I polished up my time-line this morning. It looks pretty good but pretty long. As I look back over it I am overwhelmed by the amount of work that I had to do to get to today. It does not feel like a lot of work but this time-line shows my daily persistence in the program. The amount of paralyzing worry that I worked through and the documents I have written over days and days of revisions are enormous. The lengthy emails and management of the situation with getting back to people and providing what was needed. It was like a full time software project. I have managed larger software projects with many more involved individuals that were less work. The amount of time that I had for other things in my life suffered. But, I know that It will be all worth it in the end. I post the time line at the end of this blog entry.

I am now working on the meat of the document. I have been making little notes to myself and organizing this text for a few days. Now organizing the little notes will be the task. Getting them all on one piece of paper and then ordering that same piece of paper over a couple of other pieces of paper. Then making a PDF and sending the document. I have one week until the document is due. I think that I can handle one more week of 4am mornings. By now it is old hat. I am productive at that time. The lack of sleep thing seems to be counteracted by the fact that I am waking for the day not extending the day beyond some already worked number of hours. All the best brain cells get used first in the morning when I am fresh.

The Time Line of the Last Year

Date	Description
02/09/2005	Ask for past exams examples to discovery anything new?
02/16/2005	Ask the graduate advisement office to view my past exam failure, told to contact my adviser
02/17/2005	A refusal by my adviser to help with an exam question because it was not in his area of expertise.
03/10/2005	Notified my exam application was received
04/08/2005	Day of 2005 Software Engineering Exam
06/08/2005	Notified that my exam results have been mailed to me
08/15/2005	Notified my adviser that my deadline for appeal was August 31st
08/17/2005	Told to send my appeal to the PhD committee...but I don`t know who that is?
08/17/2005	Request my adviser to send my appeal.
08/17/2005	Notified that my appeal of the exam will be handled after the fall quarter begins.
08/24/2005	Received contact information for PluS program (Director)
11/03/2005	First of multiple Visits to Doctor for Assessment
04/14/2006	Request report from doctor to be mailed to PluS, Advisement Office, Adviser
05/02/2006	Contacted PluS program about my doctor results of learning disability
05/05/2006	Doctor reply about delay in sending report because of office move.
05/26/2006	Release Form request from doctor
08/04/2006	Requested alternate way for reviewing the exams and was denied
08/28/2006	Notified by my adviser that he will be away from school during the summer and unable to work with me.
09/09/2006	First BLOG entry of DePaul Experience on http://endofdayexperience.blogspot.com/
09/12/2006	Finally, able meeting with director of PLuS program to create a plan
10/09/2006	Advisers refusal to work with me until there is a PluS program recommendation.
10/09/2006	PluS program suggests my adviser and I meet. Adviser refuses without a PluS program recommendation.
10/10/2006	Begin Daily Study Regimen starting at 3-4am for 3-4 hours before work
10/10/2006	Request to meet with my adviser on reviewing exam copied PluS program
10/10/2006	PluS program asks for the adviser to push forward on with a limited recommendation of test review.
10/12/2006	No response from adviser copied contact PluS program
10/17/2006	No response from adviser copied contact PluS program
10/19/2006	PluS program contacts adviser directly.
10/19/2006	Reminded my adviser of our meeting and that my intent was to go over BOTH exams
10/20/2006	Attended first meeting on teaching ISP121, first announced my interest.
10/21/2006	Visited adviser to review both exams. Told first exam was too old to review.
10/24/2006	Email thanking my adviser for reviewing my single exam with me.
10/24/2006	Contacted advisement office about exam being too old
10/24/2006	Academic Advisements responds that they DO have my first test.
10/25/2006	Adviser states that he believes we are finished reviewing exams and that there would be no more review.
10/25/2006	Notified my interest in teach ISP 121 was accepted/ask for Thursday night session
10/26/2006	Offered to pass on the review of the first test as an olive branch.
10/30/2006	Phone meeting with PluS program director
11/07/2006	Notify PluS program director of exam dates.
11/09/2006	Notified of my lab classroom assignment
11/14/2006	Ask PluS program to get ZED question thrown out on the basis that it has never been taught in any depth in any class at DePaul
11/30/2006	Attended Orientation for Teach ISP121 I do a sample lecture but not the right audience
12/13/2006	Sent Resume to office of employment
12/15/2006	Notified that I would be used for spring quarter rather than winder quarter ISP 121
01/03/2007	Told I was select to teach ISP121
01/15/2007	First contact with Study Group/Start of weekly meetings
01/21/2007	Study Group for 4 hours
01/24/2007	Told to contact employment office to do another sample lecture.
01/28/2007	Study Group for 4 hours
02/02/2007	Made contact with Computational Finance Professor before giving Sample ISP 121 Lecture.
02/02/2007	Second sample lecture with correct audience but I was then not selected
02/04/2007	Study Group for 4 hours
02/11/2007	Study Group for 4 hours
02/18/2007	Study Group for 4 hours
02/22/2007	Told I am scheduled for section 902 of ISP 121
02/25/2007	Study Group for 4 hours
02/26/2007	Told my section of ISP121 was can celled
03/03/2007	Emailed my exam application for my 3rd attempt at the exam.
03/04/2007	Study Group for 4 hours
03/06/2007	Notified advisement that of special requests for the exam in the absence of the PluS program director on my behalf.
03/06/2007	Told of new PLuS contact for working on my behalf
03/06/2007	Notified that the PluS program director would be `Out of the office for a while`
03/07/2007	Made contact with new PluS program contact
03/11/2007	Study Group for 4 hours
03/13/2007	New PluS program contact makes special requests for accommodation on exam
03/18/2007	Study Group for 4 hours
03/25/2007	Study Group for 4 hours
04/01/2007	Study Group for 4 hours
04/09/2007	Announce http://thestudent.fateback.com and http://endofdayexperience.blogspot.com to The World/Office of Advisement/PLuS/My Adviser
04/13/2007	Third Exam 2007 for Software Engineering

