December 28

From my brain

2007

Me 09:02, 28 December 2007 (EST)

The test yesterday still has me a little loopy. There were questions that in retrospect I could solve, but were just too difficult to do in an hour and 15 minutes. There were a total of 45 questions to answer in that period.

For an example, here's the one that drove me nuts "under the clock" that I finally solved just now:

A clock loses 9 minutes every hour. On Monday at noon, it is accurate with another clock that shows the correct time and is working properly. On which day will both clocks show the same time?

• Monday
• Thursday
• Friday
• Saturday
• Sunday

It said you couldn't have anyone help you and you were on the honor system for that, but nothing was said of calculators or spreadsheets. I had MSCalculator and Excel open throughout the test. My mind cramped then, but as I create the sheet now, I come up with two possible days: Thursday and Monday.

The way I worked it out was that for every hour on a "true clock", you add 51 minutes to the clock losing time. The following Monday, both clocks will show 4am by this process. However, on Thursday at "true" 8pm, the clock missing time will show 8am. So, which is the correct answer?

Another example:

The following list of words follow in a logical progression:

PHYSIOLOPSYCOLOGICALLY

QUOTE

ENDOLAPROSCOPICALLY

TREE

FASTER

SHOE

Which of the following words would be next on the list?

• TRISCADECAPHOBIA
• PLACATE
• MEANDERING
• FURTHERMORE
• EXPEDITE

Yeah, programming test with grammar. These I caught swimmingly.  :) Didja catch it? The choice should have been FURTHERMORE. The list was Adverb, Noun, Adverb, Noun, Adverb, Noun, and "furthermore" is an adverb.

I took a lot of the tried and true "pick answer C and move on" choices for some of the crazier stuff. Late in the test I was proven to be quit inept in my developer skills as I barely grasped what they were asking about with the last 6-7 questions as they were about higher end object-oriented programming, Java, and other concepts that I never have used because I'm self trained (the concept and definitions of inheritance being the primary one).

I emailed the woman who contacted me from SetFocus to let her know I finally finished the test. We'll see what comes of it.