Hi all. Well this might just as well be one of my last postings ... Okay okay, it's not that serious yet but let me explain how I came to this simple yet drastic conclusion. The company I work for, Brunel ICT, had made some plans for schooling it's employees (that's us) in such a matter that by the end of this year everyone would be MCSE 2003 Certified. This idea on itself is a great plan. But please wait until you hear how they were planning on doing this. For me 'getting certified' means I need to pass on no less then nine exams. Four of them are considered 'core exams', the base of an MCSE certification. Then after I pass on those four I need to do three 'electives'. The electives are also required but from four or five (I think) available exams you need to pass on at least three of them to pass for the whole MCSE deal. When these seven exams are behind me I can call myself a genuine MCSE 2000, since these are all exams for the Windows 2000 MCSE program. The next step is to get passed an upgrade exam, which in fact are two separate exams. Add them all up and we're facing nine of 'em. So far so good. It is a enormous amount of work (understatement of the year here) and that's proved by the Microsoft Certified Teaching People (I don't remember the official term, sorry), who say that for each exam you need to put in about seventy hours (!) of study. And their aim was to do one exam / block per four weeks. Yeah, right ... So let's do some of the math shall we: A week has seven days, each counting twenty four hours. That is a total of one hundred and sixty eight hours. Everybody knows you should sleep at least eight hours a day, but I'm still as stubborn as I am old (sorry mom :-) and only take six or maybe seven. Subtract that and we still have one hundred and twenty six hours left this week. Then I work six days a week. Five days at Philips lasting anywhere between ten and twelve hours, including the traveling time. Let's say it's eleven, to have an average and some easy calculations. That's another fifty five hours 'gone'. Still with me? The sixth working day is a short one: only seven hours. That brings us to a halt at sixty four hours left for this week and all we did was sleep and work :-| Then I give myself the pleasure of relaxing with one snooker night each week, I also need to do some eating, shopping, cleaning, washing, etc. You don't need to be a mathematician to see that we're going rapidly to an chronic hour shortage over here. Unless they invent a serum that will take care of the need for sleep I don't see how I'm going to be able to do this without loosing just about my entire private life. Even though that is not much yet, I would still miss it, I'm sure. And that is just the beginning. Add to these calculations that the seventy hours of study per block was needed for someone working with the material on a more or less daily basis, which I'm obviously not, and you can imagine that I need some more time to get this done. If this was for a period of let's say four or eight weeks I could get over it. It would still be one hell of a job but I would definitely be able to get passed it. But this plan was intended to last until the end of September for crying out loud. I tell you folks that this is one of the few times where I consider myself lucky not having to explain all this to a girlfriend or wife. How could we possibly get passed this? 'Sorry honey, but for the rest of the year I won't be able to participate in any of the domestic tasks and stuff at all' ... give me a break. We'll have to wait to see where all this is heading but I believe that things will be a whole less drastic when all the negotiations for peace are done :-) Next Monday I have scheduled my personal development talk with Brunel so then we'll know more. I'll keep you posted of any new information that might shine light in these dark times ... Geez (Biek reading over the written lines) that all sounds pretty sad, doesn't it? Well don't be so sad dear reader, it'll all work out fine in the end. I do have faith in this to work out fine. And please don't see this as one huge complaint because I think it's a great idea and I'm exited that I'm finaly am going to get some more education. I just need more time to get it all done. So I see you all next year ;-)