Was quite nervous to begin with. Not because I was just sitting for an exam, but because of the cost of the exam.

So there I was, telling myself how many questions I need to get right, a nonsensical thought but it’s because of all the years, bowling competitively, telling myself to achieve a target I set.

10% successful so far.

Based on the sample exam engine that I’ve been practicing at home, I needed 70% to pass an 80 questions MCQ paper, that would mean I’ll need at least 56 questions correct to pass. There’s two types of MCQ questions, a single answer question or multiple answers question (meaning more than 1 correct answers). A question may have more than 4 choices, some even 8 choices, and it doesn’t specify how many answers are correct. A full point for getting all right, and half for incomplete answers.

So again, I entered my credentials and begin the exam ‘tutorial’ – how to use the exam program, etc. Then I saw something rather odd.

“To pass this examination requires at least 55%”

Okay, I was delighted, even more when it mentioned that it will specify how many answers are correct for the multiple answers questions. There was a downside though – there wasn’t any partial marks for incomplete answers.

55%, that’s 44 questions I need to score.

Timer started counting down when I press ‘Begin exam’. 3 hours and counting.

By the time I finish answering the questions, I did a rough estimation of the possible score I’ll get.

A breakdown of confident/50-50/not-sure answers.

25% – 100% absolutely correct.

25% – 50-50

50% – lets hope for the best shall we?

I even included error co-efficiency for total breakdown of the correct answers into the calculation.

100% for confident answers.

80% for 50-50.

And the remaining, 5-10% should be correct.

So that in the end would get me at around 50% for the total score. 5% short. I guess that extra 5% would have to be put under the ‘lucky answers’ category, if there were one.

Ran through my answers a few times and with 15 minutes remaining, I couldn’t wait anymore. It was killing me that the ‘End Exam’ button was just there, waiting to be pressed.

53%

Head to Monitor Distance Awareness.

Nearly every computer has a webcam installed, especially on the newer laptops around now.. Most of them have a built-in webcam. What this program does is use the webcam to estimate how far are you from your monitor, and alert you whenever you’re too close to the monitor.

Sometimes you’re too caught up with what you’re doing, you don’t realise you’re getting closer and closer to the monitor.. Which unfortunately I do a lot. ><

The rough idea is to measure the size of the subject in the ‘safe distance’ and ‘close distance’ and use both sizes to give the computer an estimation of how far you are from the laptop. (i feel i’m repeating myself..) As long as you’re within the ‘recommended’ distance, the computer won’t pop a message, basically tell you to back off.

Or make the computer blank off the screen or put the monitor into standby until you press a ‘resume’ key.

Or display some lolcat. Or ugly fat chicks. That would keep you away from your screen for a while.

You get the basic idea kan?

Rough Ideaz I Haz. Sumwan meak dis progrum for mi, kthxbai.

So lets start with my 9 to 5 ‘job’. I’m currently in a certification course to be certified as a SAP ABAP developer. I’m taking it in HCL-Axon at TPM, near my old uni. Steph said that company is one of the best companies in Malaysia for SAP, while my dad stunned after I told him I was taking a SAP course in Axon. More like astonished actually, but me being as blur as possible wasn’t too sure what the ‘astonishment’ was about. Haha.

Those who are wondering, I’m still unemployed. I’m taking this course under the MDEC Job Camp initiative by the government (it’s their way to help fresh grads and unemployed IT peeps to be more desirable to IT companies by providing free IT courses).  The course itself costs RM30,000, while the exam fees is RM2,000. Of course I’m not paying RM30,000, plus I don’t have that much either (else I would have bigger lenses by now!!), but I have to pay for the exam fees. I can not take the exams if I want to, but I think the RM2,000 is worth an investment.

If I do get certified, I’m most likely going to work in a medium-large sized MNC (maybe?). I’m not being ‘chun’ or a show off, but SAP is a very expensive platform for small companies to have it. Usually SAP is deployed in the oiling, mining, aeronautical industry, so that’s why I’m expecting to be somewhere around there, again, if I get it.

