myrddin.org: weblog

I sat my Novell Certified Linux Professional exam today and scored 100%!

Novell, it would appear, have finally got their act together and fixed up their exam. I wonder if this would have been a result from what I would assume to be heaps of complaints and exam result contests.. This time around I got a compeltely different exam, which was GREAT to see. I would have felt a bit put off if I had received the same exam objectives again.

The best part of the exam improvements was that the objectives were VERY clear in what it needed you to do. There was even a section where it indicated exactly what config file I had to create and/or modify to achieve part of the objective. The file in this instance was unfortunately one of the ones that YaST creates which I was a little dissapointed with, especially when the Novell practicum web site stated that it didn’t matter how you achieve the result as long as the objective was completed. The additions and changes that had to be done to the config could have been equally valid in an alternate config file than the one that YaST creates while still achieving the same result. This is likely to explain why almost everyone I know who had done the earlier CLP exams had failed or almost failed on objectives requiring config changes when the objectives did not explicitlly indicate that it had to be the YaST specific file, not the generally accepted configs..

At least now the exam was quite good. I did however feel that the exam was rather lame, I didn’t feel challenged at all. Not that I really expected to be challenged with this low end exam to begin with.. I was more concerned about having to try and decypher what the objectives actually wanted me to do as the earlier exams were extremely vague. Now I have slightly more interest in actually doing the Novell Certified Linux Engineer (CLE).

Now I just have to try and maintain my 100% pass results. First 100% was with my RHCE and now 100% for my CLP..

Filed under: m.o

Well, I don’t quite know any other way to say it.. so I’ll say it publicly.. I have an addiction.

Its a horrible tale to tell, but I’ll just get straight to the point.. I’m a World of Warcraft‘aholic.. This drug was passed to me from a mate a fortnight ago of which I spent hours and hours playing and managed to only get about 4 hours sleep in the process. I am now addicted.. Its almost like every waking moment I’m thinking of how I can progress my character, what profession and skills my character should learn and so on.. Its really starting to get out of control!

The day after my introduction to this game, I had arrived home and almost immediately renewed my 4 year old subscription to Cedega 5.2 and picked up myself a copy of the World of Warcraft cd media from the local EB Games. I then spent a few days screwing around getting things up and running the way they should be, tweaking my xorg config and cedega settings.. I did however have a few really annoying problems getting Cedega and World of Warcraft playing nicely with my dual 19″ CRT monitors. I really wanted the game to be fullscreen on one monitor while leaving the other with a functional desktop of which I could fire up browsers, irc and so on like I used to do when playing UT. I couldn’t get around this problem so I did the unthinkable *gasp!* and went back to the one monitor *eek!*. I thought it would be really really hard going back to the single monitor after using the dual monitors for all this time, but suprisingly it hasn’t been too bad. I’m using fluxbox sill and currently have 7 fluxbox workspaces (home, maint, gaming, work, mail, misc, vmware). My fluxbox theme is ever evolving and I’m really quite happy with the way everything is turning out.

Cedega, back when I used it last was called winex, and I must say, its come a long way since then. Very stable, very good framerates and very easy to install & manage.

World of Warcraft, albeit not exactly a brand new game, is oh so good to play. Now I’ve never really been much of a player of these style of games, I’m usually more at home with first person shooter games like Unreal Tournament{, 2003, 2004}, Quake3 sorta deal. I did however have a rather long fascination with DiabloII (which is why I had an old subscription to winex), and this is pretty much the same sorta deal in a round about way. I’ve been playing an ‘Undead Warrior’ for about 10 hours of online time and I’ve barely even scratched the surface. The game is *HUGE*! I guess they Do call em Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game (MMORPG) for a reason.

I can just see it now; I’m going to dissapear all weekend, every weekend, only emerging from my computer room for food and toilet breaks, and even then I might be able to convince the other half to bring me food if I’m lucky.. hehe

Now I can see why Nicholas always complains about not having enough spare time between work and his own WoW habit…

Filed under: m.o

I’m on annual leave! yay! … And damn doesn’t it feel good to do what ya want, when ya want (or to just veg out as I’ve been doing today anyway) instead of working yer ass off for a company that doesn’t give a toss about ya… :\

Filed under: m.o

I almost forgot about it, but Novell *finally* responded to my CLP exam contest after about 7 or so weeks… They gave me a free code to resit the exam. I’m not quite so sure I’m all that interested in the certification anymore based on the quality of the exam and its poor automated grading system.. Nonetheless I’ll probably book myself in again in the coming weeks, hopefully they have done something about the exam problem areas this time though.

Filed under: m.o