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.