Mehrdad's space: Myself

My 18th Birthday

Mon, 17 Dec 2007 20:46:05 GMT

My birthday! I'm finally 18. But how does it feel? Actually, these days are among the hardest days in life. Basically, it's not good at all that I'm still living in Iran. I should have been in the US. In some points, it feels good to be 18 since you're considered legally independent. And I'm going to attain my driving license as soon as possible!

ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest 2007 Asia Regional

Thu, 06 Dec 2007 19:06:14 GMT

Tomorrow morning, I'll participate in ACM/ICPC 2007 Asia Regional Contest - Tehran site located at the Sharif University.

I'm not good at solving algorithmic problems. My main focus has been engineering problems, software architecture, real world application development, and such kind of things, therefore, there's not so much hope to achieve a good rank at the contest. But it's fun!

70-551 Exam

Sun, 22 Oct 2006 07:29:13 GMT

I'm going to take 70-551 exam today. Hopefully, I'll pass the exam and I'll become MCTS and MCPD.

I hope God helps me in this exam...

70-551 Registration

Wed, 11 Oct 2006 14:55:07 GMT

Today, I registered for the Microsoft 70-551 exam (MCAD -> MCPD:Web Developer Upgrade). I'm going to take the exam on October 22, 2006. Hopefully, I'll pass and become a Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist and Microsoft Certified Professional Developer (Charter Certification!).

MCPD:Web Developer Exam

Mon, 09 Oct 2006 06:01:13 GMT

I'm planning to take 70-551 exam (UPGRADE: MCAD Skills to MCPD Web Developer by Using the Microsoft .NET Framework) on October 22 and achieve a MCPD:Web Developer charter certification. I'm too busy developing the blogging engine project and I can't write more.

1 year of being a Microsoft Certified Professional

Wed, 27 Sep 2006 14:20:28 GMT

Yes, exactly one year ago, on September 27, 2005, I passed "Developing and Implementing Web Applications with Microsoft Visual C# .NET and Microsoft Visual Studio .NET" (70-315) exam in New Horizons CLC in Dubai, UAE with 962/1000 and became a Microsoft Certified Professional. It had many positive impacts on my life and I suggest anyone who can achieve a Microsoft ceritification to go for it. It's a good thing. Unfortunately, I couldn't go abroad yet to take MCPD exams yet, but I will take them as soon as possible.

University Registration

Mon, 18 Sep 2006 16:26:39 GMT

Today, I went to University of Tehran for registration. The registration process was an awful experience. I was there at about 9:30AM and when I came home it was 4PM. I'm too tired to mention the details. Nevertheless, I'm now officially a BSc student in Computer Science.

University admission story, finally finished: Computer Science at University of Tehran

Sun, 10 Sep 2006 00:15:57 GMT

Yes, the game is over! The final results which came out about an hour ago indicate that I've been admitted to study Computer Science at the University of Tehran. Of course, it's finished only if I don't apply somewhere overseas. Currently, I'll study here until I can go to another country. Let's wait and see what's going to happen. It's a completely new experience for me!

I finally received the Visual Studio 2005 Award for Customer Exellence!

Wed, 24 May 2006 12:07:37 GMT

After several months of waiting, I finally received my Visual Studio 2005 Award for Customer Exellence!

Who am I?!

Thu, 20 Apr 2006 08:06:27 GMT

Hi guys!

I haven’t blogged for a while because I’m studying and probably this situation will last for about 2 months. I’m a little tired of studying and I found out that it’s the best time to blog!

I’ve got some suggestions regarding my blog. I’ve found out that it’s good to know the person that you’re reading his/her blog, so I’m going the talk about myself in some posts. I’ll start in this post, so let’s go!

My name is Mehrdad. I’m a 16 years old boy who have finished high school last year and is currently studying in “Pre-University” grade (probably, you aren’t familiar with the Iran’s educational system, maybe I’ll talk about it later). I’m a computer geek. I’ve loved computers ever since I seen a PC for the first time. The first time I used a computer, I was 4 and my cousin has bought an i386 PC @ 25MHz (Really fast at that time). I played game on that PC several times. Some time later, my father bought an i486-DX2 PC @ 66MHz (WOW! 4MB RAM, 256MB Hard disk, 512KB Trident graphics card!) and I started to learn and use computers using an MS-DOS book (I could read and write Persian when I was about 3, and started to learn English when I was 5 although I knew the English alphabet before that). I used the PC for gaming but unlike now –that if you don’t have to know anything to play games on a PC, at that time, at least you had to learn how to use MS-DOS and many basic computer concepts- I learned many things during my usage. I started programming in QuickBASIC when I was 6. Actually my first program was typing a code snippet that I read from a book (I didn’t have a QBASIC book, that was another older BASIC variant book), It didn’t execute on QBASIC, so I tried to figure out problems and incompatibilities using the online help. It finally worked, and I was so happy! I started learning QBASIC using the online help and I finally I learned many programming concepts. I’ve also programmed a little with FoxPro 2.0. That goes on until I was about 10. At that time, I wanted to know how they develop Web sites. I learned HTML by experimenting in the FrontPage Express and seeing the results. I went further and bought a book on ASP. I mastered ASP and since then I could consider myself as professional developer. Some times later, I found out that there is a new product called “.NET” which is going to revolutionize the world of software development. I learned about .NET and after final release, I got a Visual Studio .NET 2002 (I was a VB programmer at that time). As a VB programmer, I switched to VB.NET, and I found out that it’s much better than the old one. ASP.NET was a great brand-new Web development platform. I mastered these things. I always wanted to learn “C”-type languages, but I had a fear that they are hard to learn and very advanced. I wanted to learn “C#” and “C++,” so I bought the “Microsoft Visual C# .NET step-by-step,” and “Microsoft Visual C++ .NET step-by-step” books. I read them and after using C# and C++ with the great MSDN Library as my reference, I mastered them. My primary language became C#, and I became a professional C# programmer. I was ready to take MCSD certification exams; but there were many problems because I couldn’t take the exam in Iran. So the MCP story delayed until September 2005 that I went to Dubai, UAE, and took the exams and passed with good scores (for instance, I passed 70-315 with 962/1000)! I’ve been with Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 and Microsoft SQL Server 2005 products since their first betas. I made many workarounds and bug reports to make the products better, and I’ve been nominated for the Microsoft Award of Customer Excellence for Microsoft Visual Studio. Several months ago, Microsoft introduced the beta MCPD exams, and invited MCAD/MCSDs to take them for free, but I couldn’t take because I couldn’t go to somewhere else at that time but I plan to take the MCPD: Enterprise Applications upgrade exams in summer.

Currently, I’m studying for the university entrance exam -which I’ll post info about the situation of examinees- and I don’t have enough time to blog.

Some of my friends told me that you shouldn’t hate your country; I want to make a distinction about Persia, and Iran. Persia is the ancient Iran (at least before the Islamic Revolution in my point of view), I love it. But I’ll call it after that, Iran, I don’t like it. The situation here is not very good, and it has made problems for me. I plan to go to US as soon as possible, and join my friends at Microsoft!

Some friends told me to write in Persian. I don’t like to maintain another blog to write in Persian, so I may sometimes write in Persian here is a special category. Sorry for those folks who can’t read them. But my main blogging language will remain English.

Don’t forget to comment!

Mehrdad