I just passed NS163 and now officially have my NCDA! It will take a couple of weeks for them to ship out my certificate but the system has been updated with my passing score so I am officially certified. Not just me though, everyone in the class passed both exams, so there are now 8 new NCDA’s in the field. Congratulations to all the other guys and to Jon Presti for being a great instructor and making sure we all had the knowledge needed to pass the exams and get certified. Now to figure out what to do with the rest of my day, because my flight doesn’t leave until tomorrow. Had I known we would be done by 2pm today, I would have scheduled for an early evening flight. Oh well, looks like I get to go explore Las Colinas a little.
Monthly Archives: April 2011
Five Years
Five Years have gone so fast,
But you are not our past.
We love you now, just as then;
We will see you once again.
NCDA Boot Camp, Day 3
Had the first of two exams today, NS153, and I am happy to say that I passed! I am now half way to my NCDA. After the exam we began covering the material that will be on Saturday’s NS163 exam. After class I was talking with Jon and found out that he wasn’t going to be having dinner tonight because he was short on cash (due to forgetting to process a lot of expense reports, oops.) and so I told him he should come over to my hotel which is literally next door to his because we have free dinner in the lobby. We had some good conversation at dinner about the class, the material, and NetApp in general. Apparently this is the first time Jon has hung out with any of his students outside of class as well, which I thought was odd because he is by far one of the most straight forward, down to earth, and straight up cool techs I have ever met. Well, time to study some more!
NCDA Boot Camp, Day 2
So my first test is tomorrow and in preparation we filled out the necessary forms for Prometric, and as soon as I got my form I had to laugh. According to the paper Prometric still thinks they are a Thomson company. 
I then had to explain to the class why I was laughing: 1) Thomson doesn’t exist anymore, we are now Thomson Reuters, and 2) when we were Thomson, we sold Prometric in 2007. Jon said he was going to send an email to his contact to see about getting updated forms. 🙂 The second day of the class went smooth and as I predicted some of the conversations have been very interesting. Also like I predicted Jon is really awesome, he knows the material very well and has no problem admitting if he dosen’t have the answer to a question, but he gets the answer typically while we are doing the labs either by doing some quick research or calling one of his contacts. I can see Jon being a great contact through out my career.
NCDA Boot Camp, Day 1
Made it in to class this morning, bright and early at 8am…and went into the wrong building. I wasn’t the only one though, the entire class including the instructor did. It had to do with the way we were given the address and how the buildings are actually set up inside with the suites. Long complicated explanation short, I found the class. Interesting enough the instructor was one of the last people to arrive (on time I want to add, as I was just really early), and he (Jon Presti) seems really damn cool and I think he is going to be a great instructor. We have decided collectively to begin class at 8:30 instead of 8:00, which for me means another half hour to study before class because, lets face it, I will be up well in advanced. Anyway, the first day was really good. There are 8 guys in the class counting me and according to Jon, this is the first time he has had a class completely comprised of guys from enterprise level storage environments. Based on some of the conversations we had today in class I am thinking the conversations about storage are going to be very interesting and informative. I found out today that of the two exams I need to take to get my NCDA certification, one will be on Wednesday morning and the other will be on Saturday morning. The one on Saturday is supposed to be the more difficult of the two, so I am certain I will be spending all of my “free time” studying. Well, one day down, time to hit the books!
