Author Archives: Jeanne Boyarsky

sybex’s new test bank website

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On November 14, 2024, switched to new test bank software. That means the mock exams and flashcards and the like are now on a new website.

If you are registering for the first time

Create an account

  1. Go to study.learning.wiley.com
  2. Click to create a new account

Register your book

  1. Click “Redeem Test Bank”
  2. Choose Sybex and the book you are using.
  3. Then answer a question about the book and you are in. The old PIN code system is no longer used

If you were already using the old site

  1. Go to study.learning.wiley.com
  2. Click to create a new account
  3. Login using your credentials from the old site

Note that any books you had registered that haven’t expired yet will appear. However, your progress/history on them will not.

Different than Real Exam

Be aware that the exam software is different than on the real exam. For example, the real exam lets you flag questions for later, navigate to specific questions, or end the exam from any question.

Day 13 of BlueSky; thoughts so far

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I signed up for Bluesky on November 2nd. Why then you ask? I had “try Bluesky or Threads” on my to do list for a long time. I was waiting until I had time to do it. Which meant finishing Java OCP 21 Certified Professional Study Guide and submitting all Word document drafts of Real-World Java: Helping You Navigate the Java Ecosystem. After that I started catching up on the many things I want to do. It was easy to decide between the two platforms. I remembered a number of Brazilian users had started using Bluesky when X temporarily banned their country. And by November 2nd, tech twitter had started moving over as well.

I do use Mastodon but it doesn’t fulfill the same need for me. For example, plain text search is something I use on Twitter/X and Bluesky that Mastodon does not have. So now I check three social media sites periodically. Some duplication; some differences in perspective.

Here is where I am right now. I’m sure this will change over time, but at just under two weeks, it is enough to feel comfortable.

Security

The only option for two factor is to receive an email with the two factor code, such as 5HAGF-MBYB1, and type it in. (I could copy paste in the browser, but not always in apps). Kinda annoying, but I’m set up now.

Youc an also set up application passwords instead of giving a third party application your real password which is nice.

Starter pack

Starter packs are groups of people you can follow with “follow all” to quickly get started. I followed the Java Champions starter pack. I also had some accounts I had stored in my to do list of people who gave their handles when they left Twitter/X that I was following. After I joined, Sharat created Java Community Starter Packs One and Two.

You can see all starter packs here and search/filter for what you are interested in.

Lists

In addition to my following feed, I subscribed to two lists. One on Cyber Security and one on US Politics. Both are things I want to check periodically but don’t need in my main feed. I expect to add more lists over time.

iPhone client

The official Bluesky Social app works great on the phone.

Mac client

While you can use the official Bluesky app, it is vey clearly an iPhone app. It’s the size of an iPhone which is very much not what I want on my computer. However, I was happy with the browser tab on a computer. I just didn’t want it in my main browser window with all the other stuff I aspire to look at :).

I asked on BlueSky and Josh Long had a great idea. On Safari on Mac, you can choose File > Add to Dock to get a shortcut for just that browser tab. Opening it is like a full screen app. Perfect. Oddly I can’t upload images to my posts so I use the main browser when I want to do that but the docked tab for read/write in general.

iPad client

While you can use the official Bluesky app, it is vey clearly an iPhone app. It’s the size of an iPhone and making it bigger just makes the font huge rather than being reactive. Also, I couldn’t type on the dummy iPhone keyboard. I abandoned that approach almost immediately.

I also tried Graysky. I couldn’t get it to let me log in with two factor and gave up on that too.

iPad has a similar approach to Mac for storing a browser link. However, it opened as a tab my main browser which is what I wanted to avoid! Additionally, I want to see notifications on my Ipad which a browser doesn’t do.

Then I tried the Skeets app which is working great for me. There’s a free and paid version. So far, the free version does everything I want.

PASSED! Jeanne’s Experience Taking the SAFe ScrumMaster exam.

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Today I took the SAFe 6.0 ScrumMaster certification and passed with a score of 80%. Passing is 73%. I was optimizing for passing quickly and not investing a lot of time rather than a high score though.

My path to certification

As background, I’ve been a part time SM (and rest of the time developer) for over a decade and been on a SAFe team for a while.

  • Oct 21-24 – took SAFe6 training course – half a day each of the four days. It was online and I felt myself absorbing less each day. It’s hard to pay attention to people talking online for that long every day. I also felt the energy level of fellow students dropping both in the main classroom and in the breakouts. Which became a negative feedback loop.
  • Oct 24 – I was also helping get ready for a conference so my brain was somewhat distracted
  • Oct 25-27 – went on vacation. Didn’t think about SAFe or work at all
  • Oct 28-29 – attended/spoke at/helped run an agile conference. Further distanced myself from class with more information on the topic of agile that wasn’t safe.
  • Oct 30 – went to NYC Scrum user group. Awesome talk but again more info on the topic of agile that wasn’t safe. Took first practice test when I got home (and was tired.). Got at 80%. Good enough. it’s a pass.
  • Oct 31 – re-read PDF from class and then took real exam in between trick or treaters. Tired and distracted but glad to be done. Pass!

In class they advised us to practice until getting a 90% on the pracitce exam. I did not follow this advice. It’s only $50 for a retake so better to try the real one and see what happened rather than

I didn’t want to leave this for the weekend because I want to spend a bunch of time working on my upcoming book so need to be thinking about Java. Also, you have to take it within 30 days and I’m not going to find myself with more time if I wait.

The exam

All questions were single answer multiple choice with four possible answers. All of them were relatively short which was a pleasure after my experience with the Java 21 exam!

Some were very easy. Some had two reasonable sounding answers. For a number of them you had to know how SAFe would handle the scenario even if that’s not how another agile framework would.

Logistics

The exam is non proctored and you don’t have to show your environment on camera. It was nice not to have to clean up all the programming books and papers around me. The environment is exactly the same as the practice tests one.

After the exam

You get a score report with the % right for each category. This part looks like the report for the practice exam. Unlike the practice exam, you don’t see the questions and which ones you got wrong specifically.

Timing

As I mentioned in my experience with the Java 21 exam blog, I typically finish exams with lots of time to spare. This was a 90 minute exam. I finished my first pass in 34 minutes and my second (to clean up the ones I was unsure of) in 20. really a little less sinceI got up for trick or treaters a few times.