I scheduled my next test, MS 070-315: Developing and Implementing Web Applications with Microsoft Visual C#.NET and Microsoft Visual Studio.NET, for this coming Monday at 2:00p. It’s scheduled to run for two-and-a-half hours, but I’m hoping it doesn’t actually take that long. The last few have been like that - scheduled for a long time but only taking about an hour. Here’s hoping. I’ve been studying the practice test I have and it’s feeling pretty good. It covers pretty much everything that wasn’t in the training course, which figures. I think I should be able to muddle through reasonably well with my existing experience and some good old logic. Maybe.

Jenn’s birthday is coming up and I nearly had to beat her to death to get a list of things she’d like for gifts. She says she doesn’t know what she wants, but somehow expects me to come up with some surprise thing that she wants but doesn’t know it. Riiiiight. I basically laid out that I’m tired of being the critical thinking problem solver when I provide a HUGE list for people every holiday (like, over a hundred different things) and people still complain that I didn’t provide a big enough selection. Fuck that, man. No list = Sizzler gift certificate.

I was playing Amplitude again last night and the more I play it, the more I realize how true it is that you can’t think while you play, you just have to play. I mean, like, Jenn was trying to talk at me (more “at” than “to” at the time, methinks) while I was working on a particularly difficult song, and while she was talking there was no way I could do it because I was trying to concentrate on her words. Same goes for checking the score - I can’t be looking around, thinking about the score or anything - I just have to play the game. No explicit brain work involved; simple implicit functioning. And let me tell you how nice and relaxing that is. To not have to think, just to do.

I believe that’s what’s wearing me out at work. When I’m at work (which, seriously, anymore I totally dread), I’m wiped out. Why? Because I don’t just get to program stuff and exercise knowledge that I’ve learned; I only ever get to fight these difficult uphill battles of me vs. technology - work on undocumented product with no help and too much to do… you don’t realize how totally exhausting it is.

Plus, for the last few months I go home and I study to take the certification tests. So it’s not like I get a break when I get home. I don’t remember most of college being this stressful, but the parts that were… well, let’s just say that I took a break from studying over the Labor Day holiday last weekend and I didn’t miss it a bit.

All that, combined with stuff like “I don’t know what I want for my birthday but I won’t be happy with a gift certificate so you’d best figure something out” makes me either want to pass out or kill someone. I’m honestly not sure which.

I’ll survive. It would just be nice to not have to fight all day to get things to work. It would be nice if I could do something easy for a change. It’d be nice to work on something other than SharePoint Portal Server 2003. Somehow, I don’t see ever escaping this thing, though. Even after rollout, there’s user training and continued development and everything else on SPS 2003, so regardless of how optimistic my boss is about “seeing the light at the end of the tunnel,” I’m convinced it’s more a black hole than a tunnel. There’s no light, just endless dark.

I wonder what’s on Monster today…