I have been working on the report for a few days now. I have organized my thoughts around my research and what I will be doing going forward. For the history I have prepared a timeline of what incidents have happend since the 2005 test. The appeal, the doctor, the review of tests, study and study group are all part of the timeline. I am working to tell a story about the last year. I will publish my timeline here upon sending my report before the 5th. This has been sort of a big undertaking. I find it very important to tell my story acuratly and without biased, just the facts. So the timeline dates and my experiences are taken direclty from my emails and logs. Often times I used the exact words used in the emails. I am nearly finished. What is left to do is write the meat of the paper. Since this is possibly my last celebration if I don`t have a favorable outcome to the test I want to say it perfectly. I have spent 8 months or more on the chosen research topic before the distraction of failing the second exam and subsuquent giration to stay in school. Nothing has changed about the research. My feelings about the department and how best to complete the degree have been in flux. I still believe I have a great topic. I still believe that I have a great plan. I just need to continue. The lack of interest in my topic and plan by others should be no reflection on my intentions. Until I am able to produce the vocabulary in the right context to describe my research others will be confused and bewildered. That is just how it is going to be. Understanding is what the PhD is all about. If they don`t understand it is not nescesarrily that you are wrong you may just not be complete yet. Being complete is a function of bandwidth and execution. If you are set on paths that are less than fruitful because of requirments you should not be held accountable for a delay. I am a part time student. I can only work on this so many hours. Since September I have done something every single day for at least 2-4 hours. I work out for 1-2 more and attend work for 9 more hours. At a minimum that leaves only 8 hours for sleeping and eating. So you know I am getting less than that for sleeping. I don`t know how I can do better than that. I do have a family. Generally, in my research at my work I work more than 8 hours and 1 hour of travel so I really am quite a juggler. I don`t really have time for much in the way of academic publications. As I have said before, these activities are a must with my learning disability. I have to study longer and work out harder to maintain a level of excellence. So it is a matter of execution and bandwith.

I got back more information about the other guys in the study group. One guy left after 20 minutes. I really comes down to the information ask for what not on the reading list or it was ask in such a way as to not use the correct vocabulary to clue you into what is being ask. I have other independent corroborations to these ideas from others that have taken this past exam. It was not representative of any of the other exams nor was it designed to test the knowledge of the students. Don`t tell the students to study one thing and them ask them about another.

So I have started thinking about this report I am going to write to the PhD subcommittee on my progress. I think that this should be my highest priority. Putting up the questions from the exam, I am not sure what that proves. It does prove that I can remember them. I am not sure that it proves that they prove what the testers want them to prove. I remember them, I looked them up, I know something about them even before, now I started turning them into web pages. Does it prove that I am any more of a PhD, No. Obscure references defined, misdirected study refocused, but, what did they test of me? Even some of these definitions like "What is architecture?" does it really prove anything about what the person taking the test is all about. A nebulous questions defined, void of all context, relates to nothing. It is like saying "Tell me what you know, but be specific." The word "specific" does not clue you into a granularity or a topic. The testers indirectly ask a macroeconomic question when what they really wanted to know was about a guys taxes. Both would be specific questions. I thrash every time I think about it. At least the long questions at the end of the test were specific skills.

The last year has been all about this test. I am not sure my adviser knows me well enough to be able to write anything about me anyway. I have not been happy with the DePaul relationship. I am optimistic that it will get better. I really think that this school has potential. The PhD program from 2001- 2007 has not grown in maturity much. I see the same lax ability to service the students. Some really care, some don`t. Some just want to guard there existence and limit there workload. Some are really good. Some work hard to get people enthusiastic about programs. I am excited about the Computational Finance masters program. It is about time for that program.

I have material for this report. I have made progress outside of the test. I expect that others have no idea. The fact that they don`t should signify something. It does not signify that I have not been active. It does signify the level of interest of others. It does signify the level of help of others. The fact that I can make progress without direction says a lot for me. The fact that I am slowed by other hoops without concern for the real work means I have real, set in stone, signposts of my progress. I just need to put these on paper. I have made contacts over the last year. They are significant. I want to learn not just complete. At this point I am not learning anything. In fact, I have been teaching something. Read "The Big Brag" by Dr. Seuss.

Let us spend some time on this report. This is a part time endeavor.

Had a great weekend. The weather was great, sunny and warm. We were baby sitters on Sunday. I had put the patio furniture out on Sunday. I sat and watched the kids from under the umbrella for a few hours and read a couple of old Linux Journals. It was very pleasant. It has not happened in a very long time. I have read nothing in my spare time but information pertaining to the PhD for the last 12 months. I was glad to finally read something I was interested in and it not be a publication off of the reading list.

I received an email this past Wednesday from a PhD in the administration that is writing a paper about educational research at DePaul University. It seemed kind of funny that this would come now at a time I am taking advantage of the PLuS programs opportunities. I did respond with my website. I don`t know if she will get much response. She is asking for past work so that she can write a summary. Is there any past work? If there is I have never heard of it. I read those things mailed to me having to do with research but none were memorable about educational research.

I also got back an email from my study partner that took the test also. He said he was very surprised at the content of the test. It seems that his surprise at the questions and the fact they were not on the reading list were right in line with what I thought. He is optimistic as am I. It is funny he would say about one question that "We probably know that one...it is just a naming convention thing." Well that naming convention thing made me upset.

