Thursday, June 02, 2005

Slight misunderstandings

Last night I had made up my mind that I am going to retire from the IT profession. I wanted to let the people who knew me on the few lists I was still subscribed to know that i was signing off. So I wrote an email and sent it out. The subject was "I must say goodbye" and in it I talked about how my health situation was getting worst and I wouldn't have time to do anything anyway.

You see where this is going?


Wait for it...


Yep!

About an hour or so after I sent this email someone rings the doorbell. It was two members of the local county police. They had gotten a call from someone in Canada and were checking to see if I was pondering, or actually in the act of suicide. After assuring them that I was not going to harm myself or anyone else they went back to their beat. I went back and took a look at the email I sent and 'lo and behold the message did look quite like a suicidal person had sent it. I fired off another email to the same places to clarify my position.

It was kind of nice that someone actually cared enough to do something. I remember on /. a few years ago the story of a kid killing himself while on an chat room and webcam while people in the chat urged him on and did nothing to try and stop him.

4 comments:

  1. May I be the first to applaud your decision to leave the thankless, brutal, ungrateful, overtly religious, and altogether anti-social IT industry. It was the best decision I ever made, and hopefully it will be yours as well (I guess next to having a son, which I assume is high on your list of good decisions). It sucks up your time, your energy, and your money, and in return you don't really get all that much. It took leaving the industry for me to realize that. Although I'm glad I had the experience, I never want to go back to IT stuff again.

    Ever.

    EvereverEVER.

    Now, I do IT stuff because I want to, and I'm not on anyone's watch when I do it. It's much more rewarding.

    Good luck with whatever you're planning on doing as a replacement. I don't know if the New Riders book thing was a joke or not, but if not, don't let them screw you out of royalties. I was majorly screwed with my book. Agreeing to make the second ed. of my book the sixth ed. of "Using Linux" came with a hidden benefit: I and the other authors inherited all the "Using Linux" book LOSSES, so all the royalties that we earned from the new edition were sucked up (or as I prefer to describe it, STOLEN) by Pearson/QUE. Hopefully, New Riders and Pearson aren't the same company. If so, don't agree to do a book swap in the future without a good agent or a lawyer.

    Just a friendly word of advice. Of course, if you're not really writing a book this is all moot.

    Anyway, I have to eat something so I'll shut up now...

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  2. It's actually hard for me to give it all up. I am genetically predisposed to the world of IS/IT. Ok, more concisely, I was born a geek. Do you know I still d/l different Linux distros* and burn them to CD? I have stacks of CD's with older distros on them that never saw the inside of a drive after being burned. This is something I have stopped recently because, though it's a very small expense, it's still an expense that I don't need.

    The book thing was satire. I only picked New Riders as the publisher because the first book I looked at was from them. I probably could provide the content of such book if there were someone to do the actual writing part. Here's hoping you end up getting the money you deserve from the godless publishers (though I'm not going to hold my breath; you know).

    BTW, what did you have to eat?



    * The spell checker keeps wanting to put "bistros" in for this. I find that very funny.

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  3. Oh, I still do IT stuff, but it's not what I do for a living. I can't give it up 100%. I just have no desire whatsoever to actually work in the IT industry. It really is a thankless profession as well as being a time/money vacuum.

    And I'm not buying the idea that you're genetically predisposed to do anything... You are more than a computer guy and you know it.

    Laying off burning Linux CDs? Simple solution: rewritable CDs. The stack of CDs will remain under control and you'll still get to play around with Linux (although after playing with multitudes of Linux distros on and off since 1991, I can honestly say after they're installed they really aren't that different except for how administration works. Want to learn something really new? Ditch Linux and try the BSDs. Moving from Linux to Linux to Linux gets old after a while).

    As for food, B and I met my father and sister for sushi. It was a late birthday thing.

    (BTW, put your clothes back on. :)

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  4. I'm genetically predisposed to being a good cook. And to being able to take care of babies. And to a slight bit of paunchiness (if you can call an extra 60 pounds slight). Of everything that's happened the one thing I regret most is not having a bigger family. Well, two things; Not spending more time with my dad and not having a bigger family. If I weren't beyond broke I'd go buy a wife from Thailand or China or something. ;-)

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