MCP!

Ahhh, I feel just as refreshed now as when I walk indoors from being outside on a hot day, cut a wedge of lime (not too large... but not to small...), and crack open a Corona. After 4 months of reading, waking up early, staying up late, step-by-step practices, and pot after pot of coffee (literally, I must have drank about 4 pounds of coffee during these last 3 weeks alone...), I finally took, and passed, my first MCP (Microsoft Certified Professional) Exam. Ladies... ladies, please step back, for I am a taken man. I know that my proven superior genius in developing ASP .NET web applications befuddles you.. befuddle, thats a funny word! But seriously, I feel very fortunate to have the friends and family that I have who continually support me in any ways they can. In particular my wife-to-be has been so unbelievably patient and understanding as I consitently came home from work every night, ate dinner, and locked myself in my office. Studying for this exam took alot of patience, but she definately has more than I do... I'm the luckiest guy alive, I truly am... Oh... youre still reading... well I guess I'll get on with the dirty details! I took the 70-305 exam, which is developing web apps with VB .NET. The exam was 43 questions total, passing mark was 700 (Microsft never states that the total is '1000', but everyone kind of assumes that, so you can say that a 70% here was roughly 30 out of 43). To study, I read the Que Certifications Exam-Cram book, this particular book was written by Mike Gunderloy. In hind-sight, Im impressed with how accurate the format of the study questions were to the actual exam, along with the skill level required. If you can get approximately 10-11 out of 15 on each of the chapters end questions, you should do just fine on the actual exam. (Note: notice I stated that i was impressed with the books study questions, the book also comes with a cd from prep-logic to help you study... those questions were WAY too hard, and not as comparable to the actual exams questions.) In the past, I had heard that the exam was very ADO.NET intensive... almost 60% some people had claimed. I cant say it was that much... perhaps about half of that in fact. The other 70% was a good mix of testing/debugging, application deployment and maintenance, and application configuration. User services/controls, and component management was mixed in there... but only a little compared to the other topics mentioned. In the end though I'd have to say that Microsoft makes the exam as tricky as possible... without being crude about it. In other words, they'll offer proper syntax in the answers to questions and not make stuff up, but they throw in just enough options to make the answer tricky. Basically, atleast have the exam I had to work down the answers to a 50/50, before comparing and making a selection. Well, thats about it.. I had a few other blogs to publish recently, but I just saved them as drafts and never went back to them. Gee, maybe someday, when this blog is the most popular and best blog in all the land, maybe ill sell the unpublished blogs. Maybe future generations will study my blogs... and maybe they'll go for their certification on what I wrote! Yes, I like it! They can go for their MyBren Certified Professional Certification! It can be their MCP... what, thats already taken? Damn you Microsoft! G'nite folks ;)