Yesterday was mailed out a memo to all PhD students from a professor of the administration with a new assignment of chair of the PhD review subcommittee. DePaul is implementing a new PhD review process. It seems that the deadline for submitting an assessment is May 5th, 2007. Looks like my putting up of my questions this week will have to wait. I need to write a document. Wow, wonder what my adviser will write about me. He doesn`t have much to write because he has kept me in the dark since this process began. I have not been unable to work with him since he said that this test thing had to be completed first. I have tried to move forward taking classes and writing papers but he had limited my progress because of how the current test was handled. Granted I can understand that I am closer to being released from the program than probably any of his other students and therefore he gives me less time.

Well, I will write this thing. I will talk about the contacts I have made over the last year and what I will do next in the program. They have ask for these three things.

1) discuss any significant progress towards the completion of your dissertation proposal or defense,

2) list any significant publications or other research activity during last year,

3) and describe your plans of the upcoming year.

I can do that.

It has nearly been a week since the exam. Yesterday I got up early also. I am still having trouble adjusting back to regular time. In trying to sleep longer I forgot to put my watch on. When I got ready to go and swim I forgot to put it on also. Messed up my swim because I forgot my watch which I swim by the time. It kind of disrupted my morning. I was off. The switching back to regular time is tough. It is kind of like jet lag. It is more disruptive than the making time to study. I have decided to just go with it for a while. I cannot proceed with the PhD thing until they come back with my results. The last time it took them 8 months to return my results. They have said that it should take 4-6 weeks. We will see what it takes this time. In the mean time I wait for an email from one of my study group members. I am wanting to know if he had the same test as I did. I want to know if the questions were similar. It seems that they have gone on vacation. I got the how did you do emails but did not get email back from them about what there tests looked like? I suspect that they are waiting until they think that time enough has passed before they talk about the tests. His reply message said he would return on the 19th, that is today. Since I am getting up so early I plan on doing a deep dive on each of the questions I remember from the exam. I am going to put a new section called "2007" on my website. Those answers will be put there. They will not have the questions since I don`t think that would be proper nor do I think that I could remember them exactly word for word. I expect that I will publish them 2 weeks after the exam. So, the publishing will be next week on Friday. That should have given enough time for others to have taken the exam. The list is up to 8 points now. 5 of the 8 I know are not on the reading list. I will publish which are and are not on the reading list. Preparing of the web page will probably take longer than to just write an answer. I want to have more information about each question. I want to have the quotes of where the information is and the history of it. For instance I know that A*P came about some time after 1999. We were talking about it at work and how that it might help our projects. One of the other things that we talked about was "Spring". I can find a start date of about 2002 for that one. Anyway I think that A****j, a programming language, was released in 2001. The "Software Architecture in Practice" book has a copyright of 2003. That kind of explains how there can be a reference in the index but when you go to that section there is not text describing such a reference. That is the newest book that I have. The others on the reading list are earlier. This book mentioned is on the reading list in an earlier version so that version could not have possibly had a reference to A*P. The book version on the reading list has a copyright of 1997. The first papers on the A*P subject are in 1997. The first books on the A*P subject don`t start showing up until 2004. So this one is definitely not on the latest reading list from November of 2002 with the latest book on that list being from Kent Beck, "Extreme Programming Explained" from 2000. This is just the beginning of my deep dive into each question. Since I have time on my hands and an inability to sleep at the proper times I am going to put these on my website.

On the day that I publish my results of my deep dive I will stop using the asterisks to hide the names of the subjects of questions. I am doing this so that I don`t give any information to the people reading my website that may have not taken the exam. The other answers I have posted they have access to if they are taking the exam because the information is freely available to students taking the exam. So since the current test information does not show on any previous practice tests and does not show in any previous clues to those topics I will not provide them for at least 2 weeks following the test.

I once joked with my adviser that they would run out of test questions if I kept taking the exams. Maybe they have and that is why we get new questions. I expected to have the deadlock questions and the "City of Plaistow" question at least. They were on the past exams many times. Spring is a great time for new beginnings and the learning of new information. This is not a matter of understanding. This is not a matter of knowing a certain area of knowledge after being told that you will be tested of that area and you need to be able to exhibit a certain depth. This is a matter of exposure. I have heard professors in reference to the test say, "That is not my area of expertise." Well, these questions may have not been in mine either. If they were in my line of exposure would I have the depth to be able to say that I am an expert in them. I find these kind of new questions reprehensible. They are worse than the archeology type questions. At least the archeology type questions were ones I would have known about and been prepared to explain deeply. Given the work that I go through to prepare to explain something deeply I am really quite angry. This is not a memorization kind of thing this the Socrates type thing I mentioned in a previous post. Think of it like a speech where you prepare and go to the podium and are ask to speak on a different subject at the last second. This test is not Toast Masters International. As I said before, "Don`t say you are going to give me a 14th century literature test and then give me a test with Clive Barker and Ian Fleming, I would do better with Neil Stephenson." I am upset the more I think about it. If I cannot find these questions in the reading list provided, they should not be on the exam.

One more thing about the exam: It is a contradiction to say don`t put down a memorized answer when you ask for quotes. Also, don`t say avoid opinion and conjecture if you are asking for a general answer from a student. Student answers are opinion and conjecture. Remember the movie "Back to School" when a paper was turned in by the student main character written by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. about Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. as his own work. The teacher says that the student main character knows nothing about Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. By the way, Kurt Vonnegut passed 2 days before the test on April 11th, 2007 at the age of 84. Vonnegut played himself in a cameo appearance in that 1986 movie.

