I attended TechEd on the Gold Coast last week, and took advantage of a free offer by Pearson VUE to take a free certification exam. I studied really hard (figuring that even if I failed, then at least I had experienced an exam without it costing me anything).

Well the study paid off, as I passed "Developing and Implementing Web Applications with Microsoft® Visual Basic® .NET and Microsoft® Visual Studio® .NET" with an excellent result - 962!

I'm going to see if I can have a go at 70-310 before the end of the year, and maybe complete the MCAD or MCSD next year.