After 13 months of what mostly amounted to a really great job, I was laid off tribe.net yesterday. As I may have mentioned in my first blog post, it was a good product (admittedly with a lot of warts) that we produced, when given the chance.

However, I'm not quite finished with my last project, a contact importer, so I will remain as a contractor until it's complete. This has been a particularly fulfilling project since I was able to implement it using what I think is pretty cool new technology: it will be the first real Ajax application on tribe.net. I really came to appreciate how flexible a language Javascript is, and have a renewed interest in client side programming which had previously been dashed when Microsoft introduced so many unfortunate browser incompatibilities during the first browser war.

But this project should be complete soon, which leaves me available for new exciting software development. In case the reader *has* some work available, you can find my geeky resume, in it's three-output-formats-from-one-input-file glory at almery.com/~jay/resume/ That's right, kids, with xml-resume (xmlresume.sourceforge.net/) you never need to keep more than one copy up to date (unless you are unfortunate enough to need .doc, but those jobs are almost certainly to be avoided at all costs).

This is the best time of year I've ever been out of work. For some reason, all my past layoffs were either in the fall or winter. I'm really looking forward to finally using some of the info in the bay area hiking tribe and check out those local waterfalls!

And just in case you missed the reference in the title, check out bojon.com/tao/

See you on the trails!