‘Til All Are One

Network+ is now mine! Mwahahahahaha!

 *ahem*

The day after I completed the A+ Hardware exam (Friday 1 April), I dove into the Network+ material. I’m now glad that I did the A+ modules out of order. Network+ builds upon the networking portions of both modules, but derives more from the Hardware section. Making the transition from A+ Hardware to Network+ was easy.

By now I was quite accustomed to the CompTIA certification style, so I planned to finish relatively quickly. Computer Power allocated four weeks to complete the certification; I thought I should bump it off in two. I spent the first day diligently reading the first of two books they had given us (containing over 600 pages in all). On the second day (the following Monday; I don’t study much on weekends), a couple of friends gave me some extra material, including exam questions and what amounted to be an entire printout of a book. There must have been close to a thousand pages in all (think of the trees!). I’m not sure how much of it they got through, but I certainly wasn’t going to read it all. It’d drive me bonkers. I extracted a small sliver (by comparison) from the stack, which amounted to about 360 exam questions and some examination cram notes. I decided to cast aside my book (which I had barely dented) and focus on those.

I spent that week going over that material: doing practice questions and taking notes on the stuff that I didn’t know. Then disaster struck - I got sick over the weekend (I think it was influenza). My plans of doing the exam by the middle of the following week had to be thrown out the window. One of the great things about Computer Power is that there are no classes and all learning is self-paced. I was able to take some days off to recooperate, while still accessing all my files (notes, etc.) over the Internet. I ended up doing next-to-nil study, though. I can never concentrate at home.

After taking Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday off, I spent all of Thursday at a Personal Effectiveness workshop which had been scheduled for me prior. Although still somewhat ill, I learnt a lot. I’m glad I went. Friday was the only day that week in which I did any real study.

By that point I had grown bored with the subject matter. I was going over the same ground over and over, and I felt no challenge. Wanting to get the subject over and done with, I booked the exam for the next morning. I’d gladly give up a Saturday if I could start the following week afresh. I was still ill, but by then I was over the worst of it and I didn’t care much anymore. Marks don’t matter in CompTIA exams. They give a printout at the end listing your score, but the actual certificate doesn’t say anything. All I was concerned about was the required 72% mark to pass, and the $400 fee I would incur if I failed.

I sat down in the examination chair the following morning. I felt a little fatigued, bleary-eyed and stuffy (sinuses and nose). The drugs didn’t seem to be working effectively. At times I lost concentration and I may have even dozed off a little. The CompTIA exams I’ve done allocate far too much time for the volume and type of questions posed, and Network+ is no exception. Despite my ailments, I had enough time to carefully complete every question and go over them afterwards. I exited the exam with twenty minutes left.

Less than a minute later I had my mark: 833 out of 900. Phwoar! That’s about 93%! I made some dumb errors which I probably wouldn’t have made had I been fully alert, but I’m very happy with the result nonetheless. Especially considering that I only put in seven days of proper study (recommended time is thirty) and that I was ill for almost the entire time (including during the exam itself).

I must nominate Hotel Rwanda as my Movie of the Year. I know that it was officially released last year, but it only came to Australia this year. I rank it right up there with two of my other favourite movies, The Killing Fields and Hotaru no haka (Grave of the Fireflies).

These movies deal with incredibly disturbing subject matter: the effects of war on a civilian population. Each movie took its own approach to the topic, but they all masterfully captured the despair and suffering that people go through. What I also like about these films is that they have dealt with incidents which were either ignored or forgotten by people in other countries. Hotel Rwanda covers the Rwandan genocide of 1994, The Killing Fields is set in the Khmer Rouge dominated Cambodia of the 1970s, and Grave of the Fireflies is about Japan during World War II.

Hotel Rwanda and The Killing Fields both deal with civil war. Who cares about that? After all, it’s not in my backyard. Most of the countries in Africa are in some sort of war, yet the West currently seems more concerned with Pope John Paul II’s funeral or Prince Charles’s wedding. In the case of Cambodia, Vietnam (with diplomatic support from the USSR) turned out to be the Good Guys (funnily enough), invading the country and deposing the Khmer Rouge with popular support (despite their misgivings about the Vietnamese). The USA, Thailand and China actively worked to support the Khmer Rouge. Did we hear about any of this on television? Is it in any school history books? Nope, it’s as (self) censored as the Japanese occupation of Korea is in Japan.

The Rwandan genocide was yet another shameful event in world history. The United Nations and economically developed countries had the power to intervene and halt the bloodshed, yet they didn’t. The US had been in Somalia only a couple of years prior, but I guess Rwanda wasn’t important since it it didn’t lie on any major shipping lanes. The UN itself, France and other countries also deserve much of the blame.

Grave of the Fireflies is somewhat different, yet the same. Firstly, it is animated. This is no children’s movie, however, even if the two protagonists are children. I don’t think more impact could have been achieved if it were a live action film. Grave of the Fireflies covers yet another ignored event in world history: the effects of World War II on the Japanese population. It is natural to ignore the aggressors (or even applaud their suffering), particularly ones as brutal as the Japanese in WWII, but it is important to remember that they are just as human as everyone else. Many Germans consider the Allied firebombing of Dresden as a war crime, but did you know that the firebombing of Tokyo caused more damage and loss of life than the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki (which BTW were dropped on non-industrial residential areas)? I won’t get into the debate over whether such attacks were truly necessary (it was a war, after all), but we shouldn’t forget the human suffering which took place as a result, regardless of whom it is.

I am now CompTIA A+ certified! Not that this is much to brag about. It is mostly rote-learning and is heavily Windows-focused. In fact, a major part of it is knowing how to perform tasks like set up a modem or printer in Windows, right down to memorising exactly what you need to click on and how the procedures differ across Windows versions.

There are two components, each with its own exam: Core Hardware and Operating System Technologies. You are supposed to do them in that order, but I decided to do it the other way round (fighting with DOS/Windows problems over many years made me feel more confident with the OS module). They cover a lot of legacy material, like daisy-wheel printers, EISA and MCA buses and Token Ring networks. Having been involved with PCs since the IBM PC XT, I could relate to much of it. Overall I would say that it was quite easy.

I did my A+ Core Hardware exam on Thursday March 31 (10 days ago) and since then I’ve been working towards the CompTIA Network+ certification.