Category: Exams
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Certification Exams… At Home Again.
· I should go back and see just how many posts I have written about certifications… if I can count that high. It has long been a topic that I have been passionate about, and that has not changed. When I looked at my Microsoft Learning Transcript the other day I was surprised to see…
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The Exam Room: Welcome Home!
I have, over the years, written many articles about certification exams, and about the exam process. Some of what I was about the actual exam experience… including Time Tips for Certification Exams. So many of my exam experiences involved driving to a testing centre. Fortunately the last few exams that I have taken – and…
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Juju Revisited
It is hard to believe that thirteen years ago I sat down at the Java U café at the corner of Queen Mary Rd. and Circle Rd. in Montreal and wrote an article about superstitions. It was called Don’t Mess with Juju! and it was one of the most popular articles that I wrote that…
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Certification Exams: Is there a value to failing?
Although it is not something I am proud of, I have failed a number (the exact number is quite secret!) of certification exams. I am not proud of this fact, but the reality is I have taken a number of exams that I have been unprepared for, and that is a sure-fire way to come…
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Does Microsoft Learning listen?
I often tell people who are worried about taking Microsoft exams for fear of failing that I have failed more exams than most people have ever taken – to date over twenty failures, including one miserable exam that I only passed on my fourth attempt. Don’t worry, I do pass more than I fail. Something…
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Certification Planning
I maintain a spreadsheet of every certification exam I take – pass or fail. Excluding the title line it currently consists of seventy (70) rows, dating back to my first failed exam in December of 2001. I don’t remember when I started maintaining it, but it goes back a while, and consists of the following…
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Skills Measured: Improving your chances of passing certification exams
I have a friend who has been using Hyper-V since it was released with Windows Server 2008. I know that because at the time I did some consulting for his company, and was given a tour of his environment. That is why I was a bit surprised to hear that he recently failed his certification…
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MCITP: Server Boot Camp, Virginia Beach
It was REALLY last minute… on Friday I got a mass e-mail from a training provider scrambling to replace a trainer who had cancelled at the last minute. By some miracle of scheduling I was available; after a few hours of back and forth e-mails I booked my flight for Sunday to be at the…
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Certifications Alone Do Not Make the Pro
An interesting post appeared in a newsgroup that I monitor today. A desktop support technician in the United Kingdom lamented a colleague who had attended a two week MCSE boot camp and indeed earned that certification. Unfortunately he later encountered a number of simple issues that he could not resolve, including one with regard to…
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Choose Your First Certification Exam Wisely
As I peruse the articles that I have written over the past ten years I occasionally come across one that is interesting or relevant today. I wrote this article when I was working with CertGuard, and it was published in November, 2006. If you are an IT Pro starting down the path to certifications, this…
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Time Tips for Certification Exams
As I peruse the tome of articles that I wrote over the past ten years that were never published on this site, I am finding some articles that are timeless, including this one originally written for CertGuard, on Exam Time Management. -M <May, 2007>It is a common misconception that information such as the number of…
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Do you have your VirtCerts?
Ok I made the term VirtCert up, and frankly I am reasonably hopeful that it doesn’t catch on. However I know the certifications are, and to help you along, Microsoft is giving you some really huge incentives! As you know from reading this blog there are three Microsoft certifications around virtualization: MCTS: Windows Server 2008,…
The World According to Mitch 