we only have them until they find something better to do

That's a tricky one. No doubt, as you classify, I'm the active type. But, if I ever had a boss-or at least a direct lead-who actually did their job (kept techs insulated from the non-techs, had the guts to say "no" to management or client), I'd never leave.

I imagine babysitting the passive types gets old fast. Are they at least self-aware enough to appreciate the work, or do you get the worst of both worlds: helpless and entitled?

MS Access at Egghead Software one Sunday afternoon

How much time do you need to teach MS Access? If you walk in without understanding Venn diagrams, three hours won't help. If you do, that's plenty of time to cover syntax, templating, and data types. And if you followed that conditional, congrats-you're basically a database engineer already.

For entry-level certs, I usually recommend CompTIA's. They're industry-recognized, fairly platform-independent, and if you can go from a pile of parts to a working SOHO setup, you'll pass ez-pz. Given your Zork-a-thon, I'm guessing you already know this, but hey-someone else might need the tip.

3CX

I'm so sorry.