In this dawning of age of bandwidth-conscious ISPs, knowing how much you upload/download is become an issue. I myself really do not know how much bandwidth I do use at home.  Do I really need my current speed? Can I go with a slower connect? Do I really need a faster connection?

This is where this neat little tool comes in: BitMeter from codebox. Basically it monitors and reports back in a little graph on your desktop how much network traffic is coming and going from your PC.  There are also statistics that you can bring up to show daily, weekly, monthly usage.  There are also alerts that can be set for various events.  Overall not to bad for a free, little application.  I am sure there are other and possibly better similar applications out there.  But for now, this is my choice.

The notion of being certified is an interesting one.  In the IT world there are so many certifications, being mostly vendor-oriented, with a few exceptions.  Cisco, Novell, Microsoft, Lotus, they all have their certifications that one can obtain.

I myself am a Microsoft Certified Professional, meaning I passed at least one certification exam.  Which I did last year, the 70-290 “Managing and Maintaining Server 2003″.  Now I got my sights on the next step up the ladder, the MCSA (Microsoft Certified System Administrator), which requires another 3 more exams.

This is the sneaky part of these certifications, you need more and more to be consider a higher up IT dude.  Good thing Microsoft and everyone else charges for these things; from between $75-$300, they must be making a killing off us IT people!  Last I checked there were millions upon millions of MCP’s out there.  Profit!

But regardless of this exciting and wallet-draining news, I will continue to contribute to their profits and continue to get more and bigger certs until the day I retire, change careers, or die. Why? For myself it gives me a challenge and reason to learn more stuff.  Also, God only knows my future, and having piles of certs and on the job experience and a degree gives me an edge over the next guy that doesn’t if I need to look for another job.

This is my first of probably many, many, thoughts on this topic.  As I never know which certification I will be going for in the future.