For the very first time in this blog’s history I have managed to miss out an entire month of blogging. Sadly there were no updates from me (unless you were checking out Twitter) for the month of April. I blame this on my new job, which can be knackering – especially when you’ve been deskbound for the entirety of your preceding career and you’re a little bit clinically obese (I’m sorting that out, slowly, honest!)

I also blame it on not being arsed.

Anyway, it’s a brand new month and I plan to do something that has never been done on this site before – update once a day for an entire month to make up for the lack of updates. It’s going to be tough, but I’m sure we’ll get there. Maybe.

I did it, I bloody did it! I passed 70-272 on the second attempt. I am now officially a Microsoft Certified Desktop Support Techician. Unfortunately I can’t go into specifics about the questions that were presented to me (for obvious reasons), what I can tell you though is the live exam’s questions were a lot easier than the questions the Microsoft Readiness Suite coughed up.

The funny part about the day was with the exception of the actual exam, everything seemed to be against me. I arrived at the Prometric Test centre 20 minutes early to be told that there had been problems registering my re-sit voucher. The lady there had even tried registering a new exam voucher she had spare, but this made no difference. In the end, I had lunch in the exam room while everything got straightened out. I was the only one doing an exam that afternoon.

The next thing to go wrong was the printer, it just didn’t want to print out my results. Fortunately for me, just a good ol’ fashioned power cycle did the trick.

Do you know what the best part about passing this exam was? Aside from improved job opportunities, a new qualification? Guilt-free gaming Yup, Thursday night was the first time since October in which I have been able to play a video game without the thought of “I really should be studying” eating away at the back of my mind. That first game of Minecraft was pure bliss!

Balls to New Years Resolutions, I never keep them. Instead, I’m going to have one for this month. I’m going to try and keep this blog updated every few days, obviously if I don’t have anything to say I won’t blog anything.

I’m resitting my 70-272 exam this Thursday, I’m sure that will cause either a YAY! or FFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU!!!!! entry either way!

Hi, my name is Peter and I’m an addict.

I’m currently on Annual Leave and I’ve managed to well and truly relapse on my addition to Minecraft. Yup, I’m wasting away hours and hours at a time when I could probably be doing something more productive like studying for my exam that’s in a week’s time. Hold on, I’m getting Deja Vu here; I had an exam some 2-3 weeks ago, I failed it, while hooked on Minecraft… GOD DAMMIT! IT’S HAPPENING AGAIN!

Fortunately I should be okay this time, I’m not forfeiting study in the name of a video game, whether I fail again though is a different question. The exam should be a piece of piss, but it is difficult in places because questions for features that are now obsolete in Windows XP (thanks to SP3) are still going to be present and I’m going to be expected to know them. It would be nice if these exams were updated from time to time to reflect the changes in the Operating System in question, but I guess that just wouldn’t be fair, would it?

Anyways, back to Minecraft, I must admit it’s a tough game to play in short bursts. You set yourself an objective (normally to build something, or deliver materials to someone), and you find yourself playing until that objective is complete. Last time I sickened myself of the game because I dug a veeeery long tunnel in the middle of nowhere. This time I’m kind of having enough because I’ve built a long bridge/mine cart track over water. It hasn’t helped matters that after an hour and a half long mining expedition with another player that 50 blocks of Iron Ore got dropped from my inventory. If I had those 50 blocks still, my mine cart track would be complete now. But now I’m left here with the feeling of lack of accomplishment. On the other hand, an MCDST Certificate would be rather nice too.