I've been in the computing world since 1987 as an active member of the profession. My personality is not 1A, so I have been on the outer fringes of the "cool stuff". I think because of the fact that I won't step on people to get ahead, I haven't. I got certified last April as a Sun Java 2 Programmer, but only recently started using my skills professionally. I take full responsibility for what has happened to me in the past. I then decided to learn Linux. Not because I felt it would help me further my career or because I think it's the "next hottest thing", but because I want to learn for fun again. I want to have all the fun and frustration that goes with trying something completly different. And from the sounds of things, learning Perl is a big step towards making my Linux environment into a development environment instead of a toy. Someone mentioned that he uses Linux, but he has to do something "for real", he falls back to Microsoft. I think if the environment is learned and understood, there's so much more depth. Anyway, I guess my learning Perl is my raging against the machine. Probably will amount to prescious little except in my eyes.