Much faster than I anticipted, a bunch of goodies arrived in the post from MySQL. They said allow 4 - 6 weeks for the certificate to arrive, but it actually took a mere eight days, not bad considering it had to be mailed from America to London. It's a little surprising when an organisation I normally deal with electronically actually sends a letter. A real-live employee even filled in the custom declaration on the front of the envelope.

So what was in the envelope?

• A nicely designed certificate featuring not one but two dolphins and a mirrored silver stripe at a jaunty angle. Try and forge that on a laser printer.
• A two page closely typed letter that didn't say much actually, given its length.
• A print out of the terms and conditions I'd already signed up to twice before when doing the tests, you know, the stuff about not pretending to be an employee of MySQL just becuase I'm certified. I don't work for MySQL, you hear me?
• A little credit card sized piece of plastic saying my name and 'MySQL Certified'. There's no magnetic stripe or chip on it, so I can't buy stuff with it. I suppose it will be useful if I don't fancy lugging my certificate along to a job interview.
• Best of all a 'MySQL Certified' pen! Who says Free/Open Source Software is cheap?