

Not your typical sign seen at Mt Buller! Here in France the avalanche warnings are quite common... Nearly every run has a 1 to 5 rating with 5 being the worst. Most of the runs we were skiing were showing a 2, which i guess is relatively safe... But it still gives you something to think about.