I hope that 2017 was a good year for all of you! Many of my 2016 customers promoted this year - including myself! After promoting to lieutenant, I remained at the Vehicular Crimes Division, where I spearheaded our execution of a division restructuring. It was highly successful, and now VCD is on the path back to greatness. I continued part-time law school, where I managed two semesters of straight As. Like all of you, I weathered Hurricane Harvey and all of the challenges that the city faced.

As far as Blue Line Advances, I'm hard at work writing questions. As of this update, I have 1,927 questions written. I have increased my goal to 2,360 questions. Once I get to my target number, I am confident that I will have captured the vast majority of potential questions in my question bank. If I am able to finish this goal in December, I plan on doing a final quality check in January 2018. Uploading will occur through February and March of 2018. If all goes to plan, I should be able to open up for 2018 orders by April. It may be sooner or later, depending on how many of my targets I am able to hit. 

Please let me know if there's anything that I can do for you. I haven't been checking my [email protected] email address regularly, but I get back into the habit. It's also out of date as far as titles go, so I might change it. 

No one should be studying hard at this point. It's okay to slowly go through the G.O.s, but trying to study hard now will burn you out long before the test arrives. We still have many months left for the active lists. I'll get detailed prediction dates up on the website in the coming months. 

After a successful run in 2016, we'll be offline until the 2018 test gets nearer. I expect to start back up in the late Spring of 2018. I'll be updating the test and adding new questions between now and then. I hope to get to 2,000 questions, at least 500 of which are based on the specific style of certain questions made by the vendor. I'll see everyone there! 

I was able to resolve one of the technical issues that led me to taking down the 300 and 600 focused tests. I ended up combining them into a single test, weighted heavily towards the 300 and 600 series. The questions from the 300 and 600 series will make up about 75% of the questions. I set up both the normal test mode and the quiz mode. They can be accessed in the test center. 

I've run into some technical difficulty in getting the tests updated for the cutoff date, so I've taken the 300 and 600 focused tests offline for a little while as I wait for Tech Support to figure out the issue. The main test and quiz should both be updated by the end of the night. 

I have uploaded a study calendar to the Study Plan section of the Information Center. 

Congratulations to everyone who took the sergeant's test this morning! Everyone who studied and took the test should be proud, regardless of score. It takes a lot of dedication to even give it a good try. If you made it to assessment, congratulations. 

I'll be taking the sergeant tests offline for analysis. If you are addicted to test-taking, you can take the lieutenant's test until I close the website to visitors from October 25th, 2016, to early summer 2018. Remember not to give your password out to anyone! 

I have updated the Promotional Process Overview, Test Service Overview, Study Plan, and the Rate of Promotions Analysis. They are now updated with the most up-to-date information. 

The sergeant tests have been locked into their final form. I have split the lieutenant tests off from them in the Test Center and will continue to update the lieutenant test until we know what the cut-off date will be. 

The books for the 2016 Sergeant Test, set for September 8th, 2016, have been announced. As expected, the General Orders (dated June 2, 2016) is one of them. The tests have been updated in the Test Center for this cutoff date, and a new section for those taking the Lieutenant Test (set for October 24, 2016) will be added soon to reflect the changed General Orders from June 2, 2016, onward. 

I've added a downloadable template for my pre-scoring method of taking the tests. It is available to users of the Service in the Information Center. 

The 2016 Sergeant written exam will be given on September 8, 2016. (My original estimate of August 22 was only off by a couple of weeks.) This means that the books will be announced on July 20-25, 2016.