Procrastination/Preparation
Last August, I received an email from AWS informing me my AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate certification was due to be re-certified. I promptly ignored the email and thought, “I’ve got 6 months, nothing to worry about now.” I got the same email last November and thought the same thing as in August, “I’ve got 3 months, nothing to worry about now.”
Then the email in January came telling me I had 1 month to re-certify. I really didn’t want to lose my original date of obtaining the certification. I had previously been considering studying for the AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Professional and take that exam (which would re-certify the Associate level along with earning the Professional level), but I didn’t have enough time to prepare for that exam with less than a month to go.
So I took a practice test on A Cloud Guru and scored 86%. I scheduled the exam on the PSI website for 2 weeks prior to the certification expiration for the off chance that I would somehow fail the exam. Good thing I had planned for the possibility of something going wrong.
Exam day (or so I thought)
I arrived at the PSI exam center with plenty of time and was prepared to take the exam. I was in the middle of the check-in process when the lady working there told me there was a problem. “The system” wouldn’t upload my photo to validate who I was to compare to my driver’s license. She called PSI tech support and was told that this issue had been going on all day for AWS Certification exams. She then told me that I wasn’t going to like what she said next, “You won’t be able to take the exam today because of this issue.” She gave me a little slip of paper with PSI Candidate Care phone number on it (it’s still currently sitting on my desk, we’ll get to that later).
Well, great, I guess I’ll go home now.
I immediately called PSI Candidate Care to try to get my exam rescheduled and had no such luck. They didn’t even show that there was an issue when I was checking in and AWS would later show that I did not show up for the exam. That meant, I wasn’t allowed to take the exam again for 14 days, two weeks, the final day of my re-certification window. So while I waited for PSI to give me a refund on my “missed” exam, I didn’t reschedule my exam.
Medical Emergency
Four days before my certification expired I ate dinner and immediately felt like I needed to vomit because I ate too much. Three hours later, there was no change, just constant pain near my stomach, so I called 911 and was later taken by ambulance to the ED (Emergency Department, they call it that now, you’d think they’d think twice about it, but I guess not). I already knew that I had a hiatal hernia (my stomach had pulled through my diaphragm some) and that part of the cause for this emergency. My stomach got too heavy from having eaten too much at dinner and flipped on itself. Needless to say, I was needed emergency surgery to correct this issue. I won’t give you all the details, but a lot of gross stuff happened to get me prepared for the surgery.
After the surgery was completed, I was in the ICU for a couple of days. I ended up staying in the hospital for a week while I recovered.
Now guess where I was when my certification expired? Yep, in the hospital. Oh well, I’ll just take it at a later date and have a new start date for that certification.
Back to Normal
After coming home, I took two days off and went right back to work. I felt fine, I normally worked from home anyway, so no big deal.
I wasn’t thinking about retaking the certification exam as the deadline for re-certification had already come and gone. I knew I could take the exam at any time and pass pretty easily. So I just put it all to the back of my mind.
Medical Emergency #2
After just over four weeks of working regularly again, I had another medical emergency and this time, it was a lot worse.
I woke up on a Friday morning and about an hour later, I was having a heart attack. I knew it was a heart attack because I was having pain in my arm, followed by chest pain and shortness of breath. I also have a family history of heart disease, so I knew the symptoms and what to look out for. I again called 911 and was taken to the ED and processed. Shortly after arriving, I was taken to the cath lab for a procedure.
They put a catheter up my right radial artery, I could feel it going all the way up my arm until it got to my shoulder. They used dye to see if there was any blockage in my heart. They discovered had I have 100% blockage in one of my coronary arteries (which is why I was having the heart attack). They put a stent in that artery and found another blockage of another coronary artery. I will be getting another stent at a later time.
I was then brought to the ICU within two and half hours after calling 911. Pretty amazing what modern medicine can do these days. I spent two days total in the hospital this time before being released.
Back to the Certification
Now that I was at home again and would be taking an extended leave from work to recover, I figured I’d prepare for the certification again. I took practice exams on A Cloud Guru and passed without any issues.
This time for the exam, I decided to try the PSI proctored exam offering as I didn’t want to drive to a testing center. I know that you can’t have stuff on your desk, and you need to have a quiet and clutter-free space for this service. I have two desks in my office at home, one is mine and the other is my wife’s. So I cleaned off her desk since it was easier and then put a bedsheet over my desk and monitors, and another bedsheet over the bookcase.
The proctor approved of my setup, and I started the exam. It was just like taking an exam at one of their testing centers. Minus my dogs barking in the background because I had put them in their kennels, so they wouldn’t barge into the office during the exam.
I passed the exam with a score of 822 (passing is 720). So I’m now once again an AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate.
I still haven’t received my refund from PSI for their issue on my original exam day. I guess I need to contact them again about that.