I am still trying to shift my sleep patterns back. It is still early but I could not sleep. I am starting to get a better picture of the story around the test. I have gotten email from the others that they have now finished there tests. Up to now they have not heard from me. Besides they have not seen my website nor my blog. As I said I got email from one of them yesterday evening. I think that it is probably ok to discuss parts of the test with him now that he has taken it. I want to know if he took a test that is more like the tests in the past or a test more like the one I just took that is completely different. The test that I just took had several questions that I have learned now were not on the reading list. In fact one of the questions on the test A*P comes from a different era of software engineering not covered by the books and papers on the reading list. So I have put the questions to the guy that says he has taken the exam. Even if he comes back and says that the exams were similar I still believe it was unfair because of the questions that were not on the reading list. I know of at least 4 parts that were not on the reading list. These were either whole questions are parts of questions. One question that was on the reading list was combined with another to make it longer than it was in the past. Another that was on the reading list was more complex. The test was very different from the point of view of complete-ability, complexity, and material. The material is the one that makes me most upset. I can understand how shooting sprees like the one in the news now gets started. I don`t condone that king of thing but I understand how some nut being treated unfairly does something awful like that.

I have now looked up all the material that I remember from the test that seemed out of place. I now definitely know that they were not on the reading list. I will know sometime today if these questions were just for me or not. I don`t know what good this does for me but DePaul Reputational Risk was never a concern. I have only wanted to make the program better. I have been completely honest. To spring something like this on me was not honest. Integrity, integrity, integrity, lets have some integrity. If I had had a book on the reading list with this information, I would have read it. Even if I did know something about each and every one of these before the exam I would not have prepared in-depth for them because I did not think that I would be tested over them. As I have said before people get out of the masters program, and PhD for that matter, all the time without knowing the difference between Moore Machines and Mealy Machines. Did I expect to have them covered on the exam, No. I did expect to have to draw state machines with UML. I do this in my job. I expect to do this well, it has been in a past exam. Change the reading list if you expect to ask questions about a different area of Software Engineering. I did notice how a good deal of the questions that were not on the reading list were language questions. That was a different flavor than the information on the reading list today. Most of the information on the reading list is language agnostic. The "Java Programming Language" book is only about basic constructs. Would you expect to get language questions, no. I would only expect to have minimal OO language questions. Some of these questions I mention were labeled architecture questions. Ah, another overloaded term architecture. The quote from the book, "Software Architecture encompasses the structure of large software systems. The architectural view of a system is abstract, distilling away details of implementation, algorithm, and data representation and concentrating on the behavior and interaction of "black box" elements. A software architecture is developed as the first step toward designing a system that has a collection of desired properties." So, these questions are not architecture questions even though some of them were labeled that way. They are not part of design either. They may be related to tool design but not to system design. OO analysis and design lend themselves to OO languages better than procedural languages but I would think, though it crazy, you could do OO analysis and design and end up using a procedural language. If they were architecture and design questions would they not come form the architecture and design section on the reading list. Design Patterns, SEI software architecture, RUP, Scenario architecture analysis, and a pre-RUP about RUP paper were on the reading list. It does not seem that these would cover O***/C*** P**** in OO design, and in fact they don`t. They don`t cover A*P either. The don`t cover the F****** B**** C**** problem either. I would not expect to have them on the exam.

It still remains to be seen what will happen. I don`t think anyone is visiting my site yet.

Still getting up early. I have not made the shift yet back to reality. So I blog. Had a great weekend. My in-laws 40th wedding anniversary. Many aunts and uncles. We played hours of double-deck penuckle. If was good weekend. I have many family members asking me about how the test went. I was telling them the same story as the previous post. I have mixed feelings.

This morning I looked up 2 more questions from the test. This brings the count to a total of 4 that I have looked up that I believe were not in the books on the reading list. The two questions I looked up today were O***/Cl*** ****** and Fr*** B***. These were object oriented questions so that narrows it to a few books on the reading list. They either have to be in the "Java Programming and Concurrency" section, the "Object Oriented Modeling section" or the "Object Oriented Design and Architecture" section. I already know that they are not in any of these books. Anyway, this is how my thought process went. Lets start with the book on Java Programming it is to basic to have this kind of stuff in it but lets try anyway. Nope, not in that book. Lets look in "Concurrent Programming in Java". Nope, to specialized. Well there is a paragraph under re-usability on o*** and c*** systems. I understand this principal but did not get this idea from the question. It would have been a shame to miss this question because of how it was worded. Anyway I dismissed this as a topic for a question because Lea mentions this in passing not as a topic. I am still looking of the Fr*** B*** question answer location in the reading list.

Off to swim.

So my feelings about the test are mixed. I liked the new format. There were definitions and the space was limited to the number of words that you could write. The definitions were supposed to be contained withing a few sentences. I also like how a question about one thing is broken into multiple pieces. The focus of each piece helped me clue into what to write about. This was all very good. What I didn`t like was even though I had extra time I also had extra material. There is no way that someone else could have gotten that test done in 3 hours. In a way it was not fair. I was supposed to get the same test but have more time. The test was twice as long as any pre-test. In previous tests there were similar test questions that were combined into 1 question on the test that I took. Maybe you are not supposed to get done and they figured that by adding the length for a normal person that they would guarantee that I would not get done. What they did was successfully give me a philological disadvantage from the start. I had to overcome the idea and the paranoia that somehow this test was meant to make me fail. It was like preparing for a 16 century literature exam and getting Cliver Barker and Ian Flemming. I would have done better if I had gotten Neil Stephenson. I have written down some of the test questions. I remember them verbatim. I know that I can recall them because the memory is linked to that little cold room at the PLuS program that I had only been in 2 other times in 1993. I can remember pictures of the room then and I can remember pictures of the test pages now. The question about A**P. You know this one if you have had the test. I came home and checked. A**P is mentioned in the index of one book Software Architecture In Practice. All the other books on the reading list are too old to have had A**P. I checked them also. When I went to look up the section mentioned in the index of the book mentioning this topic that section of the book must have been removed. The section pointed to is Fault Detection and Fault Recovery. Another section pointed to for A**P is 2 pages before the end of the book and that section is about Architectural Style. I did not read about A**P in either of these two sections. That means that for all the books on the reading list none of them contain the detailed information ask for about A**P. You can guess how I feel about this question. I do know something about this. I remember presenting the early stages of this technology to my professors group of students. I don`t remember the detail required by the test. There were other questions on the test that are on my website in some form. These questions were combined into one question in some cases. I was not able to get to some of the questions on the test that I have done in the past on my website. Even the cyclomatic complexity question was more complex than on the exams I have seen in the past. I handled it. The greater complexity meant more chance for error. I was also worried that maybe the reading list had changed. I checked the webite this morning and it is the same one from 2002. I find it difficult to believe, given the endless amount of information, you can be expected to know it all without being clued into some section of it to study. I looked up to see if I could find S***c and Dy*** Ver** in any book on the reading list. I cannot. I can only conclude that by publishing my website on Monday of this week I was asked questions that were not on the reading list so as to provide questions that I had not prepared for. I don`t know if this was malicious or not. It could have been done just to stretch me to see how far I could go with the test. I hope that the graders have such insight into my website. Maybe they do. Maybe they don`t. I know that the guys from my study group would not have been able to answer these questions. They did not study this stuff. The stuff that I could answer was contextually specific to me. Hmmm, a tailored test, maybe? How could it be that people from a testing background or from other departments needing to take 3 exams could possibly have answered some of these questions? They would have only read the books on the reading list. One of the guys in my study group had barely written any Java and knew little about OO. One of the other guys is also from another background. If they pass I will be upset. Again, they have only read what was on the reading list. I have done my best let God sort out what happened when he sorts us all at the end of our lives.

