I like StackOverflow.com but...

StackOverflow is a programming Q & A site that's free to directly copy a line from their "About" page.

But it makes me feel... Inadequate.

But asking and answering questions, other users can vote you up or down to earn (or lose) reputation points.

I have my moments of trolling the site looking for questions I can answer to gain a little rep but I find it a struggle.

How do people manage to devote so much time to gaining so much reputation measured in the thousands?

Is there some trick involved?

I do find the site invaluable for finding the answers for problems I have be stuck with but I sometimes it doesn't come through for me.

I had one particularly nasty problem that I'd keep bumping into for some strange reason.

I have an ASP.NET TreeView control on the page, the user selects a node. How can I tell if the user clicks the selected node again? No event was triggered for clicking the selected node, only for when a non-selected node was clicked.

I couldn't get a satisfactory answer so I updated the post to state that I'd look to develop a solution when I had the time.

In the meantime, my question seems to be getting a significant number of views. Nobody seems to be attempting and answers and nobody seems to be voting.

Eventually I did find the time and I thought I'd find a reasonably good solution. I promptly submitted the solution as an anwser to my own question.

The trouble now is how to get my answer at the top of the list? With the number of views my question has had, surely people are interested in the answer? Is there a reason for not voting up my solution? Is my solution really that bad that they couldn't even be bothered to vote my solution down?!

Maybe it's just me.

I just can't help but get concerned that my solution gets no recognition.

Maybe I should start trolling for some simple questions again... Don't I have something even vaguely more interesting to do?

Sigh...

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Just as a side note, when looking at my stats for the question I posted, it seems to show "2k" as the number of views.

But when I select the question, it then states the question has been viewed 1,887 times.

I am pretty sure the 2k does not equal 1887 or even approximate it all that closely.

Finally! I'm a Real Developer!

Today, I finally recieved my MCPID and Access Code.

It took a while in coming but it hadn't been a priority to sort it out.

I had studied for and passed the exam while working for a former employer. One month after passing the exam I left for greener pastures.

I never received my MCPID or Access Code.

This past week my colleague James Hippolite finally convinced me to sort out my MCPID and graciously offered to help.

He find an email for me to contact, to which I wrote a most heart felt letter discribing the heartache and pain I'd endured in the nearly two years of not being able to log into the MCP website.

Of course I could have gone to more courses and sat more exams but I've been of the mind that certification wasn't for me.

But now that I have finally sorted out my MCP log in and associated it to an email, and I guess Passport/Live ID perhaps, that I shall never consciously lose again - perhaps I shall look more seriously at extending my certifications.

In any case, I am happy that I now have a printed document to show that I've at least achievement one credential... Albiet a little long in the tooth...