Taking The Plunge

Today, I had my first CNA study session with my colleagues at work. We went over the first thirty questions of a practice exam. Not surprisingly, topics that I am not familiar with, simply because my job function doesn't relate to them, I failed miserably. For instance, as a lowly network account admin, I do not handle server works, like adding a new server to an existing network. One of the test question was "What's the command to type to update a network to include a NetWare 6.5 server?" Doh! I picked SYS:\SYSTEM\DEPLOY.EXE but in fact the correct answer was NWDEPLOY.EXE, located at the root of the NetWare 6.5 operating system CD. Either you know it or you don't, or if you are lucky, on a multiple-choice question you have a 25% chance of stumbling upon the correct answer. I'll just have to cram for the exam! But then there were the tricky questions that is sort of like a shaggy dog joke. FYI, a shaggy dog joke is a joke that tells you too much information, lots of details that have nothing to do with the punch line. In the case of the practice exam I just tried out, one of the question was about the minimum amount of space required on the DOS partition as required by NetWare 6.5. The answer is 500 MB, but instead of just asking straight out what the minimum space requirement is, the question informed me that the server had 1024 MB of memory. That confused me into thinking that, "Hmm, didn't I read somewhere that the optimal space a DOS partition should have is x MB plus the amount of memory?" The thing is they only want to know what's the minimum amount, not the optimal amount. Tricky, yes, but that's what studying is for. Better make them mistakes now instead of on the real exam.

Shortly after the study session, I took the plunge and called up Prometric to schedule my exam. It is all said and done - I'm scheduled for a 10 AM exam next Friday at New Horizons. The voucher number that I lost and re-obtained went into the scheduling program fine, there was some confusion about which exam I should take, but everything worked out, I just have to show up for the exam and pass it. Better get busy cramming!