Wow! Check out the size of my new head: my reportdhcp program has been packaged in the Mandrake Linux dirtibution! Unless I woke up being somebody else this morning. Woo! Now if I can just find a job... ;)

The IT job market sure seems to be retaining its post-boom tightness. I'm trying to find a job so that I can move in with my fiance this summer -- in Norfolk, VA. Despite my experience, skills, and recent Master's Degree in Technical and Scientific Communication, I haven't had so much as a nibble.

One thing of note I see more and more is that most government/contractor jobs require a CURRENT security clearance. I don't have one, so I'm out of luck on so many of these jobs... I can understand that an emploter would want to avoid the time and expense of getting someone certified, and I guess that as long as there are plenty of job seekers out there with current clearances, employers will avoid certifying new blood.

I sure hope I find something, though, because I really want to move this summer while my fiance is off (she's a schoolteacher... definitely not enough money there to support me while I look for work).

The terrible events of September 11, 2001 have set nearly everyone I know to writing, perhaps as a way to make real the inexpressible shock and sorrow of witnessing such destruction. The hijacking of planes, the destruction of the World Trade Center and part of the Pentagon, the deaths of thousands of Americans and unlucky travelers from abroad, shown over and over from every possible angle on every channel on every TV: how does one cope? One like me, living in my quiet city in the Shenandoah?

We were having a meeting when someone stuck their head in the door. Two airliners had struck the World Trade Center; they had been hijacked. We had a TV brought into the conference room and watched, astounded. We saw the towers collapse, live on CNN. Afterwards, I went outside to smoke a cigarette. The day was clear, the sky a brilliant blue, the angle of the sun just beginning to hint at the coming autumn. Looking northwest, my mind's eye expected to see the smoke over the horizon, smoke that was billowing into the same azure sky hundreds of miles away. I got very little work done.

I talked for a while with a good friend when I got home from work. I telephoned my girlfriend. And after listening to the President that evening, after getting drunk and falling asleep on the couch, after waking up with a stiff neck and going to bed (after another half hour of grim news), it was morning again. Another workday, following my father's advice that everyone should deal with it by getting on with their lives. So I did-I did my job, I went home again, I wasted the evening looking at Websites and reading instead of working on my thesis. I stayed up too late.

I lay in bed and thought about how tenuous everything in this life really is. All you have, I told myself, all you can really keep forever, is what is inside you, and nothing else. Friends and family will die, houses will burn, possessions and pets and all the rest can be swept away by the hand of God or men. I thought of those I love and why I love them. I thought of all the memories I carry with me. And now I am thinking of the songs I know, the one poem of mine that I have memorized.

When I was a child I had a cross hanging in my room. My mother told me that it kept evil spirits away. I asked her once if the American Flag, which I also had, would keep the evil spirits away, too.

"If you believe in it," she said.

Wow, thanks to this article, I'm now reviled on Slashdot. A little devil's advocation, and they threw me to the dogs!

I wish my certification here would pick up so I could at least respond to articles. I used to really enjoy slashdot, but this just stinks -- without flaming or really trying to incense anyone, I got not just flamed... one guy went so far as to get my WHOIS info, post my home address and phone number, and infer that other like-minded slashdotters might wish to harass me.

I'll bet someone here remembers when you could have *actual discussions* on the Internet. :)

Well, I know this has been discussed before, but the trust metric seems to be a bit, well, untrusting! I've been certified as "Apprentice" by two journeyers, two apprentices, and two observers (one of them me), and I am still rated as an observer. How disheartening!