Texas, I Am In You
Flew in to Texas this afternoon (plane landed about 2:30pm Central / 3:30pm EST) and after finding may way out of the terminal I made my way to the bus for the rental car where I ended up getting a Dodge Caliber with a GPS system as my rental. First impression is that it is a decent car but not something I would want to own as I feel very cramped in it. I found my way to the hotel, TownePlace Suites, without to much of an issue. I say without much of an issue because it took me a little while to understand what the GPS (a Garmin Nuvi) was saying, mainly because every time I had to use an on or off ramp from a major highway (by the way Dallas and Las Colinas seems to be nothing but concrete and asphalt!) it sounded like it was saying to take the “sledge road” and that confused me, but luckily I could tell by the map what it wanted. After finding the hotel and getting checked in I decided I had better find my way to the class location so I would at least have an idea of how to get there in the morning. Turns out it’s not very difficult to get there but the main road is closed due to construction, of course, so I have to take a detour that puts me back out on the main road (Walnut Hill) about 15 yards from the driveway to the class location. Thankfully I have the GPS though because it was able to re-route and find a way back to the class location, and seeing as it is pretty straight forward I won’t need to use the GPS in the morning. After finding the class I then decided to go have dinner at a Sushi restaurant that Chuck recommended from when he was down here called The Blue Fish (this location), and I have to say it was very good! After dinner I came back to the hotel to relax and prepare for class, I have a feeling this is going to be a long week.
Daddy, the Easter Bunny was here
Happy Easter!
Kylie woke me up this morning at about 7am, she came in to my room and quietly called me while standing next to my bed. When I stirred and moved over she climbed up and said “Daddy, the Easter Bunny was here. 
Can we go and look?” So we got up and went and had a look, and she was right the Easter Bunny had come. On her little table were two baskets of goodies, and not just limited to candy, though she had plenty of that too. She also got two books: Harry the Dirty Dog (which was one of Daddy’s favorites when he was a kid) and The Giving Tree, which is a classic. Additionally Kylie also got some new socks and 3 garden stone painting kits. All in all it was a good morning. Sadly though our day was cut short because Daddy had to leave to fly to Texas for a week of training. 🙁
Meeting with an Otolaryngologist
Today we (Mommy, Daddy, and Kylie) had a meeting with an ENT (otolaryngologist) about taking Kylie’s tonsils out. Based on what the ENT saw (both from examining Kylie and looking at her records) and what he heard from us, he thinks that she is a candidate to have her tonsils taken out. A good portion of this decision is based on the number of times Kylie has had strep throat in the past year, and he said that based on that alone Kylie is a candidate as she is at the threshold based on that number. While Mommy thinks it would be best for Kylie to have them out now, Daddy is a little less certain. The idea of surgery, and Daddy’s memories of being in the hospital for three days when he had his out, has Daddy wanting to wait a little. Mommy, on the other hand, remembers how much better she felt as a kid after having hers out, and how less often she got sick. After talking together outside of the office we decide if Kylie has strep one more time by her birthday then we will have them taken out, as this would put her over the bare minimum of times required for the surgery. Now we will have to wait and see.
Second Kindergarten Parent-Teacher Conference
Mommy had Kylie’s second parent teacher conference today (like with the first meeting, Mommy and Daddy decided it would be silly for Daddy to make the 2 hour round trip drive for a 10 minute meeting) and she filled me in on all the good news. At this point in the school year Kylie has already surpassed all of the end of year criteria for promotion to the first grade! That criteria includes reading at a level 2, and counting by 1’s, 2’s, 5’s, and 10’s to 100 without issue. The teacher did say that Kylie has begun to be a little more disruptive. Well, maybe not disruptive, but when it is time to stop talking for instance she now finds that she sometimes has to remind Kylie that it is time to settle down. Mommy and I are wondering if this might be because Kylie has already mastered what they are currently learning, and the teacher seems to think so too because after telling us about this she said she thinks this will change shortly because next week they are going to begin their science course and will be learning about new things, which she thinks will re-engage Kylie and help pull her back to her normal behaviour. Either way we are very proud of how well Kylie is doing and are certain she will continue to excel and be a great student.
She Wants to Conduct
Got a phone call from Kylie today and she told me that when she grows up she does not want to play violin, instead she wants to be a conductor. I told her that would be a lot of fun, but she would have to practice real hard to learn all the different hand signals and how to properly tell each player when and what to play. She said she understood that, and she was going to see what she needed to learn. I don’t know what made her decide she wanted to be a conductor, but if that is what she wants she knows I will support her and help her in any way that I can.