WHEN:

December, 10-15

WHERE:

Kyiv Polytechnic Institute, bld. #6, room 235

(1st floor, near Goethe Institute, "Kvazar-Micro" plaque)

Kvazar Education Centre: [http://edu.kvazar-micro.com/education/it/ms/2349.php] (mistakenly scheduled at Dec., 17th)

Vendor's site: [http://www.microsoft.com/learning/syllabi/en-us/2349bfinal.mspx]

A temporary suspension of discoveries

Another trainer, now of English descend. Now yours truly can at least to have a pleasure to hear a true Anglo-Saxon pronunciation.

All evening spent in a company of colleagues at Sachsenhausen. Apfelwein appeared to be a sort of white light liquid, which is mixed either with carbon water OR fanta by aborigines. I've tried both ways. Also i've tried some Hessian traditional food, which name I've already forgotten. As well, I've forgotten the name of the tavern, but is still can be recovered from a box of matches I've got there as a present.

Cheers

20071014

Standing alone at a noisy bus stop, under spare autumn rain, not unlikely to turn into snow sometimes, i was feeling somewhat unsure was it that smart idea to put on a light wind-coat for a two-week trip. After 40 minutes of such doubtness, a company car has finally arrived and took me to BPK airport. (Was it the fact that the former was a business-class Audi, that excuses a risk for me to get sick before a plane?). Having often visited Boryspil' airport to meet one little K(reature) from her european voyages made me quite familiar with this crowded and strange place, where the time is seemingly standing still for decades in a form of soviet-era frescoe depicting a muscle Mens'Healthy Atlantis, flying toward the West (probably escaping from a deformed red sea-star behind his back).

Passing ukraining guards appeared to be a relatively small deal (specifically, in comparance with passing a border of a German embassy, where one would have to take off a belt, empty pockets and, in advance, leave his cell phone at home). Waiting in line before an exit gate took a little longer, but what's good, having passed the latter, one get directly to the plane (which for me shows how amazing is ukrainian technological advance).

Lufthansa was kind enough to provide me a fresh issue of FT, a moderatly fresh A-320 to get to FRA-port, a 5c eco seat (in a row just after biz.), a hot rice with a meat, a smiling turkish stuard and a smiling alike nordic stuardesse, a cup of instant coffee and a full glass of red wine. In return for these goodnesses, i've stolen an emergency instructions card (which i promise to study thoroughly and return on a back trip).

Here i've to notice that flying on a jet was a big deal of excitement. The last time i had such experience was in ancient 1990 (taking a trip from the same Boryspil' to syberian Orenburg by a sowietische Tupolev 134) wich for now roughly means: 'never'. The board crew, including a captain Peter, was wonderfully tolkative, repeating each their phrase in undesrtandable to me anglo-saxon manner.

Fraport hapened to be a surprisingly busy place. (A collegue of mine has encountered 17 planes in the sky at a time, but fixing this glorious moment in JPEG was evidently beyond the technical abilities of his smart phone). It took two buses to take the whole freight of our Airbus into the airport building. There one should follow a signs with a suitcase and wait another half an hour for his very suitcase to arrive. After that, another 30 sec. it takes to pass a german guard and get rightly to the railway station.

The most tricky part when using F.am M. public transportation is a ticket purchase. Luckily, i was well virtually prepared for such transaction, so that could not only buy a single ticket myself, but to instruct a strangers to do this. Here is how to do this:

- Choose your destination on a table (50 is good for the whole Fra-city)
- Dial it on a keypad
- Select a ticket type with a dedicated button (the top-most one is for 'Einzelfahrt' -- a one-time ticket for 3.55 Euro or 2.20 Euro during non-rush hours, closer to the bottom there is a 'Wochenkarte' -- a weekly ticket which costs just 20.10 Euro)
- Supply a cash (both coins and notes are accepted, but the bad news is that only small notes will be taken, otherwise, one will have to ask for a change in a nearby bank for a fee)

It took just two stops (or roughly 10 minutes) to get to our Niederrad by S-Bahn route 9. Another 20 minutes it took to find an NH hotel. And another thousand+ Euro it took to save a place there for a next two weeks. All in all, the hotel looks prettier in reality that it is on a web page (another argument against virtual world for which i've got addicted so much).

All that could fit into remaining of a day was to walk around the business city (yes, we are lucky to live in a very Frankfurt business quarters!), notice that there far more planes in the sky than people on streets. (Even rabits there are more numerous than people, but i am not so sure about the former in comparence with planes.) Another discovery was that the destination of our business trip was actually a 5 minutes on foot from our hotel: a moder faceless skyscraper (Herriot's 1), which can be destinguished from it's neighbours only by front-shields with company names.

