[{"content":"People play day trader with their life. And expect long term gains. How do I know this? Because I have been there.\nLately I have been working on learning a new job, losing weight, raising my kids, and spending time with my wife. Everything I listed it important. But has made it challenging to prepare for the AWS Solutions Architect certification. So, rather than complain. I thought back to my core principle on how to be successful in anything #LabEveryday.\nBut how do you LabEveryday? Let\u0026rsquo;s go over the 10 steps that I take.\n  Establish your goal - Create the contract by writing it down\n  Break goal down into smaller increments\n  Establish your plan - Your plan of attack. Atomic Habits and the Power of Habits\n  Make your goal a priority\n  Track your progress\n  Be consistent - Consistency beats intensity. Be unstoppable and do both\n  Surround yourself with people and things that will motivate and inspire you\n  Perform checkups. Is your why still strong enough. Have that accountability.\n  Make sure self care is a top priority!\n  Embrace the journey - Grind so hard that it polishes you\n  ","permalink":"https://labeveryday.github.io/posts/how-to-labeveryday-in-2022/","summary":"People play day trader with their life. And expect long term gains. How do I know this? Because I have been there.\nLately I have been working on learning a new job, losing weight, raising my kids, and spending time with my wife. Everything I listed it important. But has made it challenging to prepare for the AWS Solutions Architect certification. So, rather than complain. I thought back to my core principle on how to be successful in anything #LabEveryday.","title":"Back to the Basics #LabEveryday"},{"content":"Over the pass 4 years I have used certifications to elevate my career and skills. They have helped me to get opportunities that I use to only dream about. Not only that, but they have boosted my income to levels that I never thought that I could reach in tech.\nBut don\u0026rsquo;t get it twisted! Not every certification journey I have had has not been all roses and Hennessey. Yo boy has failed A LOT! Studying for certifications can take everything from you. From your time, your money, your friends, your marriage, your confidence and that\u0026rsquo;s a short list. But, because of my struggles I have been able to learn and grow from my experiences so I can share them with you.\nIn this post we will cover in detail 7 questions on how I passed the AWS Cloud Practitioner exam in less than a week. Note: There are no affiliate links in this post.\nWhat is the AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner Exam?\nThe AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner is a foundational level certification for AWS. Achieving this certification will provide you with cloud fluency and foundational AWS knowledge. For me the AWS cloud platform and services were brand new. The exam preparation introduced me to AWS terms, services, and platform. The exam itself, is not too technical. he exam helps professionals understand and speak the language of AWS.\nHow much did the exam cost?\nAt the time of this post the cost of the exam is $100 USD.\nHow many questions are on the exam?\nThe exam consists of 65 questions; either multiple choice or multiple response.\nDoes the AWS certification expire?\nYes. You are required to recertify every three years.\nDo you need to lab for the exam?\nNo. But I always think that its good to gain hands on experience. I have heard of people only reading whitepapers and watching free YouTube videos. And they are still able pass the exam. And that\u0026rsquo;s ok. There are many people that will take this exam to understand AWS and the services offered. If you are like me then you need to not only read and watch videos on a topic. But you also need to put your hands on the technology to get to a true understanding. If you are wondering. Yes, I did lab for the exam.\nHow long did it take to become AWS certified?\nIn my new role at AWS the CCP was one of my first required certifications. On Monday the 13th of December I scheduled the exam and I sat the exam on Sunday Dec 19th. So that\u0026rsquo;s a total of 6 days. I spent Monday-Wednesday reading the AWS whitepapers and making notes. That was a total of about 12 hours. Then from Thursday thru Saturday I watched videos, labbed, and studied my note cards. For a total of 25 hours. This worked out to be about 8 hours a day from Thursday thru Sunday morning. So to summarize in 6 days it took me a total 37 hours to prepare for the exam.\nWhat resources did you use for the AWS CCP certification?\nHere are a list of resources that I used to prepare for the exam.\n  Cloud Partitioner Exam overview - This will answer all your questions about the exam and provide you with a link to schedule you test.\n  Cloud Partitioner Exam Guide - The Exam Guide provides you will all the topics that will be on the exam. Remember anytime you take a certification exam you should know what you will be tested on.\n  Overview of Amazon Web Services Whitepaper - This document is about 74 pages of reading. But trust me its worth! It will give you an overview of cloud computing and many of the services that AWS offers.