You ever find yourself in the position where Twitter Tools no longer updates anymore?

The information is aged, old, ancient – Infact, even if you blow away the tweets displayed, the details on your widget do not seem to go away?

One way to get rid of the tweets it has cached are by dropping your wp_ak_twitter database.

That will result in clearing out the data in the database and in the sidebar, but it may not resolve your ability to actually update and receive tweets.

After I dropped the database, it took a considerable amount of time, but -eventually- it started actually pulling updates from Twitter as a whole – So good luck to you others out there, and hopefully you don’t have to drop your database like I had to!

This will intentionally be a short-post.

Trying to determine exactly what ‘limits’ twitter tools has, as it stopped updating 3 weeks ago and I had to drop its tables in order to clear out old stale data.

We’ll see what comes of this!

This exam is not ready yet! No Beta code to speak of.

But there is already talk about it, so the chances of there being codes.. Soon!

Until such a point, here are some study guides provided by the blessed Garth Jones!

70-635 MCTS: Microsoft Deployment Toolkit 2008, Desktop Deployment

70-635 Study Guide

He’s even created a Wiki Page for Exam Prep and Review! so check it out!

So, special props to Garth Jones, and look forward to an update to the Free Testing Archive when we get that Beta Code!

Thinking about getting Certified? Not sure what to do? What the value is?

I’d like to point you to our good friends at Microsoft running a Certification 101 Live meeting.

*Begin Blatant Theft from the MSLCommunity :)*

After many suggestions from you, and from our dear friend Trika, we are hosting another Certification 101 Live Meeting. This one will take place on Tuesday, November 18^th and will hopefully be the start of a regular schedule of these Live Meetings.

Audience: IT Professionals, developers who think they might like to get certified, but aren’t sure it’s right for them and/or aren’t sure where to start. People who have never taken a Microsoft exam and work with Microsoft products, or people who will be working with Microsoft in the very near future.

Registration: Join folks from the Microsoft Certified Professional team (including ME) to learn about the benefits and process of getting certified: choosing a certification path, preparing for your first exam, taking an exam, and what to expect after that. Click to register for:

• November 18, 2008 at 7:30 A.M. Pacific Time http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032394770&Culture=en-US)(What time is this in my region?)
• November 18, 2008 at 5:30 P.M. Pacific Time http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032394771&Culture=en-US (What time is this in my region?)

Here’s what we’ll talk about…

• what a technical certification can do for you–what is the goal?
• how to choose a certification track that will help you meet your goals – career or otherwise
• how do you know when you’re ready (expected experience level, time/money involved, etc)
• preparation options (what you need to know, how to learn it)
• the testing experience (registering, during the test, what happens when you’re done)

Our hope is to make this less intimidating for new people.

Please send the links around if you have co-workers or user groups who might find this helpful.

*End Blatant theft!*

Do check out and comment on their blog as well! this post Certification 101: Getting Started with Microsoft Certification and others are available there!

You ever get up and say “ooh! I want to find these TR articles!” Okay, if you don’t, *I* do :)

I certainly know a number of other folks who are always out there wondering …. Where do I find this?!?

Well, here is this little gem!

That’s right! all you need to do is click this Technical Reports: By Number link, and there you will have them all right there! I expanded it out to the “View All” feel free to manipulate as appropriate.