I was doing annual papers cleaning back in the Hanuka/X-mas days and found a voucher for one discounted Microsoft Certificatied Professional exam, which I completely forgot about and which was about to expire at December 31. So I decided to give it a try. I chose 70-315 exam (Web apps with C#), spent a week preparing (using plain old good MSDN) and went to a Pearson Vue test center, which I conveniently found to be located the same street where I work (Maskit street in Herzliya Pituach).
It was cool. Well, actually it was hot, I mean the weather. It was I believe about +30°C that day in Tel-Aviv area and I still didn't get used to such New Year weather. The exam went ok, I passed with a score 905 out of 1000, which is apparently not bad. I know I failed on several freaking DataSet related questions, but the rest were pretty easy.
So now I'm MCP in addition to being MVP, funny acronyms. I'm kinda new to this stuff and have no idea what's a value of that. Actually I'm pretty skeptical about certification in software development, but I don't think I could pass the exam with no hands-on experience in ASP.NET, the questions weren't theoretical at all.
Oh, and happy New Year (or happy New Civil Year as it's called here down in Israel)!