I am not hurt about this if I pass. I will be able to continue doing what I do best, trying. Hurt too shall go away after a time if I do not pass. I know the criticality of what these guys do for the program.

It has been a good day. I have fixed about 60 typos in the my web notes. I put up the new phone state machine. I also found that I had missed a significant piece of my notes in the website. The Chidamber and Kemerer OO metrics and the data from the Critique of Software Defect Models paper. I put them on the OO page but maybe they should have gotten there own page. I will fix this sometime in the future. I just wanted to have them in my printouts. It was easiest to just put them in an existing page rather than make a whole new one. So there is where they are right now. It is right that I have up that data. It completes the reading list material. I also added the notes from the Test Data Adequacy Criteria paper. I put it on the testing page. That is appropriate. I have updated my printouts.

Wife and son went to the mall to get out of my hair. It is now just before 8pm. We should have stared my son`s bed time activities 30 minutes ago. I hope everything is OK. Kind of scared the guys at the oil change place messed with the throttle cable. I hope she is going to be home soon. This kind of disrupts my study. It would have been bad either way. If they were here it would have been the same disruption.

Start working again on the mnemonics. I am going to skip my swim tomorrow. Traveling down town. Don`t want to have any problems.

It is early in the morning on the day before the test. I have been reviewing. I noticed a question that had to do with architecture. I have had some problems with how this question is worded. See my previous posts. Anyway, I have in my notes a number of things that pertain to this question but not to it in the way it is worded. Since I felt so uneasy about it I decided to add a section to my website that just took those parts of my notes that were pertinent in some way and add them to the bottom of the question. I have some precedence of doing this kind of thing. So I decided to add the information. I took the information for various places in my notes and organized them around architecture. This was the drive in the question. The question almost ask about personal opinion but you know how I hate to answer any of these questions with personal option. See my previous posts. Anyway, I organized different parts of my notes into a coherent single document and added it below the question with a quick line about "These were from my notes". Hopefully the questions on tomorrows test are not as badly worded. A question this badly worded does not clue me into what is really wanted and I have trouble accessing the correct information in my memory. Just look at this one. It took me until the very last day to do this. If this is what they want on the question I would have missed it. Anyway, having done this exercise I have linked the revised architecture answer document to this question. Hopefully it will not be a problem. Hmmm, lets see it has been a problem for the years that I have been doing this thing. My instructor could not even clue me into this kind of answer. It all started with an implication...."Do you mean ....measuring?" The guys in the study group got this one wrong if this is the kind of answer they really want. It is a shame. I know the guys in the study group may not be able to talk about specific methods but I think that intuitively they know questioning/measuring thing. I wish that I knew the real answer.

I spent yesterday reviewing before my swim. It was a good swim. One of the guys that came after I started 4 years ago, we had a little race of sorts. I held him off for several laps until he pulled ahead on one lap and stopped. I continued right through his stop and went on to complete my normal 45 minute workout. It felt really good to be able to push him that hard. I am becoming a better swimmer.

Yesterday, was a tough day at work. I had gotten the email back from the PLuS program explaining the arrangements for tomorrow. It made me feel good that she was prepared for me to come and do this thing. A day later, yesterday, the director of graduate advisement passed a contradictory email about the accommodations to me and her. They don`t seem to have a handle on the situation. The way I understand it from the PLuS program director, "What the PLuS program says is what goes." At an rate, I will do what the administration asks. They don`t really have their act together. They probably have never been in this situation before. It is OK. If I decided to do something about the unfamiliar way they are handling the problem it would be a good excuse but probably not good enough. Anyway, I don`t think there is going to be any problem. I know this stuff. My website says so. I have read every shred of literature they have ask me to, multiple times for this test and others. I know all the contradictions. I know every mistake they ever made in formulating the tests. I have documented them all in this blog. I expect to pass.

Today I will spend the day looking over my notes and trying to put to memory the lists that are in them. From the lists put to memory I can then link those lists to the memories of the entire body of knowledge. I just have to get the organization right. It is like figuring out what street to go down to get to a house in a culdesac. After you get to the house everything in the house is at your disposal. You know how the house is laid out and you can get to anything in any of the rooms. You just have to get down the right street. This is a technique used by Socrates when doing public speaking. He would walk into a room in his mind and pick up objects in the room that would clue him into the right memory to talk about. He just had to enter the right room. For me I have a paper or book represented as a color cover layout. I know that the Larmen book is a white cover with green letters. I know the title by looking at the book on the floor next to my desk in my mind. I can get to the information on architecture because it is a chapter in the 30`s, I think chapter 33. I remember a page where the text on the left side of the page was talking about a document. That document was not happy it was the SAD document. That is how I remember stuff.

