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For those keeping score, I passed my first Microsoft certification exam. I am now officially a Microsoft Certified Professional! After taking so long to to the first exam, I’m pretty pumped to take more. I used both UCertify and Transcender to prepare for the exam. In the end neither of them fully covered exactly what was on the exam. But I did find that the UCertify prep exams were a bit more helpful because the prep exams provided many more types of questions than did Transcender. I’m just glad to have it over with. I’m now ready to move on to more interesting exams.

On a side note, once certified MCPs are supposed to gain access to an official Microsoft MCP site. You provide you Windows Live ID, your newly acquired MCP ID, and an access code. I received all my MCP ID information a few days after passing the course. So I immediately attempted to log into the site. The process to logging in requires linking your Windows Live ID to your MCP ID. To the company which tried to centralize all login processes with Passport, I’m blown away by how complicated this has been.

I received a few different errors while attempting to log in. The final message I received told me to contact my regional MCP representative and linked me off to some sort of “contact us” page where I could find the rep’s contact information. I explained my problem with logging in and sent off the email. I received a response 2 days later asking for me to provide my “CURRENT” information as well as my “PREVIOUS” information as it existed in their database. I’m not joking, I was asked to send the info as it was in their database. I wrote back and told them that I have no idea how or what info they are storing, but I provided my “CURRENT” information. I also told the not-so-english-speaking rep that I have no idea what “PREVIOUS” information they might have stored, so I could not provide any more details than my “CURRENT” info.

Since then I’ve exchanged numerous other emails, all without resolution to my problem. At one point I was asked to log onto Passport.com and retrieve my “Unique ID”. Apparently my email address, first name, last name, address, and MCP ID have not been unique enough to locate my account information. Finally I was told that it would take 5-7 business days to have my problem fixed. Today is business day 7 since I last heard from Microsoft’s regional MCP representative. I don’t hold out much hope for a resolution today.

Through my career I haven’t seriously focused on getting any certifications. While I always find time to play with and monkey with new technologies I haven’t taken the time to get any official “stamps of approval”, specifically in Microsoft technologies. Not to mention, working as a full-time employee doesn’t give me much incentive to get certified. Once hired, companies seemed to forget how much official training you’ve had.

Once I started as a consultant I was told that certifications, regardless of what or how many, help to start the conversation with potential clients. Certs aren’t necessarily used to prove you understand everything about a particular topic, they are used to help categorize ability and fit within projects. So that I can understand and respect.

So, finally, after all these years I’ve scheduled up my first exam, 70-315 Building Web Applications with C# .Net. Now, no laughing at me. This test is quite old and barely applies anymore. There have been a few newer tests which supersede this one but I’m taking it for a moral victory. I actually began studying for this test 5 years ago. After 7 years of actual development experience with C# and web applications I’m pretty sure I have the skill set to pass. I just need to polish up on the official Microsoft answers.

So May 5th is the day that I hope I will finally pass my first certification exam. Wish me luck

For years I’ve bought bleeding edge tech devices. In 1998 I bought the first ever MP3 playing CD player, imported all the way from a back alley in China. I bought a 6 gig Archos MP3 player which held a charge for all of 2 hours in 1999. Hell, I even had an Apple Newton 130, bought off a BBS for $480, which I connected a modem to so I could send email from it in 1995.  I’m no stranger to the not-so-perfect technical solution.

Last month our standard DVD player stopped working. It would boot up but would not read a DVD. It would just sit with a “Loading” message flashing. I used the opportunity to upgrade to an upscaling DVD player. I’m not ready to drop any serious money on any next-gen DVD technology. I’m not convinced that it’s worth the money yet. I’ve heard good things about upscaling players, which take a normal DVD and “upscale” the video resolution to that of modern HDTVs.

I ordered up the Philips DVP5982 1080p Upscaling DVD Player  from Amazon for $65. The upscaling works well. It’s a nice player, simple and nice. The video quality of my existing DVDs looks awesome through the player.