\n  How AWS Pricing Works - Reading these 30 pages you will have an overview of how pricing works across some of the AWS most widely used services.\n  Compare AWS Support Plans - Here you will get a break down of four different types of AWS Support Plans.\n  Practice Exam Questions - Unfortunately this is not free, but the questions on this site were helpful. I like the fact that they provide an explanation for the answers on each question.\n  AWS Cloud Practitioner Certification Preparation - This course also is not free. But they do offer a 1-week free trial. Another great thing about the course is that they have labs the curriculum. Plus the labs do not need you to create an AWS account.\n  Create a free AWS account: - Here\u0026rsquo;s a link to create a free account. Incase you decide you want to lab and explore the AWS console on your own.\n  In closing, the AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner exam was a great exam experience. The questions were on topic and straight forward. Something to mention though, is that I do have the Azure Fundamentals Certification. The knowledge from that certification helped me to understand the AWS topics. Although we often want to achieve certifications as fast as possible. The most important thing is that we take the knowledge from our studies and apply it.\nI wish you much success on your certification journey. Good Luck!\nPeace,\n ","permalink":"https://labeveryday.github.io/posts/how-i-passed-the-aws-cloud-practitioner-exam-in-a-week/","summary":"Over the pass 4 years I have used certifications to elevate my career and skills. They have helped me to get opportunities that I use to only dream about. Not only that, but they have boosted my income to levels that I never thought that I could reach in tech.\nBut don\u0026rsquo;t get it twisted! Not every certification journey I have had has not been all roses and Hennessey. Yo boy has failed A LOT!","title":"How I Passed the AWS Cloud Practitioner Exam in a Week"},{"content":"Over the last few years I have moved all my notes from OneNote to markdown files in git repositories. This allows me to have version control and a centralized location for my all notes and projects.\nWhich leads me to the second reason.\nGitHub\nThis allows me to host my git repositories on the GitHub platform for free. By doing this I have a centralize location that I can access my files from anywhere and at anytime. That\u0026rsquo;s the power of a remote repository. Yes it hosts your files. Which you may have all ready known. Another thing to note is that using this process also forces me to learn more about DevOps. We will talk more about this in our next post.\nThe Ability to Keep It Simple\nStatic sites provide me the ease of creating a markdown file. I used this file to write my blog post. For me this is a normal blog writing workflow. Once I am done writing all I have to do is push my new post to my repository. It does not get any simpler than that. I don\u0026rsquo;t have to worry about any of my of previous pain points.\nNow you may be asking what is a static site? A static site is a website that is presented the same to every user. The site does not change unless the developer changes it. A static site does not have any back-end. The files or content for the site are hosted in a repository or in something like an AWS S3 bucket. This is what makes them so simple and easy to get up in running.\nIn this post I wanted to give you a quick update on my blogging journey. In the next post I will walk you through creating your own static site. If you are looking forward to this post send me a tweet on Twitter.\n ","permalink":"https://labeveryday.github.io/posts/static-sites-have-changed-my-life/","summary":"Over the last few years I have moved all my notes from OneNote to markdown files in git repositories. This allows me to have version control and a centralized location for my all notes and projects.\nWhich leads me to the second reason.\nGitHub\nThis allows me to host my git repositories on the GitHub platform for free. By doing this I have a centralize location that I can access my files from anywhere and at anytime.","title":"Static Sites Have Changed My Life"},{"content":"I titled this post \u0026ldquo;First Post\u0026rdquo; because sometimes you just have to start. Now you may start slow. Or you may start fast. Either way to get to your destination, you have to start. This is my start!\nLet the cloud journey begin!\n Embrace The I.T. Journey    Twitter Inspiration As you are setting goals. Think about something I heard today. Consistency beats intensity!\n\u0026mdash; Du\u0026#39;An S. Lightfoot (@labeveryday) December 29, 2020 ","permalink":"https://labeveryday.github.io/posts/first-post/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI titled this post \u0026ldquo;First Post\u0026rdquo; because sometimes you just have to start. Now you may start slow. Or you may start fast. Either way to get to your destination, you have to start. This is my start!\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eLet the cloud journey begin!\u003c/p\u003e","title":"First Post"},{"content":"","permalink":"https://labeveryday.github.io/about/","summary":"about","title":"About"}]