WGU Progress Thread

joehalford01

Hey guys,

I was going to post another random question and decided it might be best to start my own WGU thread. I'm going to be finished with my two math classes by the end of the month and I'm going to need to accelerate in some more classes. When I talked to my mentor last week, he wanted me to add in the CIW XHTML class and the javascript classes. I have four months left in the semester though, so I'm thinking this might be a good time to break off the 70-640. If I run into trouble with it, I won't be stressing about any other classes I still need to complete. I also work with active directory quite a bit at work and it's going to be really helpful with the windows 7 deployment we are doing (as far as getting more use out of it). What do you guys think?

bryanthetechie

Just make sure that your mentor doesn't add them to your course of study until you are ready to take the exams. They can open up the material for you to use without adding it to the CoS. Once they add it, you have to take it and pass it or it screws up your On-Time Performance and can disqualify you from financial aid.

joehalford01

He did add it to my semester. I do have four months though, so I should have plenty of time. I can't wait to dive into this beast. I'll keep you guys posted on how I find the material.

joehalford01

GAC1 done! Thank god, this class was so irritating. It's really annoying having to go back and learn pre algebra when I've already been through calculus. Now I just need to wait and see if my work for HHT1 gets accepted and I can just focus on the 70-640. My books are on their way from Amazon, I ordered the MCTS Training Kit Book, Don Poulton's 70-640 Cert guide, and Darril Gibson's Portable command guide. Enrolled in Labsim and Ucertify too, so it looks like I'll be busy.

Hypntick

Technet and build your own VM lab. Couple those with the MS press book and some lite labsim and you'll be golden. Good luck on the 640, the MS tests are rough to say the least.

joehalford01

Hypntick wrote: »

Technet and build your own VM lab. Couple those with the MS press book and some lite labsim and you'll be golden. Good luck on the 640, the MS tests are rough to say the least.

Already got my lab set-up, I'm running 16GB of Ram and an i7, downloaded vmware workstation and 2008 R2 from msndaa software. Thanks!

joehalford01

I'm finally digging into this microsoft press book. I think I'm digging Server core.

Psoasman

joehalford01 wrote: »

I'm finally digging into this microsoft press book. I think I'm digging Server core.

Server Core is pretty cool. Make sure you lab with it for the exam.

joehalford01

Definitely, I'm already thinking through some of the uses for work. I'm thinking we could use it with one of our older servers as a simple back-up DC in case the main one goes down. I'll definitely be spending some time with it.

joehalford01

What did you guys think of Labsim for the 70-640? These two guys are so lame, I'm having trouble watching them. I'm more of a reader anyways. I'm thinking I might just watch the portions on the sections of the book I find difficult.

Psoasman

joehalford01 wrote: »

What did you guys think of Labsim for the 70-640? These two guys are so lame, I'm having trouble watching them. I'm more of a reader anyways. I'm thinking I might just watch the portions on the sections of the book I find difficult.

I didn't mind Andy so much, except for the mouth thing. The other guy is creepy. During the CS part, he had this scowl on his face and was talking like he was scolding his audience. I skipped through most of that.
I find the notes useful, I copy them to word and print 'em out. The hands-on labs are also good.
The guy, Zachary, is good for the 642, btw. Talks like he knows what he's talking about.

joehalford01

70-640 scheduled for tomorrow morning! I feel like I'm living eating breathing active directory right now...

Psoasman

joehalford01 wrote: »

70-640 scheduled for tomorrow morning! I feel like I'm living eating breathing active directory right now...

Good luck! I used to wake up in the morning and my first thought was Group Policy,when studying for this exam. Those notes that LabSim provides are very useful. I'd take a look through those today.

Nobylspoon

joehalford01 wrote: »

What did you guys think of Labsim for the 70-640? These two guys are so lame, I'm having trouble watching them. I'm more of a reader anyways. I'm thinking I might just watch the portions on the sections of the book I find difficult.

I like the main guy but the guy that covers the R2 material is like a robot. I had such a hard time paying attention to his videos. I was happy with the CBT Nuggets videos but they were not provided by WGU.

Nobylspoon

joehalford01 wrote: »

70-640 scheduled for tomorrow morning! I feel like I'm living eating breathing active directory right now...

Best of luck! Will you be going right into 70-642 next or work on another class?

mypcrepairguy

joehalford01 wrote: »

70-640 scheduled for tomorrow morning! I feel like I'm living eating breathing active directory right now...

Good luck!
That exam kicked my but first time around. Hopefully it will be better for you!

Edit: I should probably update my sig...but no time...I must complete BHV1!

N2IT

Good luck Joe!

joehalford01

I did it! Scored a 746. Not as high as I would have liked but a pass is a pass. That test was a hard one, I don't think I'll ever sweat a Comptia exam again in comparison. Thanks for all of the encouragement guys, it's awesome seeing other people pass these things. Keeps me going.

joehalford01

Nobylspoon wrote: »

Best of luck! Will you be going right into 70-642 next or work on another class?

Not sure, I've got to finish up this HHT1 Finite math class and then decide what to do next. I think I'm going to take a couple other classes before jumping into the 70-642. I touch this stuff almost everyday at work so I'm not too afraid of material slipping out of my mind.

joehalford01

As far as questions go:
I had a lot of certificate services and DNS.

Powershell and cmd line questions gravitated towards the obscure. I think you'd be better off knowing the basics of each command and syntax, and using that to estimate what the most likely answer is. You eventually realize that some switches just make sense even though you don't "know" them by heart.

I barely touched RMS and FS and I'm glad I didn't spend a lot of time, the handful of questions asked we're very very specific and I would not have gotten them even if I had studied these hard.

Know your sites and services and group policy pretty well as well. It seemed like knowing what to do in a scenario rather than the exact syntax and button to click was what helped me the most.

So glad this one is over!