I have done this with all sorts of memories about this test. The rooms come in several sorts; folders on my PC, pages in my subject notebooks, the actual books themselves. It works. It is reported that Socrates would speak for several hours continuously. He could repeat the same speech several times for different audiences giving the same information in the same way. It works fairly well for teaching he found out. I think that for modern day teachers to use this method it is more difficult. There is to much variability in the students and students are disruptive. In Socrates day, students wanted to be there and came from several miles just to listen. If they were unruly they were ask to leave forever. If they could not keep up they were ask to leave forever. Try that in your classroom.

This will probably be my last post before the test tomorrow. I will continue if I pass and not continue if I don`t.

I started my review this morning. Man, I am finding typos and other problems. I have already corrected several typos and changed 2 diagrams. The telephone state machine that I did a few days ago is missing some transitions. It really should have some transitions from the connecting state and the dialing state for if the caller hangs up during those states. Hang up would really be a default state for every state. It would be drawn as the exit state for a sub-state machine containing all the other states except for idle. If I were really implementing this state machine I would have a default state that handles printing and error showing the current state for every state in the state machine. What this accomplishes is in testing when you see this error message and the state that the machine was in when the transition was issued you now know that you are not handling that transition in that state. You should be re-examining for a case that you missed in that state. Your testing then serves as a way to explore un-thought-of state transitions. So the diagram is limited. It is not really wrong. The problem is that you cannot hangup in the middle of connecting or dialing...not really a standard telephone is it? I will fix it when I get a chance. The other diagram I fixed is the OCL class diagram for file/group/owner biii. I forgot to put the role of member on the diagram. I added it back. It was in my notebook but not on the image.

Today I also went through the cyclomatic complexity question. I know that the guys in the study group have this one wrong. I told them but none of them have read the McCabe paper from 1976. You had to go to the library to get this paper. I had the library mail it to me. I have convinced myself that I have it right because of what I read in the paper.

Today my wife goes to the doctor. I am taking a half day. I get an extra long time for study this morning. It is only 6:15am. I will re-do a few more problems before 9:30 am when we have to leave.

Tonight I published my website to the world. It has been a long time coming. I will spend my days left in review. It is a little bit unnerving to put my stuff out there like that. I feel vulnerable. At any rate someone has to see it. If it is wrong well its then wrong. I don`t think it is. Maybe there are small bits that are wrong but I would say none of the questions are fully wrong. I have to many references. That is the point isn`t it. That I needed to be above reproach. If the books on the reading list said it then it was true for this test. I have completed this work without using much of my own experience. The value of my experience is up to interpretation, a reference cannot be off the reading list cannot be. It is all out there now. I have other pieces of material but until after the test none of it will get posted. This is the work that will be there on Friday.

Now I have got to discover the rhymes that will help me to remember all of the points that need to be mentioned in a question. Expounding on a point can only be done if you remember the point. I can expound easily if I remember what I wanted to expound on. Over the next couple of days the Fresh Prince will have nothing on me. :) I have been chastised in the past for memorizing answers. See my previous posts. I have beat that dead horse.

I am also worried about getting a test that is completely unlike anything I have seen. The problem with that is it will throw me off my game. Not because the questions will be different but because I would have had to use different techniques to prepare for different types of questions. I don`t remember names well. If you form a question around a name I need to know the names that you want me to remember otherwise I will only remember concepts. This isn`t jeopardy. I should not have to form a question to meet the answer given. If I have study to answer questions, I should be ask questions. I should not be ask to form questions to meet the answers. That is a different testing type altogether. Get the idea. At any rate my adviser and others will know what I think about the test now and they could change it just to fail me.

Wife and son are late tonight. I am getting worried. They went to her sisters for a scrap book party. Where are they?

Big study review starts tomorrow.

Well it is the final week of study. It has been a long time coming. My highschool cross country couch used to say that by the time you got to the state meet all the work had already been done. You don`t need to be worried just execute. If the work was of the right standard you will see the results. I think that I am ready, though I am worried. I thought I was ready the last couple of times that I took this test. The uncertainty of it all make me uneasy. To me it is obvious that I have completed the work. To them they never seem to see it. We will see how things come out with what I publish.

I was doing another question form the 2003 exam this morning. I completed a phone call state machine. It kind of seems ironic that I would be doing this one on the last question before review. I do this in my job so much. I am working with the SMC compiler. It draws the statemachine for me. Not that this is an issue. You really have to know what is going on anyway. To find bugs you have to read one of those diagrams. You always complete a diagram in the beginning before you put the statemachine into code but after that the tool kind of does it for you. So I thought I should do this one anyway. Trivial. Anyway it is done. I started to go for sub statemachines like doing a substate machine for the dialing state. You know accept or reject numbers and length. I decide this was overkill. I left that out. Having written programs like this in my job I hope that they can see that I go way beyond the question and what most people can do with it.

It is 5:30 am in the morning. I am going to swim. I will have to post the results of yesterday afternoon and this morning tomorrow. Yesterday was a good day. I studied before church for 4 hours and left the brunch and got to take a short nap then study for another 3 hours. It was a really good day. It kind of took its toll on my son. My wife had him away from the house and without a nap for to long. It was difficult with screaming and crying to get him to bed. I bet he sleeps long this morning. I hope that I get to see him before work.

