LIFE: I'm officially jobless as of today, for the first time in quite awhile. I left my job as System/Network Admin at [Spinn.Net](http://www.spinn.net), an ISP here in Albuquerque. I pretty much built the whole place so it's weird to not be going back there but it's for the best. I was pretty sick of my job there at the end and it had sucked away a lot of my love of computers. Being the only one who was on call 24x7 and had to make sure nothing broke because the business pretty much rested on it is tough. I learned almost everything I know there though so it was a very valuable 5 years.

The really strange thing I’ve experienced is the return of the excitement I used to have with messing around on my Linux boxes. Just since I’ve been preparing to leave I’ve gotten one of my old servers back up and installed Fedora, a new Linux based on RedHat. It’s very nice. I’ve also installed BackupPC, a cool free backup software I found that lets me back up my laptop, windows machines, linux machines, everything. I’m also messing around with the Squid proxy/cache software and I’ve got in mind a cool project to build a turnkey wireless hotspot out of free software (NoCat and Squid are the two big ones I’m planning on messing with). It’s nice to be excited about messing with computers again rather than dreading have to fix anything.

Now I just need to find a job. I was hoping I could find a position doing Perl programming but that’s a pretty limited market, especially in Albuquerque. I’ve got two Perl leads though, one that pays about twice what I was making at SpinnNet, so I hope one of those works out. If not I have enough networking knowledge that I can probably find a job doing that. I never bothered with any certifications so even though I know the stuff, some people are stuck on having the piece of paper, which makes things hard. I’m not opposed to getting a low-level tech job if it comes down to it. I could easily be a computer repair guy at CompUSA if needed so I’m not too worried. It would be nice to just be a guy who punches a clock and has little responsibility. :) In any case I’ve got two more paychecks coming so I’ve got a little time.