Chicago

That’s right, you’re looking at real Chicago style pizza, albeit through the lens of a mediocre camera phone. I just got back yesterday from the CompTIA Linux+ Certification item writing workshop that began on Monday.  I was actually supposed to get back today, but I moved the flight up after hearing that we were ahead of schedule on our work and that Utah was expecting a snow storm this morning.  Unfortunately, this is all I have as far as photos.  I did see downtown and Lake Michigan on the flight in, but there wasn’t much time for sightseeing.

The workshop went pretty well.  It basically consisted of writing multiple choice questions independently for part of the day, and then splitting into two groups to review and approve the pool of questions written.  We didn’t exactly sit and make up questions, they had an outline of ‘objectives’ that covered all of the topics they wanted to test on.  I remember being invited to apply for the job task analysis they used to create the outline, but it was held the week of our wedding. I suppose I made the correct choice in not attending that one 😉

The main boss lady who visited the class a few times and took us out to eat said that the test refresh couldn’t have come at a better time. Apparently this certification is on the list for linux admins in the armed forces, and there is a big push for them all to be certified.

There were eight others who attended, so while I can only lay claim to about 1/9th of the questions, I saw, edited, and approved of about half of what will go on the test.  Of course all of that is top secret and I had to sign a contract because there is a whole industry around preparing people for these tests and people would pay pretty well for the objectives and test specifics.

In all, it was a good trip, and I’d be happy to do it again. I can’t say I’d want to do it for a living though. Writing questions gets boring after awhile.