Oh, haven’t explained what’s SAP about. SAP is a business solution for big companies to handle nearly everything in their company. For example: human resource, finance, marketing, information management, etc. It’s basically a skeleton framework for business to run. For it to work for different industries, all you need to do is to install the right modules into SAP and it be available for developers/programmers to build programs for the clients. There are modules specifically for mining, oiling, transportation, business warehousing, and all kinds of industry which I never heard of as well. Cool stuff.

Talking about development in SAP.. It’s freaking simplified! All those things I learnt on Microsoft .net and those kononnya state-of-the-art programming languages.. Suddenly, SAP ABAP programming interests me even more. Table/Data adapter and all those codes you used just to retrieve a set of data from the database, which could be 20 lines worth, is only 4 lines in SAP ABAP. Crazy and super ‘cheating’.

Wonder why I never find out about SAP earlier. Bleh.

I do hate that I can’t simply double click in SAP, even highlighting text, because it will trigger SAP to search/display the details of the text I clicked.. Sheesh!

The SAP server that I connect to is hosted remotely somewhere I don’t know. So the training is HIGHLY dependent on the Internet, if it’s down/slow like what we’re having right now with Streamyx, I can’t do anything at all. Like yesterday, no internet = no exercise.

The training is 5 weeks long, 9AM-5PM everyday. Though I start ‘work’ a little earlier because I have to send my sisters to their uni everyday by 8.30AM. It’s a freaking long journey from home to Sunway to Bukit Jalil. Not to mention about the tolls, RM6 one way. I even just serviced my car (5,000KM maintainance), where the previous service was just 1.5 months before that. Bleh. But whole family is against me not taking them to uni. I still don’t understand why my sisters cannot take the LRT to their uni, LIKE how I did last time. WHY?

Sometimes I feel my sister is treating me more as a driver than what I’m supposed to be. Sigh.

Summore I’m sort of ‘training’ to be in a 9-5 job. What happens when I get a real job after that? Sigh.

Okay. Time to sleep. Tomorrow a long day with BarCamp and Nuffnang-Maxis Broadband Music Bash party. And I’m going to watch/shoot Formula 1 the following day. Ciaos!

But somehow, getting a desk job scares me. Maybe that’s why I’m still bumming around, like what Grace and I are happily doing. Though I do have the urge to fill my bank account and besides having the weight above me, I also want to be able to finance my own assets..

Freelancing as a photographer is fun at the moment, but not necessarily good. So I decided to get another source of income.I may very well step into a much more serious job soon, but still working at the comforts of home.  Double the goodiness, if there’s such word.

My skill set is partly limited but still expanding, at a slow rate. WordPress, web hosting, programming (this is getting rustier by the day) and photography (editing skills getting better by the day. lol). The new job I’m hoping to get involves a new CMS (content management system) that I haven’t used before, Joomla.

Though many of you would be thinking “What? WordPress? Blogging is not a skill set!”. Well I’m not talking about blogging, but merely the platform itself. I’m well versed with setting up and maintaining the site. I’d very much love to move into plugin programming and themes development but lack of graphical skills will slow down progress. I’m better at innovating than inventing. Heh.

Hopefully I can put Joomla under my belt as well. Maybe I’ll explore CakePHP as well. Hahaha..

Was showing off a site that I built not too long ago to a friend. A comment was thrown back which snapped me out of my dreamy world of carefree thinking to back to the college years.

I expected better from you.

I guess because I’ve established and maintained a good track record in college, my friends look up to me in a way I never thought it would happen. Usually I’m a pain in the ass for most people, anal as most say. Perfectionist. lol.

Need to keep up the standards!

So, I’m going to work on those stuff I overlooked and scrub them harder. Heh. Now where’s my metal brush…

By the way, anyone want’s blog hosting?

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