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.
