Microsoft Certification - Not Meant To Be

I had taken two Microsoft courses to learn about their Azure cloud platform. These courses were to deign and implement a data solution. They were offered on the other side of town. I talked my boss into having the company pay for a local hotel to stay in.

The courses were taught by people who seemed to know the Microsoft cloud well. The first class was implementing a data solution. They had us doing very specific exercises with the actual cloud. It was hard to get a frame of reference for what exactly that was teaching us.

The design course was second. It felt like it should have been taken first. Design and then implement, right? The study material for the design class was simpler and lesser in volume. I studied it. But there was not much to study.

Microsoft provided me vouchers to take the implementation and design certification exams. I took one at the local community college. And I took the other at a local testing site. I failed both of them. You need 70% to pass both tests. I got a 66% and 67% respectively for the implementation and design tests.

Normally I have the company purchase some exam prep books before I sit for an exam. No such books seem to exist for these exams. There are people who will sell you practice questions, including the company recommended by Microsoft. That does not seem like it would help much.

I guess I could buckle down and improve my knowledge by 10%, and thereby squeak past the tests to get the certification. But my heart is just not into it. I am not really that interested into becoming a Data Engineer. At least not for the Microsoft cloud platform. I think I will choose another specialty in the Microsoft universe, and get a slam dunk passing grade on those exams.

Squirrel Near Death

My buddy was coming over my house to meet for lunch. I decided to move Little Kat's car out of the way, in case I needed to drive my car to lunch. There was a squirrel on the driveway. I knew something was wrong. The flies were landing on it. I knew it was alive, because I saw the squirrel's eye blink. But I suspected it was near death.

The squirrel did not move as I drove the car by it. I gathered the family together and told them to be on the lookout. I did not want them running over the squirrel. I planned to collect the body after the squirrel died. Before my friend arrived, the squirrel hobbled over to the side of the driveway. It was sad. I hope the squirrel lived a long life.

I had recently wrapped up another dead squirrel that was in front of our house. I initially thought maybe it died of the cold. However the body was not stiff. So it must have just died that day. I don't recall having to do something like this before for a squirrel. Maybe for a frozen mouse. But not for a squirrel.

Microsoft Certification

Microsoft offered free training to employees in my company. The courses we related to Azure, their cloud computing offering. I recently started getting vouchers to take the Microsoft certification exams for free too.

So I signed up for the first exam. It was the one for Azure basics. I chose a testing center relatively close to my house. I had been to that testing center before. They made me read this long set of rules first. I asked the receptionist some questions about who my TA would be.

Then I stored all my belongings in a locker. The receptionist made me turn out my pockets before entering the test room. Even though it was early (8:00 am), there were a couple people in there already taking other tests.

The test started out really hard. The questions were confusing. But hey, I had to keep my cool. Later I saw some questions that made more sense. Since the exam was hard, I used some tactics to maximize my chances of passing.

In the end, I barely passed. Now I am worried and I have a much hard exam test on Monday. I had planned to be out of the office this morning since I was testing. But they needed me at work. Since the test was finished quick, I decided to take the afternoon off instead to study up for the next test.

Mice Invasion

Momoko and I took a vacation and went to her dad's house. He told us that he caught 5 mice in his house since the last time I was there. Whoa. He needed extra mouse traps. So we picked some up from Walmart.

Momoko decided to clean out the condiments drawer in his kitchen. She found that the mice had already eaten the sauces in all the packets. Had to clean out that drawer and leave a trap in there. Chinese food crispy noodles seemed like a good bait.

Apparently some mice were just running around on the kitchen counter. So we had traps set up there. Caught a few little mice. They were running around during the daytime hours!