Finally!

Ye Gum Noki

MCSE: Security.... What a long strange trip it's been.

Passed 298 and 299 this morning.

I was strong on 298 with a 973. 5 testlets and 35 questions. Reading all the background on the first testlet took a lot of time for me and I finished that one with about 3 minutes to go. Too close for comfort and kind of stressful. For the second one, I just skimmed over the background info and went to the questions quicker and that seemed to help, so for the last three, I went straight to the questions, then wnet back to the background info for specific info. And that worked really well for me. But almost all of the background stuff is useful info for answersing the questions so if you use this method, be careful not to miss anything. It was almost like a graduation exercise, wrapping lots of topics into one exam. I liked the format and to be honest, I didn't think I missed a single question, but I obviously I did. It would have been nice to go out with a perfect score.

299 was very difficult for me with a 786. I think I must have been a little tired from taking the previous test becauseI had trouble concentrating and struggled to REALLY understand some of the longer questions with long answers. 30 questions which seemed OK when it started but I kept makring Questions for review and then started trying to figure out how many I could miss and still pass. I took an hour and 10 minutes and when I was done, felt like it could go either way. Lots of PKI, CA and IPSec questions. I swear there were a few terms I had never seen before, anywhere, so I don't know what that was about.

Also I found it interesting that both exams referenced SUS instead of WSUS, not that itmade a great deal of difference.

Anyway, glad that is behind me. Now I can really hammer the folks that work for me that have been slacking on their MCSEs because the boss hadn't finished his...

Thanks to all who post here. It's a great site with fantastic resouces and people!

Good luck,

ajs1976

congrats