Randolph A week ago, I had just returned from a three-week sojourn in sunny Tampa, where I spent most of the time indoors, far away from the sun, relearning everything about SQL Server. Those three weeks are best summarised in my previous blog entry, where I described Immersion Event 1.
The result was that I wanted to dive deep into the product. I wanted to spend hours reading through transaction logs, my new books, the training material, and blogs of the people I met. Most of all, I wanted to really focus on getting the MCM.
After catching my breath, and reading email (over 1000 emails were summarily “filed”), and various other things related to home life, I felt that motivation to get my MCM slipping away. Real life, “normal”, day to day activities are holding my attention more and more. For instance, our permanent residence letter arrived while I was away, and we will fly to LA in a couple of weeks to hand in our passports (why LA? It’s a very long story).
At the clinic, I had to set up a new firewall which has been sitting in a box for a couple of months. We are also hiring new staff, so I had to get involved there too. And at home, I’ve started capturing the hundreds of receipts for our annual tax return.
However, it wasn’t all bad. I’ve managed to get three out of four virtual machines up and running on my antique laptop to start playing with SQL failover clustering. And I’m slowly making plans in my head for tackling the four preliminary exams that are required before I can do the MCM knowledge exam.
So my point is, I need to maintain my focus. It is way too easy to be distracted. So next week, in between capturing receipts and so on, I’ll do some practise exams. I’ll play with clustering. I’ll revise the clinic’s disaster recovery strategy. Anything to keep my eye on the prize. I want a SQL Server MCM, and I’m going to get it.