Switching Gears

March 21st, 2009 by Bill

It’s funny how life’s bumps and bruises have a way of focusing your attention on all those things you promised yourself you would get around to doing “as soon as you found the time.” Well, nothing says, “Now’s the time!” like job loss.

It seemed destined to happen sooner or later but kudos to my former employer for offering a very generous severance package. That bought me time to focus on tasks which, while they might not generate income, may improve my future prospects without having to worry about whether it is time to begin practicing the phrase, “Would you like to Biggie size that for $0.59 more?!”

Thank goodness for my old 13″ MacBook, MobileMe account, and my iPhone. Now, the closer I get to crunch time, if I haven’t found (1) full-time work or (2) a steady stream of consulting gigs then the iPhone and its very cumbersome data plan will be the first things to go. Since MobileMe was renewed recently I can still enjoy all the calendar and contact synchronizing goodness for a while more but who knows what the future holds in this economy. They’ll have to pry the MacBook from my cold dead hands though.

By the way, the only reason I have the MacBook at all is because of the generosity of the folks at Amphora Research for whom I worked briefly but most enjoyably as a customer advocate. If you’re searching for an electronic lab notebook (ELN) solution you would be a fool not to give PatentSafe a good hard look.

The MacBook is the perfect laptop computer allowing me via VMware Fusion to run just about any operating system a software developer might need. The iPhone allows me to make do if I’m ever too far from my MacBook, with access to personal and business calendars, contacts, email and to do lists, and even command line access to all of my Web servers via TouchTerm which I highly recommend.

While I’m handing out shout outs, thanks are also in order for the folks at EdgeCase for their assistance during my professional intermission, as well as “Super” Chris Nelson and Ed Sumerfield for sharing their available bandwidth in a time of economic hardship. I hope that I can in the future somehow reward your kindness.

Categorized under General, Work
  • http://edsumerfieldconsulting.com Ed Sumerfield

    it's a pleasure working with you dude.

    On a point of perspective, since you are working with us, you are actually in employment, so I am not sure what this nice break you are talking about is? The beautiful thing about independent consulting is that you are always employed, just sometimes your employer can't afford to pay much :-)

  • http://edsumerfieldconsulting.com Ed Sumerfield

    it's a pleasure working with you dude.

    On a point of perspective, since you are working with us, you are actually in employment, so I am not sure what this nice break you are talking about is? The beautiful thing about independent consulting is that you are always employed, just sometimes your employer can't afford to pay much :-)