But when I got it I noticed it had a USB port on the front. I can plug something into it.  Hmmm…

I read through the manual and discovered the player was aslo capable of playing Divx movies from a USB drive. In the past I’ve tried hundreds of methods to play Divx videos on my TV. I’ve connected my laptop to the TV, transcoded the video to VCD format, streamed them to my Wii, etc…None of them had worked even the slightest bit well. I was skeptical. And if I was skeptical, imagine what Courtney thought.

So I hopped on the internet, found some interesting Divx videos, threw them on my thumb drive, and plugged it in. In an awe inspiring moment the DVD player played the movie. It did more than play it too, it played it well! It just worked! I couldn’t believe my eyes. I had finally found a technology that worked without some cumbersome, poorly implemented, feature set. Thank you Philips.

Last night we sat down to watch a show I had downloaded. Court looked at me and said, “This isn’t going to stop half way through is it?” She knows me too well. I assured her that it wouldn’t…Well, I assured her that I hoped it wouldn’t. To my delight, it played all the way through.

Chalk up a win for me. I’ve found a diamond in the rough. It took me 15 years, but I finally found one.

The revolution has begun. I can’t say I’ve been an avid user of Myspace, but I’ve had an account since ‘03. I never really found the chic factor of it. Most people who wanted to find me could find me right here (or here, here, or here). One thing I am completely fed up with, though, is the friend spam from Myspace. That’s why I’m choosing to participate on the 30th.

I’m not giving up on social networking, far from it. But I think Facebook and LinkedIn have succeeded where Myspace failed. Both Facebook and LinkedIn provide me value, whereas I wasn’t able to get much out of Myspace. LinkedIn centralizes my professional contacts and helps me organize by resume information. Facebook provides a clean and contemporary interface, serving up fun little games and time wasters that I can share with friends.

I’ve struggled over the years to find a good, reliable solution for maintaining secure backups of my files. As my much of my real-world possessions become digital versions of themselves I’ve grown increasingly paranoid about losing them.

I’ve been averaging about 1 lost hard drive per year for the last 4 years. When a begins hard drive to fail I typically have to scramble to clear space somewhere else, or start digging through my archives in hopes that I actually did back up everything to one of the other corners of another hard drive. I’ve tried building dedicated server machines, I’ve tried a multiple hard drive configuration, but it is all too complicated.

Running parallel to all of this has been my growing concern for my carbon footprint. Sure, it sounds wacky. Why should I be concerned? I’m just some guy in MN. But I figure becoming more green isn’t a choice, but a lifestyle change. If we don’t start to become aware of our ecological impact now then we won’t be able to solve the problem later. We recently downsized from the truck to the Mazda, all new light bulbs are compact fluorescent (most that are needing to be replaced were already halogens). This article got me thinking about the waste of power I was spending keeping so many machines on during the day.

So to cut out one whole computer from the Broken Complex I decided to outsource my backup. I chose to use Mozy, for mostly the unlimited backup space and zero transfer charges. For 5 bucks a month I can backup any data on my machine. Mozy runs in the background constantly checking for new files. Once a night any new files are uploaded to Mozy. So far I’ve been quite satisfied with the service. Mozy makes it clear that they are not an offsite hard drive facility, Mozy is a backup solution, that’s it. It doesn’t work well as a file dumping grounds. It’s job is to simply ensure that the files selected on the local machine are successfully backed up to Mozy’s servers. There are other services that tackle both backup and remote storage, but they were cost prohibited to the amount I need to store.

The initial backup of 80 gigs of pictures and music took 6 weeks due to Comcast’s upload limit of 384kbps. It  finally completed the other day and we reclaimed a speedy network connection again. After the upload completed I was able to shut off a computer that had been running for 3 years. The computer room has become quite quiet.

I attended the Minnesota Developers Conference 2007 yesterday, a nerdfest for .Net developers. All in all it was awesome. I’ve attended very few conferences in my life. It’s nice to get out and mingle with nerds. I could talk ad nauseum about some things. It was also a great way to come up to speed fast with the new stuff coming in .Net 3.5.

