Well, as much as I would love to stay with my current company, sometimes things just don't always line up the way we hope.  Guess I'll be reading all those emails from recruiters and auto-listings from Dice and CareerBuilder now. *sigh*

Everytime someone mentions certification, I get all amped up to get certified again.  I got my MCSD (Microsoft Solution Developer ... for Visual Studio 6.0) back in 1999, and while it didn't give me superpowers, it was certainly nice to have that little graphic on my resume.  That certification has long since expired, and with each new version of Visual Studio, I am constantly reminded of just how "out of date" I am.  

This morning, I was asked if I knew my MCP ID, and it reminded me that I have been meaning to look into certification again, now that my company has a training budget reimbursement program.  It's always a little more incentive to complete when someone else is picking up the tab.  Weird how that works. lol

Well, so I went out to the MCP site and started poking around the tests, requirements, etc and found the process is still very much the way it was 10 years ago; only now things are more expensive.  And, as usual, Microsoft doesn't even offer training materials for all of the tests. Specifically, the Windows Communication Foundation (70-513) MCTS test.  No e-books, no self-paced training kits, just a 3 day course that costs far too much and yields far too little information. Similarly, the final exam to get the MCPD certification, is the test: PRO: Designing and Developing Web Applications (70-519); which also has no training materials other than a FIVE day training course.

Now for the big dilema: Do I get the self-paced training books or the interaction practice tests?  In the past, I've used the books along with the practice tests with decent success.  The books are a nice precursor and the practice exams (at least the Transcender exams) provided a more "real life" test, and gave high detailed results, along with information relating to each and every question - if it's wrong, if it's right, why it's wrong or right.  I don't have a lot of spare time on my hands, so whichever I get will be a long and random process; it could take, perhaps even a year for me to get the certifications (I hope not, but I've known people who haven that long).  Also, books cost half of what the practice tests cost; although I expect (hope) the practice tests are more thorough and a better overall preparation.

Now, granted, I am looking at certification materials for VS 2010, not 2008, so it's a bit newer and it could take some time to get them released, but still, there's no mention of when the new testing materials might be released.

However, here's why I don't like looking into certification.  Here's a practice test question:

<asp:EntityDataSource ID="dataSource" runat="server" 
ConnectionString="name=EntityConnection" 
DefaultContainerName="AccountingEntities" EnableFlattening="False" 
EntitySetName="Invoices" 
Select="it.[InvoiceNumber], it.[Amount]"> 
</asp:EntityDataSource> .

I don't know of a single programmer who uses scripted datasource objects in their web forms, yet all the documentation and courses teach that method.  It reminds me that being an MCP only means that I've learned how to take the tests; but has no bearing in the real world.  So, each time I think about getting certified, I end up talking myself out of it.  However, I know the market value for certified people and employers do like abbreviations after your name...

Guess I'll buy a book and see how it goes; then re-evaluate the situation.

Someone recently asked me what the point of this blog is.  That's a fair question.  There are hundreds of other tech blogs - most far more technical than this one.  The reason I started this is because every once in a while, I run across something that just strikes my fancy in such a way that I would love to share it.  It could be something I did which I consider to be excellent, it could be something "Dilbert-ish", or it could be something I read that I find share-worthy.

When I post little code snippets, they're one of two things: awesome or entertaining.  Like that little blurb of HTML in the last post.  I mean seriously, p - b - br - /b /p  no text, no labels, no placeholder, no names, no... anything.  That's just hilarious to me.  Maybe I'm too sarcastic to be a programmer? 

Every programmer who has ever been around the block has run into situations where they find themself in a situation which could drive you crazy.  If you don't find a way to deal with it, you will lose it and bad things happen. This blog is an outlet of sorts for me.  

Recently I've been talking about working with some older code.  I don't have a problem with that, but I'd be lying through my teeth if I didn't look at this stuff and remember all the times I spent writing this exact same type of stuff.  Because I've written thousands of lines of the same code, I feel justified is pointing it out in a mocking manner - because I'd be laughing at my own code if I ran across that too. Think about it: How many hours (over the years) have web developers wasted going back through their HTML source to capitalize their tags because that was the standard?  An awful lot.  Now, lowercase is the standard, so when VSIDE starts complaining about XHTML 4.0 compliancy, I just have to laugh.

I laugh because I find it entertaining just how little we programmers stick to our guns.  I'm quite sure that when CAPITALIZATION was the standard, those standard-mongers would go to war over a lowercase anchor tag.  When M$ said "oops, that looks terrible... um... the new standard is lowercase." those same people were the first to write RegEx scripts to parse through all that html and replace A with a.  If the next standard is UpAnDdOwN, I'm sure we'll have hundreds of RegEx's that do just that as well.

As much as I'd love to just do what I know, do what I did best, I can't. No full-time programmer can.  If we did, we'd be out of a job.  We have to evolve, adapt and overcome our own standards to adhere to what the marketplace wants.  I, personally, despise the idea of ending all lines with a semicolon. I hated it in Turbo Pascal, and I hate it in C# - but the difference is, now I get paid to put those semicolons in; and that makes all the difference.  I would prefer not to, but what I want and what the market wants don't always align.  I understand that - and I think any programmer that's been around longer than a few years understands that.  Especially as consultants, we are (or should be) the code-generating equivalent of Mystique.  We conform to whereever we are and however it's done there.  It doesn't mean we aren't still people with our own brand of humor, sarcasm, faith or lifestyle; it just means that the longer we're in this business, the more we become that old man in the bar who's been everywhere, behind the scenes, seen the show and saw the strings.  We should be happy to be that person because that means we've had a nice long run - and hopefully still running.

Visual Studio IDE highlights e.v.e.r.y.t.h.i.n.g. in the source code when you open it up.

hahaha

Also, what's this do:

<p><B><br>
    </b></p>

*snicker*

This is more entertaining than anything else.  Over this past weekend, I slept in late, woke up, got coffee went to check my email and before my 2nd cup of coffee I was formatting the hard drive on my old desktop and installing Win2k3 server.  At the end of the day, I had a new Active Directory server also running IIS 6 with multiple websites.  I guess it's also a file server of sorts, since I have no use for the other 80gb drive in that box.  heh  It's important to note that my plan for the day was laundry and video games; neither of which require building a new domain controller.

As I'm building the blog site up, adding widgets, extensions, etc, I'm becoming more and more familiar with how things work.  I like this. I'm able to offer some small guidance in the discussion forums; which is always nice.  Most recently, I tried to add the Flash Tag Cloud widget.  I should say I did because it is there.  I said tried because initially I couldn't get it to work at all.  Then I went through the BE-supplied Breaking Changes list and realized I had forgotten to make the changes to the widget's source code.  So, finally, when I added the widget, it appeared.  However, there were no tags floating around. I edited the settings on the widget several times, but no avail. Nothing was working.  Then, after about 20 mins of trying different themes, settings, double-checking source code, it occurred to me.  Tag clouds often don't list every-single-tag-ever-used; commonly it's the most oft-used tags.  So, I created several new posts, duplicating existing tags and voila! My tag cloud was there, populated, spinning and all awesome-like.

So, just a note to any other wpCumulus-based-BE-widget users... make sure you have plenty of posts/tags for your widget to read, otherwise you might be staring at a blank white box. heh Now, I just gotta come up with some more legit posts to get that widget working. 

Here you will find a random collection of tech-related thoughts, complaints, gripes, venting, raves, and sometimes some bragging rights all brought to you by me.