I spent yesterday morning and this morning preparing an answer for the 2003 question on XP and RUP architecture. I still have part B to go. I can see why this question never made it on to later tests. This is a subjective question. Depending on you point of view the same sentense could be a strenght or a weakness. If this is the reason for removing this question I am in agreement. I had a feel for this question before I started it but now that I have done the deep dive I understand it even better. Describing what is in each process pertaining to how architecture was handled was not a problem. Deciding what was a strength or weakness in each project was terribly subjective to me. Having worked on projects that were RUP project and XP projects I understand both methods well. I find it difficult to not take the feelings about the project and transfer them onto the methods used. XP project for me have always failed in some way. They never scale up to large groups and they result in hacker nirvana. The customer can never keep up with the thought processes or vocabulary of the developers. Developers don`t know how to talk to customers. RUP projects have aways turned out better. The project manager needs to be very good just to keep a RUP project going. Therefore the project, if it can be done by the manager at all, runs very well. So I have always had better projects under the RUP methodology. This is not to say that I think that XP could not work but, I just have not seen it. I take some of that statement back. I have seen it on very small projects of about 5 developers. All the developers had 7+ years experience in the environment already. So it did work in that environment but the productivity gains were made because each developer had there silo of expertise. So, in general, it was not what most people think of XP.

I could not put my opinions into the answer. To put my opinions in the answer would bring a level of uncertainty to how the question would be graded. A question should not be graded about how well you can argue. If the grader accepts the premises you can prove anything true if you are eloquent enough. I was never accused of being eloquent. These questions cannot be about experience. I think that I have more experience on projects than nearly all of my professors. I have been doing software since 1982...That was `82 with basic and assembler. So these guys don`t have anything on me in the way of software experience. I was working professionally in the industry for an educational software company before some of these PhD guys started programming. Anyway I see this question as not a concrete question. It is based on you experience. Some of the students taking this test will have only read about RUP and XP. They may never have worked in the industry. It might be different if others had written on the advantages and disadvantages of each. If someone has written this stuff it is there option and based on experience. Beside, these writings are not on the reading list. An example of perspective is when Kent Beck admits that he writes in the first person because it is his perspective on the ideas in XP in the acknowledgments in the forward of his book Extreme Programming Explained. Larmen in his book Applying UML and patterns goes out of his way to not draw opinion about XP but leaves it up to the reader to draw conclusions. He says that RUP is just a vehicle for presentation about iterative processes for projects that are using OOA/D. I find it reason enough to conclude that this question is unfair if the authors on the PhD reading list avoid such a question.

I have to run to church. It is Easter Morning. My son is getting ready for the Easter Egg Hunt.

Today I went back to do parts of the pessimistic balking strategy over. I remembered that preconditions in ocl are the responsibility of the user of the class and not the class itself. Therefore, It would not be possible to do the check in the precondition. I added methods for the check and pushed the responsibility of checking off onto the user of the buffer class. Then I put a precondition in each method that matched the check method for each method of action on the buffer. That would fulfill the requirements of a balking strategy.

I remembered in the past having trouble finding bounded randomized exponential back-off. I know that is like the access method used by ethernet. I just did not find a reference to this method in the reading list. I am always cautious when I have to go outside of the reading list for a definition. This puts you at risk of an opinionated grader and if they think your answer is full enough. If you have a complete quote from the reading I think that it is more difficult to be at odds with the answer. You were told that these books would provide the answers to the questions. I have found that the actual situation this is not the case. Thinking for yourself is not a defensible position. Avoid it if you can.

It is good Friday. The day that Christ went to the cross. He healed the sick on the Sabbath, I will study on Saturday also. I think that I am supposed to be doing this thing.

I have 2 more parts of the current question to finish. I will try and finish them tomorrow, Saturday. Then I want to do the RUP question on the 2003 exam and the OO design question that follows. These 2 have not been seen on tests since 2003. So hopefully I won`t see them. But, I will be prepared for them if I do.

Still working on the question from 2004. I don`t know how students can do this question. You are ask to give 2 definitions, draw 2 class diagrams, and give 2 essay question answers. I think that none of these are trivial. It took me a few hours just to get one class diagram correct today. It is a fairly simple class diagram with one class of 4-5 methods. The OCL was fairly simple with about 4-5 invariants and post conditions. The drawing of this thing took a few hours. How can I do this on the test? I now have more time but it has taken me hours to get this right. I have more to go. I will continue tomorrow with this question. I did find one other question that is kind of unique. I will try to get it done over the easter weekend.

We have decided not to travel. It is kind of nice that even my extended family are sensitive to me doing this test. So my wife`s family are still gathering on Sunday for brunch. I am going. I think that it is important because God has gotten me this far. He is the reason I am blessed with the ability to work around my problems. Sunday is the day that Christians believe that Christ is risen from the dead. On that day he died for our atonement of sins. He did this so that we might have life. I believe this. I will celebrate this occasion with my family even though I will still be taking some time for preparation. Don`t ask God for rain if you have not plowed your field.

So hopefully I will finish this other question about RUP and software process. I found these other questions on the 2003 exam from April. There are 3 questions of interest on that exam. So I will start on that test next week. Since these have not been ask since 2003 and the other questions have been repeated several times I find myself thinking that they will be repeated again. But, just in case I am going to take a look at these questions. I find more subjectivity on these questions. My strategy will be to quote the hell out of the books on the reading list in hopes of heading off an opinionated grader.

It is late in the morning. I need to get to work. Lucent has not had a stable lab environment for several days now and I am expecting to be called to lab today. So I need to be ready.

So I went to work on putting up the concurrent software design question from 2004. The first subpart of the question is, "What is safety?" The problem with this is the word safety is overloaded. The definition in the book Concurrent Programming in Java by Lea and the book Software Engineering by Sommerville take two different angles to discussing this answer. Sommerville talks about safety critical systems will Lea talks about safety in software mainly as it pertains to synchronization of objects. Both are correct but the definition that you take for safety build in a dependency for the example you need to provide. Granted the question is in the Concurrent Software Design section but that really can be applied to both types of answers. So I deem this a trick question. I would expect that every subpart of this question will have issues like that. The grader will need special knowledge to answer each parts. This question cannot be scripted. On the last test I wrote down the exact words from the Concurrent Programming in Java but gave an example for the Sommerville book. It was wrong or so my adviser said when we reviewed it. I am kind of upset that they cannot make the question more clear about what kind of answer they want. So I have written the answer both ways and they can pick which one they want.

