Tag Microsoft

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!

I was talking with a friend of mine tonight asking him what he used to do his blog writing, and he said he used the WordPress editor.  I was shocked, awed, even amazed.

He is a perfect candidate for using LiveWriter, if not for the simple reason that you can put words NEXT to text without having to do all forms of magic to get it done.

There is however one amazing feature of LiveWriter which not enough people realize.

If you go into the Help, you’ll find the Writer Team Blog!

That simple little action lead me to find (because I wondered if there was an update) That indeed there is an update! The RC for LiveWriter 2009 is out! I didn’t even know it was coming!

What’s new in 2009?

Well, you can go to the Writer Blog and find out more like here or here.

But I’ll cover a few of the things which I find particularly amazing and I think you’ll agree!

Oh my god! Word Count! What a simple yet elegant function! And here it is!

(These number of words are ofcourse, up until this point!)

That’s also Sweet! (found in options!)

Some of the new plug-ins seem pretty sweet!

FLICKR UPLOAD
Uploads an image to your Flickr account and inserts an inline picture into your post.

DIGG THIS
Automatically adds a DiggThis badge to your blog post after you publish it from Writer.

TWITTER NOTIFY
Automatically generates a TinyURL and sends a Tweet about your blog post after you publish it from Writer.

Speaking of images! (Like that one above) Your image manipulation options have gone through the roof!

Check out our ability to do text wrapping! Though a major pet peeve of mine is when I click “next” to an image after selecting Left, it keeps bringing me to the top! (hint hint) It’d really be nice for it to select the area next to the text so I can start typing there!

With the introduction of Center, it guarantees our place with the position of the text after an image.  It’d be nice to have some kind of universal everything I post should default to ‘x’ though I’ve yet to find these defaults/options to manage.

Check out those borders baby! Wow that is a lot of options to choose from and I’m not complaining!

Infact, I opt’d to give “reflection” a try here, looks pretty sweet!

But nothing can really compete with… a Watermark embedded into your image?!

You can manipulate the text, the font type and size, and especially the position.  Seriously, Wow, this is cool!

Let me say this again.  This is really cool!

Oh, did I mention how fricking cool TILT is?!

Some of the new Photo Album and other settings will be pretty sweet, but managing text, writing it, manipulating images and getting content into some usable fashion are my major deals with this as are a majority of folks I know who use LiveWriter.  Everything else is just CAKE!   I suggest you go out there and download this RC now! Get it out there, because is this pretty sweet, and will continue to be sweet!

Windows Live Writer 2009 (Release Candidate)
Version 14.0.8050.1202

Go, get your Live on!

Every so often I get asked by people for help improving their skills, making them more marketable as well as ways to get access to training and resources.

And more often than not, I lead them in directions with the huge cost of $0.00 associated with it.    Whether you’re looking for Certification, access to Labs, E-Books, or Training information.

I’m a BIG fan of Free!

So, can you afford freE-Learning?

Thanks to our friends at Microsoft, here is another resource available to you!

By visiting this lovely site, it will display all of the available courses being offered by Microsoft Learning for Free!

What relevant topics are available on there at the moment:

1. SQL 2008
2. Application Virtualization
3. Terminal Services in Server 2008
4. Virtual Machine Manager for 2008
5. Hyper-V
6. ASP.NET
7. .NET Framework
8. Windows Security
9. Microsoft Security Guidance I-IV

…And more!

Seriously, there is a motherload of information here, so much training to wrap your teeth into!

If you saw my previous post about the voucher to get the Hyper-V training for free, this training is very complimentary to that and more! (Especially since that voucher seems to be faulty at the moment)

So get out there, get yourself something Free for this season.  It’s your education, do something about it!

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!

To make it easier to find out what tests are currently available in general and in Beta’s, I’m creating this “link” more or less, which I’ll keep current as I can. – All dates update 04/15/09

71-680: TS: Windows 7, Configuring. May 5, 2009– May 18, 2009 (WIN7J)

NS1-501: NetApp Certified Implementation Engineer:SAN – October 23, 2008 – December 31, 2008 (No Code needed)

70-113: TS: Windows® Server 2008 Active Directory, Configuring (Pilot) – July 31, 2008– December 31, 2008 (Code H640) (Qualifies you for 3 free vouchers after exam release)

71-505: TS: Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5, Windows Forms Application Development – November 25, 2008 – December 15, 2008 (Code: X356Y)

71-563: Pro: Design & Dev Windows Apps Using MS.NET Framework 3.5 – October 13, 2008 – December 11, 2008 (Code: DW897)

71-564: Pro: Designing and Developing ASP.NET Applications Using the Microsoft® .NET Framework 3.5 – November 6, 2008 – December 1, 2008 (Code: RSC43)

71-565: Pro: Designing and Developing Enterprise Applications Using the Microsoft® .NET Framework 3.5 – November 10, 2008 – December 3, 2008 (Code: 999TR)

71-403: TS: Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008, Configuring – September 30, 2008 – December 15, 2008 (Code: VMM08) (Code may be expired, keep trying it)

70-656 Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack, Configuring – First 500 Free (Code: MDOP)

71-433: TS: Microsoft SQL 2008, Database Development – September 22, 2008 – October 10, 2008 (Code: F589G)

NS1-060: NetApp Accredited Support Engineer – September 12, 2008 – November 7, 2008 (No Code needed)

NS1-050: NetApp Installation Accredited Professional – August 1, 2008 – September 12 2008 (No Code needed) – Extended to September 12th!

71-450: PRO: Microsoft SQL Server 2008, Designing, Optimizing, and Maintaining a Database Administrative Solution – August 18, 2008– September 16, 2008 (Code: 239F4)

71-451: PRO: Microsoft SQL Server 2008, Designing and Optimizing Database Solutions – September 2, 2008 – September 30, 2008 (Code: 14F65)

71-653: Windows Small Business Server 2008, Configuring – August 22, 2008 – September 25, 2008 (Code: SBS8)

71-654 – TS: Windows Essential Business Server 2008, Configuring – July 22, 2008 – ??? Sep 25?  (Code EBS08)

71-452: Designing a Business Intelligence Infrastructure Using Microsoft SQL Server 2008 –August 13, 2008– September 10, 2008 (Code: 3568C)

71-660: TS: Windows® Internals – July 21, 2008 – August 5, 2008 (Code WINT)

All older exams will not be referenced