20071015

Training went as expected, held by a younger guy Achim from Essen and an experienced lady Tiina of Finnish origin (there should be Nokia HQ nearby, so no surprise of her knowledge of GSM markets) (she also assured that Finland is the only land where her name is spelled with a double-i). Amazing was a coffee machine with a great choice of cartridges and panorame of the city skyline throught a glass walls. At the dining hall i was pleasently surprised to meet a familiar guy N., whose trainings i've attended at least three times in a goddamned motherland.

At the evening we went to the downtown -- it tooke another 3 stations by S-9, which shows that we're living almost in the center of the city (if only we could swim through the Maine to get there on foot). The city to me has something in common with Prague and almost nothing in common with Warsaw. There big stores with clothes, but book shops are small and rare. Visually, there are more german-speakers than germans all around. Muscovian pronounce is being heard quite often (including a cash-desk woman in a nearby Aldi store). At the end i've sent my collegue home and spend the rest of the evening in the city by attending a local KFC a doing some cycles around the Hauptwasche quarters.

Cheers.

If you are new to computer programming -OR- you are experienced programmer and would like to get in touch with Microsoft .Net Framework world, here is something interesting for you:

Programming with C#

Course 2124—Five days—Instructor-led

5 days course is scheduled on 27 of August, Kvazar-Micro Education Centre

Taking another Microsoft exam blatantly demostrates how different is a day-to-day programming experience with ASP.Net and a formal requirements of certification: till the very end of the exam session, when the thrilling «Congratulations...» screen apperared, I wasn't quite sure about my chances to pass it.

Here some of the topics were covered:

• mobile controls (to be hones, i've never used any),
• master pages,
• membership (authorization, profile),
• deployment (compiling, publishing),
• localization (as for me, related question has some deviation from the best practices, when instead of using declarative syntax for implicit user interface translation, it was offering to access resources in code as a single correct option),
• configuration,
• a little bit about accessing SQL Server data with ADO.Net classes,
• a single question about XML and schema validation,
• Web parts,
• usage of Web Site Administration Tool.

To my surprise, there were no single mention of data binding expressions (for me, this is corner-stone of the whole ASP.Net 2.0 hype). Also, the correct usage of standard controls wasn't adequately addressed. Nor the understanding of Page life-cycle -OR- event system was tested.

From organisation point, the time given for exam was a way too much, as for me. They give 2.5 hour (including extra 30 min. for non-english examinee). I was done in an hour, having reviewed 45 all question twice.

All in all, my score is 876 of 1000 (while a passing score is 700). The chances are high i'll got my MCT in some months.

2124—relatively old Microsoft course, appeared to be quite challenging to teach, to my surprise. Firstly, it covers some basic concepts in a context of Microsoft .Net framework, such as: Object-Oriented foundation, thorough value-types versus reference-types excurses, tightly coupled with a very essense of computer hardware design; introduction to delegates—a cultural shock for someone used to procedural way of programming; operators overlodaing semantics etc.—matters to which a usual programmer pays a little to no attention nowadays.

Some methodological findings:

• Explain things as they appear ad-hoc, even before they are «officially» scheduled in the track of course. This gives another chance to repeat explanation once again and thus providing a theoretical overview of a given subject after students got a practical experience with it
• Do NOT strictly follow provided code excercises. Instead, demosntrate a real-world and real-time programming for the audience. For instance, instead of playing with an official dull console-based code silently, we took challenge to program a realistic windows forms based application. This way we've managed together to find some really odd behavior when overloading == (equality) operator— a didactic lesson which creators of a course haven't even dreamed about!
• Introduce an «alternative» tools. Students were really impressed by Reflector, showing them disassembled code of a very core of Base Class Library. CLR Profiler with it's amazing visualisation of .Net object creation and deletion—an impressive illustration to what is the role of Garbage Collector in the framework. Finally, two students have even prefered SharpDevelop to VisualStudio as a development environment.

.. at the entrance to the Askold Grave just in front of the gazebo, at the level of the ground at right noticed a black iron plaque  with a dedication matters enscribed. And it reveales something interesting. To my surprise, the hidden path between Glory park and Peoples' friendship arc should be attributed to a glorious 1936-1937 .. This ancientness explains a lot of the devastation along the road .. What it doesn't explain is an enormous number of young lovers hiding in plants and not bothering to notice an occassional traveller.