Archives December 2008

Firstly, a hearty congratulations to the 8 Year old (and 1 day) Lavina Shree who recently completed her MCP Exam in C#.

[NDTV via NewLaunches]

She has made quite an accomplishment for defeating the previous title holder Arfa Karim from Pakistan who was 10 Years old at the time she completed her MCP exam in 2005.

Apparently, she is 8 years old, and not 9 years old as some of the stories report (Her own website reports this)

Okay, time for the Therapy Faq on this.

Q: Should I feel bad about myself and my own certifications?

A:  No, why should you feel bad?   If you had a photographic memory and were 8 years old, wouldn’t you be able to find the time to study just a bit? I mean, outside of your regular 80 hour workweek fixing networks or dealing with your significant other, I’m sure you’d be able to find a few minutes to study for an exam, right?

Q:  What? But seriously, she’s 8 years old! Not even 9 years old like the other reports are saying!

A:  Wait, you’re right.    I forgot these exams aren’t based upon sole memorization and require you to have to think about extremely bound concepts the likes of which cannot exist in books.   I mean when I go into the Oracle to take the exam, it analyzes what I have in my brain and then starts providing dynamic questions the likes of which noone could ever hold challenge to.

Q: Does this happening make the Certification process at all less valuable?

A: Absolutely not.   That same analysis could be said of the Bar Exam, SAT’s or GRE’s.    Some people are extremely good at certain things (say, memorization) but that is not to say that they know everything there is, only what they’ve read.   So, while you can know the ‘answer’ to a defined question, if provided with a question outside the context of original discussion that shows your true ability to innovate and provide a solution.   If I want someone to be able to recite back to me verbatim a fixed question/answer, I’d get Wikipedia or something.

Q: So you’re saying I should feel good for this girl, and not feel bad about myself?

A: Exactly.  I think it is great, prior to this a lot of people didn’t even realize there was such a thing as the MCP.  Now perhaps some may feel this is bad PR, but any PR is better than none, and this will pass.    Especially when a girl who is cited as having performed feats of memorization at age 3? No, this will definitely do wonders for the Certification community and help to improve the process as a whole for years to come.   We’ve been watching it come for the past several years as tests have improved to be more relevant, and this will be no different.

Good luck out there, get ready for a whole new Certification year! And I look forward to the new innovative Betas as you should!

Are you a happy tweeter? How can you tell? HappyTweets is here to actually give you a ranking along with a color coded soothing feeling to the situation!

So, how does it work? It’s actually extremely simple!

Go to happytweets.com Type in your name and click “Get Happy!” It’s that easy!

So lets see, just how happy am I today?

Wow, would you look at that! I’m very Happy! Even with a nice pretty orange to show just how happy I am!

But not everyone is happy, and the colors certainly do change based upon the numeric ranking out there!

So, whether you’re feeling orange with excitement, or blue or grey and down in the dumps, this certainly can be a good indicator “Hey, wait a minute, apparently I’m being a real downer in tweeterville! Maybe I should spin it up a bit!”

This is more than a social experiment as Tim creator of this tool has intended it to be.

This actually serves as a “Social Service” because if you’re down, and the software says you are – Do something about it! Tweet a little happiness into your life and I’m sure you’ll find your attitude towards the world shift!   Think about everything you have to take for granted, like food or civil rights! :)

So, thanks @u2elan for bringing us this! Have a Happy Holidays, and a Happy Tweetlandia! :)

So, I’ve talked before about wanting to discuss the communities but not wanting to reveal information which isn’t exactly public.. Well, I’ve found a way to discuss this without an issue!

It’s called sadly.. Not logging in :) Yes, it is lame, but it works for me! So on to the communities!

At the high level it looks like this:

Which if you look around you’ll find a communities section with breakouts, Recent Content, NetApp TV and the top 5 discussions, documents and the latest poll!

Down a bit further (out of this section) you find Top participants, tags, recent blog posts and…. twitter!

So drilling down a bit we find this kind of stuff

This is a pretty straight-forward area, which provides indepth information for you to ask questions where you’ll get responses from both NetApp folks as well as other customers in the field with your same problem, questions or even solutions of their own!    We’re fortunate to have a number of followers (Internal/External) who monitor and moderate certain forums in order to provide their input into the types of things you’ll encounter out there!  The number of subjects is numerous and you’re always game to discuss any topic under the sun and get some good participation!

Occasionally, you’ll see new and updated Polls! Like this one:

It’s through polls like this where the user community can speak out about their configurations or situations to get a feel for what others happen to be doing.  In this particular poll it shows of the 15 respondants, 40% of them have NFS connectivity to VMware, which is certainly great for those considering NFS and were not sure who else was out there doing it.

