Career...

I feel like i'm at a crossroads at the moment. I've been fighting for so long to get training and certification for the applications that I've been using for the last 2 years - but nothing. Which puts me in a difficult position - I want the training, and certification, so that I can go to another employer and say 'here, i've got the certificates, and 2 years of experience'.. - then, bam - i'm hired!

Without the certificates, it's a lot harder to justify my knowledge. I'd need referees - from the company that I want to leave. Talk about caught between a rock and a hard place.

I've decided to take on more responsibility for this training thing myself - so rather than bitch and moan about it (except here in my blog!), I've got 1/2 of the J2EE book in my bag, and spend the time on the train reading it. This is turning out quite good, I thought it would probably be a bit crapola, but it's working well.

I just have to get my hands on some other books so that I can study them also (Oracle, Documentum?).

Unfortunately I dont think i'll be able to get work to cough up for the Oracle DBA course, and they certainly wont for Documentum, which is frustrating. They sent 3 former colleagues on the DM training, and they have all left. Suffer.

Work...

is ok at the moment - I'm having a bit of a crisis though - I cant be stuffed ironing my shirts, which makes it hard to wear suits! :)

What is the deal with that? I think it took me 2 weeks to fold the washing - I'm a pretty bad bloke all in all!

I'm also studying hard for my J2EE certification - I'm printing out chapters left right and centre, so that I can do some reading on my 45 minute each way train ride to work - it's a really good way to study, a chapter at a time - and on the train - no interruptions, no people coming up to you asking to help out with work stuff.. great! :) I dont think i'm winning any friends with my hogging of the printer though!

I had a good chat with the new boss - it turns out that he lives just down the road from me (a couple of suburbs further away from melbourne), which is cool - he's a kiwi, so I give him shit about their crap cricket team, and he gives me shit about our rugby union team! :)

As for my review, that's still to be discussed, but I'm about 3 months overdue now..

ADSL...

Seems like 600Mb is just not enough! :)

We chewed through it in 7 days, thanks to good old WinMx! :) I showed Rach this little gem, and bang - there goes the limit! The worst this is that even if we upgrade the plan now, it's going to be another 3 weeks (end of the billing cycle) to get the new limit! And until the end of the billing cycle, we are limited to 28k! That's unbelieveable!

We just bit the bullet and upgraded to 20Gb - that should tide us over!! hahhhahaha...