It’s Friday night and I’m back at the hotel, having just finished a week’s worth of Courion training. Courion is a suite of programs that perform “user provisioning” — specifically, it allows user accounts to be created, granted rights, be unlocked, and so on. From co-workers who had previously attended the class we had heard both the product and the class were both pretty complex, and they were, but I think Johnny and I (who both have programming experience) had a slightly easier time as the Courion suite is, in reality, a combination of macros and scripting. I’m oversimplifying for the sake of conversation, but generally speaking the program thinks and flows like a series of programming scripts. If you’ve ever tried passing variables between ASP/PHP pages, built basic SQL queries, and tried keeping track of several dozen variables and workflows at the same time, you have an idea of the program’s basic structure. And if you’ve never had the pleasure, just be glad there are geeks out there doing this sort of thing for you.
The class ended with an actual exam that I was really fearing. Again, from co-workers, I had heard that the quiz was a combination of multiple choice, essay questions, and hands-on lab work. What those same co-workers neglected to mention was that the test was open book. Emily, who took the class a month or two ago, scored a 99% on the final exam and challenged us to beat her score. I wasn’t too sure about a couple of my test answers but the lab work went well. When I got my final grade, I couldn’t help but smile. 100%.
I win.