Friends in IT

This is an open question to anyone who's in IT:

What's your opinion of certification? Are you certified? Have you ever known anyone to get a better job/higher salary/anything good out of being certified?

The reason I ask is I read an article a couple of months ago in an IT magazine where they said that most employers don't care about certification anymore; they're more concerned with proven experience. But in my experience, employers didn't care about certification in the first place. I'm sure there are some out there that require it, but I get the feeling they're like the ones who require a degree in IT, no matter how many years of experience you have or how many projects you've worked on; it's just a bureaucratic requirement.

I got my certification in ColdFusion 5 back in 2000 (not sure of the exact year), and never saw any real advantage in it. I do need to update my skills so they're not so "1999" (namely I need to learn how to do a CSS layout that doesn't rely on tables), but I'm thinking I'd be better off to just learn the stuff and use it so I don't forget it and so that I have projects I can show, rather than studying for a test that's focused on remembering syntax. That's what books and Google are for, you know?

VCU comics collection

My alma mater, Virginia Commonwealth University, has acquired quite a collection of comics and memorabilia associated with comics. I remember they had an extensive collection when I was there in the late 80s, but now it's even bigger. If you're interested, there's more information at this link: http://www.vcu.edu/uns/news/vcuview/archives/2006/jun/comics.htm.

They're now home of the Eisner Awards collection. The collection is housed in the James Branch Cabell library on campus.