Got home Friday after work to find my neighbors were in the fucking fire lane again.

Other than that, didn’t do much Friday night. I rented, um… I don’t even remember. Oh, wait - it was Malibu’s Most Wanted, which was reasonably funny, but I’m glad I only paid a buck for it.

Saturday was quite the day. I went down to Fry’s Electronics and picked up some CD cases for my DVDs. We had our DVDs on a bookshelf but ran out of room, so we decided it was time to put them into binders. I chose CD binders instead of DVD binders because of the cost - I have about 300 DVDs, and most DVD binders only hold 40 discs with the paper insert things… which means I would need like eight binders to hold everything, whereas I only need four of the CD binders and I still have plenty of room to grow. Of course, I miscounted the movies the first time around and ended up having to go back to Fry’s on Sunday to get another binder. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Saturday afternoon was Jenn’s parents’ anniversary party at the local Masonic lodge. There were no fez-wearers, which I was disappointed by (though should have expected), and the “party” itself was more of a calm social gathering with food involved. Nothing too much. I did notice a couple of things I thought interesting, though.

First, I realized that at these sorts of gatherings there is always a “grandma” entity who sits semi-alone wearing those gigantic black sunglasses, and there was the token sunglass wearer at this party, too:

Second, there was this guy in the back who was wearing quite the interesting “American Flag” shirt. “Fashion Police! Pull over!”

We saw Jenn’s grandparents there, which was nice, and they gave Jenn her birthday gift since Jenn’s birthday is on Tuesday (tomorrow). The thing is, these grandparents are notorious for the… interesting… gifts. For example, the gift wrap is always re-gifted / recycled. Looking at the top of Jenn’s gift, you wouldn’t notice, but flip it over…

…and we see there’s a little bit of wedding wrapping paper in there.

[Inside that package we found a frame that allows you to “magically” swap your pictures in it like an album. Check the close-up on that frame. Like the plastic wicker look? So did we.

Jenn also got a wool blanket (in a Christmas box marked “To Jim From Louise”) that has probably been in someone’s attic for 30 years (the stink was incredible). Navy blue with snowflakes on it the size of dinner plates that have been cut out and sewn on. We think we can redeem that one by trimming off the snowflakes and giving it a thorough washing.

Sunday Jenn and I washed our cars (it’d been a while and they both looked terrible) and watched View From The Top with my parents. I made that second trip to Fry’s to get the last binder we needed and I studied for my next test.

Speaking of my next test, I’m not sure about how well I’m going to do. They refer to things I’ve never heard of, and it’s all case study sorts of things (you read a case study then answer questions about it). But it’s not even entirely logical. Here’s an example question with all the background info you’re given:

Events Plus (the company you’re contracting with) currently books 5000 events per month using their existing booking system. You’re creating a new system for them. This new system should allow multiple rate schedules for each event. Most events should have fewer than 20 different rate schedules associated with it, and rate schedules should only change two or three times per event.

During the first two years after they release the new system, they anticipate it will increase their event bookings by 20%. After the first two years they expect a 10% increase in bookings each year.

Audit information for rate schedule changes must be stored in the new system. You are estimating the additional amount of storage needed for this audit information. Each audit trail record will be approximately 850 bytes. Based on the information from the case study (reprinted above), approximately how much disk space will be required for the audit trail during the first two years?

972MB 2334MB 1GB 2.6GB 26GB

Give up?

Now when I solved this, I figured it this way:

5000 events per month * 12 months per year * 1.2 (for the 20% annual growth) = 72000 events for the first year 72000 events the first year * 1.2 (for the 20% annual growth) = 86400 events the second year 72000 first year events + 86400 second year events = 158400 total events 20 rate schedules * 3 times each schedule can be changed = 60 audit records to maintain per event 158400 events * 60 audit records * 850 bytes per record = 8078400000 bytes = 7889062.5KB = 7704.2MB = 7.52GB

Notice how that’s not one of the choices?!

The way THEY calculate it is:

5000 events * 1.20 (for the annual growth) * 24 months * 850 bytes * 20 rate schedules = 2448000000 bytes (the storage required for the rate schedules proper) 5000 events * 3 rate changes * 24 months * 850 bytes = 306000000 bytes (for the audit trail records) 2448000000 bytes + 306000000 bytes = 2754000000 bytes = 2.56GB

Huh? Why are they calculating how much storage is for the rate schedules themselves? That wasn’t the question. And when they calculate for the audit trail records, what happened to the annual growth? And why is the annual growth averaged over two years and not compounded like annual growth is supposed to be? And I thought each rate schedule could be changed 3 times… it’s 3 times TOTAL?! ARGH!!! (You might think I shorted you on the info I provided in the question, but I didn’t; that’s seriously all you get.)

When you look at the “References” section on the practice test to see what you can study to figure out how to answer this, it says,”References: General Knowledge and Information – None.” Gee, thanks.

Anyway, all the questions are ridiculous like this. I don’t know how folks pass these things, since there’s no logic to me. Plus, if you have any questions in the real world, you can make a quick phone call and find out what someone meant. They expect you to make assumptions on incomplete information here and to make the same assumptions that they do. What a load.