I'm Ever Olano, an MCP!

where MCP = Microsoft Certified Professional. I just passed the 70-536 exam today. Yipee!!! Thanks to my experience (.NET or not), I passed with a respectable score of 912 (passing is 700. I am assuming perfect score is 1000). There were so many questions that were not discussed in the book. So I can see how a person with not enough experience would really struggle. I actually did panic. For many of the questions, I was just making educated guesses. I had to go over each one again. And I still had like 19 questions marked for review. That means, I wasn't 100% sure that I answered those 19 correctly. 19 out of 45. That's how bad it was. Although I had a feeling I was going to pass, I didn't think I would score that high. This is reminiscent of the Series 50-something exam that I took a couple of years ago, when I was still dreaming of becoming a successful variable life insurance agent. :)

Among the questions I wasn't sure about, the ones that stood out where those on serialization. But strangely enough, I got a perfect score in that category. I'm not complaining. :)

This is actually my second MCP exam, the first one being a TCP/IP one (I think), which I also passed (thank you very much!), around 6+ years ago, which was part of the MCSE track. Who knows what I was thinking back then? I'm a developer and I was targetting MCSE. Weird. Maybe there wasn't any developer track back then?

Anyway, so, here I am, an OPM artist and an MCP! Nice combo, eh! I wonder what tomorrow will bring. :)

Legoland, Universal Studios, Fun!

We just got back. Taking advantage of the Christmas break, we, err, I drove down to SoCal to take the kids (and ourselves) to Legoland and Universal Studios. We had fun. The kids particularly enjoyed the playgrounds as they could play freely. They also enjoyed the ball-shooting place at the Nickeledeon area at Universal. Janelle would gather balls like crazy and put them in her bucket so she could fill the ball-volcano thingie. Jed absolutely loved shooting water at people on the boats in the Pirate Shores area at Legoland. Jing and I enjoyed those, too. The children in us came out. :)

I had more fun now than past visits to theme parks and I can think of at least three reasons:

1. It was gloomy most of the time. So, we weren't exposed to the sun's heat that much.
2. Having been watching my weight, I welcomed the ceaseless walking. The muscles in my arms also welcomed Janelle's weight every time she had to be carried.
3. Unlike previous times, I did not feel obligated (by myself) to both film and take pictures of everything. I took pictures and/or filmed only when I felt like it. It turned out to be more enjoyable. We still managed to fill up our 256 MB Compact Flash card though. So, we had to buy another one. I will post some of the pictures on the galleries when I get the chance.

I'm Ever Olano, an OPM artist. :)

I saw this sometime back and ran into it again. Just thought I'd put a link to it from here.

http://www.opmdb.com/artist_profile.php?artist_id=1814

It's my profile on the official registry of OPM (Original Pilipino Music) artists. To date, I only have one song... heh... nice. It's called Pinapangarap. It was recorded in 1993 by Manilyn Reynes. I met her and would-be hubby Aljon Jimenez personally but I missed the recording of my song. I think she did it the day before. I saw her record two other songs from the same album ("Mula Sa Puso") and it was so funny how the producer (I assume) got hung up on the word "Kung" and kept asking her to redo it. He wanted to hear the "ng" part. Apparently, Manilyn wasn't enunciating it loudly enough. That single-syllable word took so many "takes" she started whining like a little child. :)

It's been 13+ long years. I wonder how I can have someone cover it today. I'm sure it would be a big hit! :) I'm still disappointed Octo Arts would not release it as a single. :(

I actually wrote the lyrics, too. So, I sent them a message asking them to put me down as the lyricist. I hope they respond. Here are the words to the song, in case you're interested. As you will see, they made some changes in the final version, without my permission. Hmph! Just kidding. I didn't and still don't really mind it. I still would have preferred magkaulayaw and balewala to stay though. Magkaulayaw is stronger than Magkasuyo. And balewala rhymes with 'Di kaya. Plus, 'di mo pansin sounds a little juvenile, don't you think? Admittedly though, I do not know the official definition of Magkaulayaw. I just stole it from one of Dingdong Avanzado's songs. :)

Pinapangarap

Giliw ko, tanong ng puso ko

Ako kaya'y nasa isip mo sa bawat saglit?

Nais ko, sana'y malaman mo (Original: Nais ko lang malaman mo)

Mga pangarap ko para sa 'ting (Original: ating) dalawa.

Chorus:

Pinapangarap ko, ikaw lamang at ako

Magkasuyo (Original: Magkaulayaw) sa habangbuhay.

Paano matutupad kung ayaw mo (rin lang/namang) magtapat, sinta?

Ako'y naghihintay.

Giliw ko, ano't nagtatagal?

Ako kaya'y may pag-asa pa sa puso mo?

'Di kaya, sadyang 'di mo pansin (Original: sadyang balewala)

At 'di mo magawang sabihin nang hindi ako masasaktan.

(Repeat Chorus)

Instrumental...

(Repeat Chorus through "...magtapat")

(Repeat Chrorus except last line)

Thanks for reading (and singing?). Sure, you can get my autograph. Just don't sell it on eBay. :)
Ever