I had an awesome project this year where we tagged Cows (anything involving Cows is excellent) with wireless 3-axis accelerometers to see whether they were eating. If they aren't accelerating their head regularly, they are probably sick, which means Al Qaida may have launched an attack on our food supply (the cows). It's like an early warning system. I did the data reception side (multi-threaded windows app) with a relational database back-end for number crunching.

As an IT manager a couple of years ago, I bought TrackIT (www.NumaraSoftware.com) and used it to track company-wide issues. They may have a free version. Not sure. You may want to look at BugZilla (http://www.bugzilla.org). Its name implies it is for tracking software defects, but you can use it to track IT issues just as well.

I've used Computer Associates - ERwin Data Modeler for many years. It is fairly buggy and UI is weak, but I've learned what not to do and can whip-out diagrams in no time. It's really good at reverse engineering an existing DB.

Try www.bugzilla.org. It's free and ez.

I was a clencher until I went cold turkey on caffeine. I no longer clench.

I have one word for you: LookOut (http://www.majorgeeks.com/Lookout\_d4808.html). Even a blind squirrel finds a nut every now and then.

It never was about the GOTO. It is really the Come-From that gets you in trouble... There is a one-to-many relationship there that makes it hard to go backwards. srf

Hmm. I wasn't thinking about the relative value of College vs. Experience. I think that is really open for debate. I see them as complementary. College can be thought of as a barrier to entry. You input time, effort and energy and you receive expanded options on the other side. It is very hard to argue that going to college gives one fewer options. With expanded options, we are more likely to gain real world experience that is to our liking because we gravitate toward things we like, and with more options, well, you should see the logic...

You absolutely nailed it on the head about this being a revenue generation engine for Microsoft. I spoke with the head of the program at Microsoft at TechEd and you can bet that his career viability was about separating as many people from their money as possible. That said, he knew very well that he had to do whatever he could to prop-up the value of the certifications. They do this by trying to keep the barrier to entry not too low (not the same as high). This is a conflicting constraint with respect to maximizing revenue. Certifications are tertiary, at best, behind College Degrees and Real World Experience.