more pins

papers
piling up
with no reward in sight
nothing to show for the effort
le sigh

for these
squandered days, nights
in a couple of weeks
in a padded envelope comes
more pins

[1:57 PM]
If it’s spring, it must be another certification exam.

Not that I don’t have enough of them under my belt, but I’ve had an interest in Java Micro Edition (Java ME) for a while now. (Consider, if you will, the fact that Blu-Ray is going to include Java ME in every player to help with rendering the menu system. Hmmmmmmm…. can you say interesting possibility if I ever lose my much-beloved job?) But, there’s just not much of a market for it normally, so I figured that while I’m working on other things and waiting for Java EE (Enterprise Edition – JSPs, Servlets and EJBs) 5 to come out and those certifications to be updated, I’d study for the Sun Certified Mobile Application Developer cert.

Yeah. That took a lot of work. Granted, I bought the certificate last year at JavaOne when I thought I could take it there, and just have been putting it off, and putting it off… (they didn’t offer SCMAD at JavaOne, thinking no one would want to take it). So I did what I had to in order to get myself motivated – I scheduled the test and gave myself four weeks to get ready.

In the end, I did fine – I surpassed the passing mark by a wide margin and I’m getting the certificate soon. (I have confirmation it was mailed on Saturday.) The only thing that irks me still about certification is this – the stupid lapel pin.

Really.

How many lapel pins do I need? I have eleven certifications, fourteen if you include the ones I’ve updated over the years, and pins for every single one of them. I never wear my lapel pins. (They’re butt ugly.) I’m more likely to carry and use the plastic cards they send with the certificates….

*sigh*