how do you objectively prove what you have independantly learned
bayareaguy: I'm more likely to believe specific things you've done over general things you claim to know particularly when it comes to specific technical systems.  Don't tell me you "know" MySQL.  Instead, tell me about the things you did to insure I can't take down your system by injecting a call to BENCHMARK() or about the time you were able to get the database working after InnoDB force recovery didn't work.