I found out a couple of days ago that the company where I’ve worked for the past two and a half years is folding. Well, sort of: really, it’s mostly being absorbed by another company. However, that company does not need a Web developer. This means that come the first of the year, I’ll be out of a job. Thankfully, I think most of my coworkers are safe.

So, I’ve sent out some applications locally, but there aren’t a lot of openings in my field. I’ve also considered going the consulting route; I could probably pick up a client or two who used to use my company’s development services, and do projects for them on a contract basis. If I could find another client or two, I could be in decent shape.

I’ve also considered reinventing myself. I could be a clown makeup artist, a jukebox repairman, or maybe even a garbage man. Any suggestions out there?

Seriously, if anyone out there knows someone who needs a Web developer, either in the Wilkes-Barre, PA area, or in a telecommuting scenario, let me know!

I’m terrified. Tomorrow I get my bottom wisdom teeth removed, and I know it’s going to be awful. I really should’ve had this done 10 years ago when they recommended it then as a preventative measure, but obviously I’ve been putting it off. I know this is a bad move, but having been without medical insurance for a lot of that time, it wasn’t really a viable option for me. Now I’ve got the insurance and I have still be dragging my feet a bit. At least I’ll have the weekend to recover, and if the forecast is right, it won’t be good riding weather, anyway.

This week has not been a good one for riding for me. The weather has mostly been pretty good, but I have been busy with a geeky project that’s cut into my recreational ride time. It’s been fun, though, and hopefully there’ll be more projects in this vein.

My computer parts arrived yesterday. I wasn’t home when UPS tried to deliver them, but I called them and they let me go to their warehouse to pick up the parts, even though their operating hours technically end at 6. That was pretty nice of them, I’m pretty happy with UPS right now.

Anyway, I’m building a mostly-new system, since my old one kicked the bucket. For those interested, I got an AMD Athlon 64 X2 6400+, ASUS motherboard, 2 gigs of RAM (for now), 500-gig hard drive, case, etc. Unfortunately all I’ve gotten to do with it so far, after putting everything together, is install Windows. That seemed to go without a hitch until I realized that my system drive is somehow the I: drive. I am assuming that this is because I also installed my old hard drives, which may have retained their old drive letters somehow.

Does anyone know if there’s an inherent problem having Windows XP on a drive other than C:? I haven’t noticed any problems yet, but I’m really not sure if this is a good situation.

Once I get Windows up and running, I’ll be installing Kubuntu, probably the x64 version. Windows has been my primary operating system for a while now, mostly because of work, but I’d really like to get back to making Linux my primary OS. I think that, even for working from home, it should be mostly doable, with a VPN client and some sort of VNC software running at both home and work.