In regards to training, I've always espoused the following axioms:

• You are ultimately responsible for your own training
• You should spend a minimum of 10% of your salary on upgrading your skills for your career

With that in mind, I needed to dig to find out the last time I took a technical training course. The last course I took was TLCC's Servlet and JSP Programming with WebSphere 5 for Domino Developers back in September 2004. That was back in the day when I envisioned a brilliant career as a J2EE/WebSphere developer. Ah, the days of our youth...

The last in-class instruction I received was the Developing Enterprise Applications with Domino R5 and WebSphere at Data Planners in June 2001. So much for axioms!

Before I delve into my plans for 2008, I want to state that I've finally given up on having a career in Java/J2EE/WebSphere/etc. I made this decision while at my last employer, who was bringing in new Java developers with a lower title (or grade) than I had. I was hired in by my previous employer as an Officer, which entitled me to four weeks of vacation, a corresponding salary range and an invitation to the annual Officer's meeting. The Java developer positions available had a title of Technical Associate. Technical Associates were a grade below an Officer, receive only two weeks of vacation a year, had a lower salary range and are not invited to the Officer's meeting. I figured that if I needed to take a demotion in order to get my dream job, the job probably isn't worth it.

Anyway, I decided that next year I would take advantage of the technical courses being offered by the community colleges in my area, namely Schoolcraft College. Now that I'm no longer pursuing a Java-related career, I figure I'd learn more about the Microsoft technologies that are seemly taking over the world. Schoolcraft currently offer introductory courses in ASP.NET and VB.NET that cost around $300 in tuition and fees. Unfortunately, my son will be having surgery in January and will be in a cast for up to eight weeks afterwards. So I probably won't take a class until the summer or fall semester.

Until then, I'll look to upgrade my PCLP (or whatever they call it these days) to V7. I'll blog more about certification later.

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