I took the Mac OS X Support Essentials v10.5 exam yesterday at Parkland’s Prometric testing center. After waiting an hour and a half for them to get the testing workstation set up, I cranked through the 90 questions in 40 minutes. The test was pretty fair, but a couple of questions were ambiguous and one I SWEAR had two correct answers. I’m somewhat embarrassed that I missed 8, but you only need 73% to pass, so my 91% was more than enough. I’m still trying to get the details from Apple, but its safe to say that I’m now an Apple Certified Support Professional
Archive for February, 2008
Certifiable
Wednesday, February 27th, 2008Scrabble babble
Monday, February 25th, 2008Scott convinced me to go to a Scrabble tournament in Indianapolis on Sunday, so we got up at 5:00AM to make it over in time for the first game. I was supposed to be in the bottom division, since my NSA rating before the tournament was a lowly at a lowly 899. However, a few people from upper divisions couldn’t make it, so the divisions were rearranged. I ended up the bottom seed in the next division up.
My first game was against the top player in my division. I opened the game with FORMATS for 82pts., but she quickly countered with PARAfFIN. Her next play was OUTLOADS (which was a phoney, but I didn’t challenge) and I then thought I was sunk. My luck changed and I went on a roll and ended up also playing DICKENS, VIBRATEs, and ERINGOES (to a triple to end the game). Final score 599-343. I ended up winning a couple more pretty handily, then lost a painful game right after lunch. I won the next three and ended up 6-1 (+518).
The worst part of the tournament for me was that I was the low seed, so my expected wins were only 2.8. Winning 6 gave me an excess of 3.2. Since I’m still in my first 50 games, my multiplier is 30, so my rating should increase by 96pts. But wait…. since I exceeded the acceptable threshold of 5pts./game, I’m subject to an acceleration provision. This rule says that if you increase by more than 5pts./game in any tournament, any gain over that threshold is doubled.
(6-2.8)*30=96
(96-35)*2+35= 157
First prize was $160, and I also won an auxiliary $10 prize for having the high game in my division. So, I walked away with almost as many ratings points as dollars and a rekindled interest in Scrabble tournaments.
Fun in the snow
Saturday, February 2nd, 2008We got a few inches of snow overnight Thursday-Friday and I was sitting around bored on Saturday, so I went out and had some fun. After seeing pictures of my snow wall and igloo from last year, my sister Leah gave me a snow brick maker for Christmas. After I rolled up a big snow ball for the base, I started stacking up snow bricks into a snow chimney.
Once it got too tall for me to reach the top, I had to climb on the snow ball and eventually I knocked it off balance and the whole thing came tumbling down a few minutes later.