And occasionally in the Recent area, you can get an exposure to just some of the types of questions being interactively asked – And who knows, I might even respond ;)

So be sure to check out those communities, check me out while out there as well! I’ll see all of the posts even if I’m not actively watching the site and my contact information is scattered there as well as the rest of the internets as a whole ;)

Take care getting your NetApp on and soon I will tell you how to do even more faster and easier with my other really cool planned things :)

Here is a new update to this post –

Please read this latest version of the best tool for this, viable as of Friday, August 20th, 2010

How to mass follow and unfollow on twitter FOR FREE?!?!?

Here is an update to this post – Be sure to check out this updated version for the >10k club!

How to mass follow and unfollow on twitter: over 10k club!

So you’re sitting there wondering “I wonder who is following me that I’m not following back!” or the more realistic question “Which of these folks that I’m following are not following me!”

Here is our good friend Friend or Follow!

It’s actually very simple to use.  Simply browse to their site, enter your name hit submit and you’re off!

Pet the bunny! :)

Then suddenly you’re brought to this wonderful page!

At that point, you can click on their names and decide if you want to continue following them or not.  It’s a useful way to see who it is that you are following who is not following you.   But the benefits don’t end there!

Simply by clicking on Fans, you’ll get a list of people who are following you, but YOU are not following back!

This happens to the best of us, or they’re spammers which haven’t been removed yet, in either case you can click on them and choose to follow or not!

Here is where it gets tricky.   Let’s say you chose to follow ‘x’ number of folks and they’re not reciprocating, and you decide “Alright, I’ve had enough of this!” I hear it more often than not.

Well, with Friend or Follow here, you can open up every page, perform your 3-4 clicks and remove them as friends.  Oh I forgot, I don’t have that kind of time and carpal tunnel, do you have another option?

Introducing Twitter Karma!

The security conscious folks abound will be concerned about using this as it does require you to enter your password (It will be performing calls on your behalf so that’s understandable that it needs credentials)

You need to be cautious when using this, if your API limit is close to being maxed as it may “appear” as though it’s not working.   Just try again in an hour if it’s not working as expected.

(Infact, merely connecting the first time is often enough to exceed your rate limit – Be warned)

Then simply change the “Show” field to “Only Following:”

Pop on down to the bottom and make your decision:

If you’re looking to drop everyone, do a “check all” and “Bulk Unfollow” and it’ll go through and unfollow them.

A bit of warning, this may take some time, so please be patient.  I find the best way to keep up on whether it is working (Because it goes into work mode the instant you click it: Would be to go to your twitter homepage, and watch the numbers increase/decrease appropriately.

One of the hardest parts for me to unfollow people is, I enjoy reading their conversations and interacting with them, regardless of whether they’re following me.  But Twitter Limits and other restrictions force you into these situations! :)

One of the nicest parts is it will show you when they “Last Updated” so you can feel better removing people who haven’t updated “Ever” or “not in a year” or so.

So remember, if you’re looking to mass follow, mass unfollow, or take any kind of mass actions (Or even just get a feeling of how unbalanced things may be)  – The two tools mentioned above will help you achieve that!

Be sure to be running the latest version of TweetDeck and Adobe Air also, just in general :)

And be sure to add me @cxi on Twitter and @cxi on 12seconds!

Raise your hand if you use Tweetdeck! Yes I know you do, we all do.

You ever sit there and wonder what that little   is up in the control section? A click on it will reveal much excitement to be had!

Simply clicking that little 12 will bring up this prompt: Asking you for your 12seconds.tv creds!

Then, get ready for it, because all of a sudden you have access to Video in Tweetdeck!

OMFG What is going on here? Why are there videos in Tweet Deck? This is actually kind of cool!

Hovering over it will prompt you to Play the clip, or click the arrow and Whoa! Wait a minute you can RT from here as well?!

RT cxi: 12seconds – http://12seconds.tv/channel/cxi/64782

#Playing in TweetDeck

It’ll grey out your background while it displays video! 

Okay, this all seems a bit weird.  I thought we could only interact with each other in 140 character segments (Less in a reply) but now we can suddenly interact in 12 second segments?    Sure, you might think 12 seconds doesn’t seem like a lot, You say I want more, I want 12 times 12 seconds to get my point across! But seriously, that’s Gross But seriously, you can say a lot in 12 seconds and this gets to that point.  The first time you’ll realize just how long of a time 12 seconds indeed is :)

*I won’t even mention the iPhone Application they announced on the 18th! ;*

How cool can this possibly be? Think about it.  It’s been integrated into Tweetdeck for how long now? And we’ve never even noticed it?  I think it’s time we take notice (Especially with the TweetDeck Holiday update coming Dec 24th! hooray! :))

As always you can find me on twitter at @cxi but you can also find me on 12seconds @cxi!

So get out there, give it a try, add me in my shaven and unshaven form and lets celebrate the 12 seconds of christmas together!