I was most surprised, though, by the amount of old and new friends I ran into at the conference. I bumped into at least one person from just about every job I’ve worked since 1998. It was awesome. I forgot what a large network of cool people I have. It made my day.

I finally solved my problem with my MDA cellphone, I bought a new phone. While bidding for phones on E-bay is a great way to pass the day, I wasn’t winning any auctions and I really needed to get back into the world of communication. I picked up a cheap Samsung Stripe. There’s nothing fancy about the phone, which is the best part. It actually works. For the last 4 years I’ve always had some sort of gizmo phone, whether it be the oddball Nokia rotary dial-esque phone or my MDA, calling has always been secondary to surfing the web. I’ve struggled to actually have a usable phone. I can’t even begin to tell you how many times I’ve accidentally called someone, hung up on someone, or answered a call from my pocket. I am tickled pink to have a device that solves all these problems. The phone makes phone calls. It’s got good reception, great speaker volume, and is quick to find numbers. The clam-shell keeps me from the accidental dialing and answering.

The only downside is that I’ve lost all my numbers. The MDA is D.O.A. It’s sort of fun, though, to answer the phone without knowing who is on the other end. It’s always a surprise to find out who’s calling again.

It all started when I fell madly in love with your Google Apps for Domains. My mail has never been so organized and spam-free! When I discovered the ability to check my mail on my mobile I was ecstatic.

Next, I started using Reader to manage all my RSS subscriptions. You have made sense and organization out of a closet full of wires and dirty clothes! I love you Google Reader, I really do.

But today you have truly topped yourself. I can now view my GCal through my mobile. Thank you Google, thank you so much. No longer must I be tied to stupid Outlook to manage schedule.

I can carry my online life where ever I go. You have centralized all my data. You have made sense out of the nonsensical.

From the beginning I have been obsessed with putting my life online. I believe though, that I have found the Mecca for uber-life-connectivity: Twitter. I didn’t get Twitter for a long time. I tried it a few months ago and couldn’t figure out why I would want to use it. After the Vegas trip, though, I realized that Twitter allows me to write a “small blog” from anywhere using my cellphone. That means where ever I am, and whatever I’m doing, can be documented.

To top Twitter though is Jaiku , an aggregator of all my various online-going-ons. It will organize my online “stuff” by date, truly tracking everything I do.

So if you’re twittering, you can find me at http://www.twitter.com/brokenindu . For everything, all at once, and overflowing, check out my Jaiku feed at: http://breakdown.jaiku.com/.

I’m in an organizing mood. When I get like this I typically shift whatever I’m trying to organize around for awhile until I get bored. Take for instance my past attempts at alphabetizing our CD collection. I typically get through M before I just give up and move on to something else.

Today 2 things got my goat today:

1. Categorizing my blog posts – I have over 500 posts on CJ dating back to 1999. The Wordpress software makes it a sinch to assign categories to each blog post. Unfortunately, I have to go through each post and select the appropriate categories. You’ll notice there’s one category named “Imported” that contains an over abundant amount of posts. Its the default category, so any posts not properly organized exists there for the time being. Over time the number diminishes as I find time to walk through each post. I try to do at least 10 posts a day.

2. Organizing my digital files – I have 4 hard drives at home that are full. The problem is, I don’t know what their full with. I had a tendency to make a backup of my “Documents” folder, which may be gigs in size, because I fear losing my most important documents. I’ve done it so frequently though, that now I can’t find anything. Is it in my 20040112 back up or my 20040620 backup? I plan on breaking down my documents into logical types instead of date based. All of this, of course, is backed up as frequently as possible. I’ve already learned that lesson the hard way.

I once read an article regarding self-organizing manila file folders. It’s basically a way for your most important or often used folders to float to the top of the pile. At work I have a wire stand that I keep all my manila project folders in. As I work/reference the folders I always return them to the front of the stand. That way my most used folders are always in front. This also forces the lesser referenced folders to the back. When the stand gets full I remove the files from the back, since they aren’t referenced anymore, and archive them (either in a drawer or in the trash). It’s a simple but effective technique that I couldn’t live without.