Announcing our new OCP Java 21 1Z0-830 Exam Study Guide!

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OCP 21 Announcement

Jeanne and I thrilled to announce our new Java OCP 21 Study Guide is coming out soon! This is based on the recently announced Oracle 1Z0-830 Exam for Java 21. Preorders starting now!

You can be confident when purchasing our book that it contains everything you need to pass the exam. In fact, we were part of a select group that worked with Oracle to help develop and refine the exam. We even helped kick JDBC off the exam (as it only tested obscure topics), so you have one less thing to study!

What’s new about the 1Z0-830 Java 21 exam? Obviously new features of Java 21 like virtual threads, sequenced collections, and much broader support for pattern matching are covered. What’s the same? The format (50 questions), time (90 minutes), and passing score (68%) are the same as the previous exam.

Jeanne and I are nearly done writing the book so expect this in book stores by the end of the year! We’ll continue to post updates on the OCP 21 Book page.

less than successfully attempting to buy us open 2024 tickets

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Every year I buy two tickets to the US Open. One evening and one day. It’s always been easy. And then there is this year. I half succeeded.

Failing at the American Express Presale

I tried after work (not at 9am) to buy my tickets during the American Express pre-sale. This is when I’ve always bought my tickets. It’s not Comic Con where I have my browser open at the exact moment. By the time i got online, there were no tickets; only “verified resale.” This article suggests had I tried in the morning, I’d have been aggravated and still possibly not have had tickets.

Attempting during regular sale

I know more tickets are released for regular sale. I tried again today after work, the first day of regular sale. I was able to buy an evening ticket for Ashe. However, all the non-resale tickets were single seats and there weren’t a lot.

I think the day tickets are sold out. I say I think because this is the process:

  1. Go to US Open individual tickets page or Ticketmaster tennis page
  2. Click “Join queue”
  3. Verify identity by entering code from text or email
  4. Accept terms of service and that using “All-In” pricing which includes all fees
  5. Observe all tickets are “Verified Resale”
  6. Want to try a different ticket type or date. Start over with step 1. That’s right. You have to authenticate for EVERY search.

I checked online and people who were online at 9am also had problems. I gave up.

Surrounding with Double Quotes in IntelliJ

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IntellIJ has a feature where you can surround a String with double quotes by simply pressing “. Here’s how:

  1. Select the text you want in quotes
  2. Press “

There’s a video showing the feature.

However, this may appear not to work on your machine. There are two possible causes

Cause #1: The feature is off

Go into your IDE settings and choose

  1. Editor
  2. General
  3. Smart Keys
  4. Check “Surround selection on typing quote or brace”

Cause #2: Keyboard mapping

I’m on a Mac and the feature worked for single quotes and not double quotes. How odd. It’s clearly not cause #1 since it works for single quotes.

I then tried on my laptop keyboard and it worked with double quotes. So clearly the problem was my keyboard! Somehow it was being treated as an international keyboard instead of US. I remapped by going to “Keyboard” on Mac system settings and choosing “setup keyboard.”

Once I did this, the feature worked consistently on both keyboards.

Makes me wonder how people with non-US keyboards are supposed to use the feature!