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Is this supposed to be a joke?

No. Its not. :)

do you have to end every sentence with an exclamation mark...?

I used to write like that. Will correct that in future.

Using all those exclamation marks makes your text look incredible stupid. Sorry for the offense, but please don't post articles like that anymore.

You lost me at "close to 1 year"

know my programming experience may be very little to talk about application architecture. And I am sure I am not going to architect applications from tomorrow itself. I just wanted to know about how other architects lead their way to success so asked about it.

If you don't know how to become an architect you probably are simply not ready to do it; I think you to study the architecture of the applications you worked on and think about which different choices you would have made and why. In time you will maybe be ready to start architecting yourself.

If you want to become a "Java architect", just take the exam:
http://www.sun.com/training/certification/java/scea.xml

Otherwise, "architect" is many things, differently defined in each organization. Technical architect, enterprise architect, etc, etc .. Figure out what you need for the architect skill in your organization, and work towards that. As others have pointed out, probably only few organizations honor 1 year experience as an architect :-)

Finally, decide if its really what you want. My experience with architects is not always good. See eg. http://softwarecreation.org/2007/do-we-need-software-architects-10-reasons-why-not/

Cheers,
Soren