On Sunday at around 3:20 AM I woke up to my room shaking.  Took me a few minutes to realize what was going on, but there was a 6.1 earthquake.   The epicenter was in Sonoma, so there was little damage in San Francisco where I was staying at.

At 9 am I was scheduled to take VCAP-DCD 550.  I was not able to go back to sleep after waking up from the earthquake, so it gave me a chance to look over some study materials. I have never taken an exam at VMworld, so I was not sure how the experience was.  I checked in, sat my bad on the table in the back of the room and started taking my exam.  It is a total different experience than taking an exam at a PearsonVue Professional Center.   They don’t asked you to pull out your pockets, roll up your sleeves and pants to make sure you are hiding anything.  The other thing that is different is that it is one big open room and everyone sits at an open table.  There are no cubes or rooms to separate people.  It is very distracting.  Also, there were people constantly opening and closing the door and it would make lot’s of noise.  After all that I started my exam and everything was going well until I got to the master design scenario question.  It took me about 25-30 minutes to complete it all.  Then I clicked next to go to the next question and the exam engine CRASHED!  So the proctor had me move to another machine.  Same thing happened.  So John Hall the exam creator came over & determined that the machines they were using had the wrong version of flash on them.  So they gave me a voucher to take the exam at another time.  I was very frustrated that I had spent 4 hours in the exam center and

After leaving the exam center I went to the VMunderground Opening Acts .

There were six panel sessions.  It was great to be able to attended  them.  The moderators did a great job of fueling discussion & answering questions.

Last event of the day was the very popular VMunderground Party.  This year the party was at the City View in the Metreon.  It is the best venue it has been in since VMworld has been in San Francisco.  Great view of the city and plenty of room.   There was good food & drinks.

Even though my exam did not turn out the way I expected, the first day went well.  I am looking forward to the rest of the week at VMworld.