This is pretty much my last question from the pertinent test that I have. I have a great deal of test way back to I think 1992 or 1993. These tests are not even in the form of the other tests. I don`t take them seriously. I am only looking at the tests that are consistent. The test questions that are consistent vary a bit from year to year but have similar attributes. Some questions on some years have more or less subparts. I tried to do something that was representative of both if I could.

Off to my swim.

I have one more question to finish from the September 2004 exam. The question is on concurrency. This is similar to other years. On the years that don`t have this question they have the deadlock question. This year has sub questions on safety and liveness. This is the question I have had trouble with in the past because the wording of the question talks about pessimistic, baulking strategy. As I remember the 2 terms did not go together some how for me. When I review the question tomorrow we will see what I thought the trouble was. Look for an update tomorrow.

Today I accomplished putting part C from the Formal Specifications and Modeling question. This is from the same exam. It is the same question as other years except on other years part B was removed and part C became B. To reiterate this question was on the 2004 exam. I was able to do this pretty well. I didn`t remember how to reference and instance variable whether you reference it with the context of the super class or the subclass when you want to put a stipulation on the subclass that is manifested in the instance variable of the superclass. This turns out to be beautifully written up in the advanced section of "The Object Constraint Language Second Edition" by Jos Warmer and Anneke Kleppe. After taking a look at that page it was easy to get the write OCL statements. There may be an easier way to represent the types of a faculty member but I chose the subclasses because I thought that it would be more like real life. I just would not rather put up an answer just to have it answered. These questions mean something to me. It shows that I really can do this stuff. You don`t know how many times I have heard from a teacher that "You just did not study." Well often times I studied maybe 5 times as much as the other students. I admit there are some things that do come easily to me because I think different. Some things I have and advantage that other don`t have. My advantage is in speed or accuracy. I it just when I don`t have an advantage that the deficiency is great and the effort is great to overcome it. Anyway, this question is done and the answer and the memory are in my notebooks for maybe the 2nd or 3rd time.

I showed my website to one of my coworkers who has a son that is learning disabled similarly to me. He and others that see my website cannot believe that the administration would not see the PhD qualities in myself. He said that they have to pass you even if your test is not exactly the best. You have legal grounds that show that their test just is incapable of testing your abilities. Just look at your career. You are in a very small percentage of individuals as far as their careers. I guess that I agree I told him. I have difficulty showing them. He says that I should remember that this is just an artificial hoop. Thanks I said.

People don`t always see it this way. My father at times does not see it this way. He does keep me going. He says that you can do just as well as anyone. But, why do you put yourself through such pain. You have nothing to prove. I guess I don`t. It is not an issue of money, success or anything else like that. It is the helping of people and the not waisting my skills. But, to not waist my skills I must often have the credentials to get my foot in the door. I have already gone beyond the foot in the door stage while trying to get my credentials but it seems fitting to finish. I will keep it up. They will have to kick me out first. Even then I may not give up. It "is" something to do. If I was anyone else I would have quit when they told my parents I would never go to college. But, I didn`t because they never quit on me. I even continued even when they thought I was done. Because, I have not done what I came here to do yet even though I don`t know what that is yet. God will tell me someday.

The daylight savings time has really gotten the best of us. Today was the day that was in the past the day that time changed. Our atomic clocks changed. Hmmm..thought they were getting time from a radio signal. They didn`t work when we change when we were going to do the time change. Now they have changed when we used to do the time change. Just another exercise in futility. A clock that changes its time automatically. Hmmm.

I uploaded the answer to the September 2004 Lifecycle process question. I can see how this question can have a large amount of subjectivity to it. They questions are ask in a way that could promote writing subjectively. The wide rang of commentary on the subjects also means that there are differing opinions on many of the questions in reading that you might do in books or on the web. I chose a strategy of staying to the quotes for answer the questions on my website. The problem with this is being able to answer questions on the test using quotes. I know that this is an objective stated in the test but I with my learning disability don`t link memories with author names. I have to do some sort of association or repetition to remember the names. In this instance just the act of looking up and retyping the name over and over in the reference section has made remembering the names easier. I reference the same name several times in most cases This was a chore on previous test that was riddled with error. I never got the names right. I avoided putting names on the test. This was to my detriment. The problem is when you quote and opinion of an author and cannot remember the name the opinion becomes your own. Opinions are never a good thing on questions where there is some amount of subjectivity. The opinion position is not defensible no mater how smart you are or can think for yourself. Even if all the opinions you find by other authors are wrong in your eyes just put down the reference. Name dropping brings credibility to an opinion answer if the opinions are those of a respected author even if he is wrong.

This was the last major flavor of question on the test. I am going to go ahead and answer two more questions from the 2004 test because they are different than other years. I am not sure why they were removed or not used on later exams but I plan on giving them a go anyway. Maybe they were to difficult for the...regular students.

Well 2 weeks to go. 2 more questions. I can get them done in the next 5 days. Leaves me 5 days to review. I can just print my pages on the site and review from them. As I have said before, the body of knowledge is vast. If you want someone to fail you could engineer that failure. I hope that we don`t have questions that I have not seen before. Mentally that will blow it for me. Even if I know the information I will not have done the organization hours to answer it effectively. We will see. If they intend to fail me on purpose, they can. We will see what they do.

Study group this morning. Not sure if I really need to go. I haven`t gotten much out of it. I hope that I have helped them.