The certification trap

I'm officially in the certification trap!

I'll be taking the ITILv3 in early March.
The RHCSA on the ides of March and the RHCE towards the end of March.

The ITILv3 is a great framework. It is useful for my consulting practice and will be useful if I go to an organization that uses the concept of best practices in their IT work. It is a nice little tag to add to the resume.

The RHCSA/RHCE are slam dunks. I do need to study in order to fill in some gaps, but I did well on the assessment test so there should be no surprises.

So the weirdness to the exams is location. The ITILv3 is in New York City, so I have a place to crash. The RHCSA/RHCE exams are only offered on Friday's which makes travel a pain. Based on my location, I'll be driving to Toronto for one and driving to Boston for the other.

When not to Grocery Shop

I used to think the witching hour for grocery shopping was that time just before dinner, when everyone was in a mad rush to get something before coming home.

Then I discovered that family shopping time with little ones occurs Saturday & Sunday afternoon.

Yesterday beat both. It was old folks shopping time. In that time after lunch and before working people get home, all of the retired people are getting their groceries. They've completed bridge or their morning senior center activity and now, fully energized, proceed to the grocery store in order to walk at a top speed of 1/4 MPH. They are nice enough - no screaming kids - but it is slow. Confusion abounds as one shopping cart is trying to go one direction while the other card is trying to go the other direction. Or, a cart will park itself as the person goes to get an item from the same shelf that you need to get an item from. They are ahead of you and it is like watching slow motion replay. What once would take seconds, now takes minutes.

Sigh.

When I get to that age and become that slow, I'm just going to send someone else out to do the shopping.