One of my friends has a job that requires him to spend a lot of work hours reading books for background information. This sounded pretty okay to me, but he says it's a pain. It's just hard to read in a work environment, apparently.

Well, now I know what he means. My boss has got me preparing for the Microsoft 70-229 exam, which involves me taking a bunch of practice tests and reading this little gem. I'm not the world's fastest reader, but even by my standards this is slow-going.

But the real problem here is that the whole enterprise is somewhat depressing. I've got my MCAD, after this test it'll be a relative cakewalk to my MCSD, and I'm being submitted for a security clearance. All of these are valuable credentials that will help me earn a reliable wage. Until, that is, my soul has shriveled into a cathode-baked husk and I decide to repaint the corner of the ceiling.

Ever been good at something you dislike? My scoutmaster used to go to his office Christmas parties dressed as the Grim Reaper: the folks at work had figured out that he had a knack for firing people, and as the company's fortunes faded, it became his career.

Now, I don't mean to paint web page development as all that dire -- I am wearing pajamas at the moment, after all. But a little fondness for dabbling with computers can quickly metastasize into a horrifyingly parasitic existence, wherein I'm sustained solely by the putrid blood of the body corporate. TPS reports, people!

Anyway, this is all easy enough to ignore on a day-to-day basis -- we all bitch about white-collar wage-slavery, but obviously things could be a lot worse. Still, for the next few hours I'll be able to tell anyone who cares to ask all about the four different levels of transaction isolation available in Microsoft SQL Server 2000. You can't tell me that isn't a little scary.