So much has changed. It has been quite a while since I have updated my front page, and it will be obvious that a lot has happened to us between my last update and now.

The short version is, I live in a suburb of Seattle, I work for Microsoft, and I play a lot of video games.

Read on to find out how in the hell I got here.

About a year ago, I was “set free” by my boss at MacLife. He used the excuse of  ”Differing employment goals.” He had problems using my skills to make any money. I am an excellent systems administrator, but he just could not sell my services at all. He could have been making a hell of a lot of money off of me, but instead chose to have me un-box freight, man the phone lines, and generally not use my skill set at all. He was a rotten boss anyway, and is now being investigated for tax evasion, money laundering, and various other business related problems. Last I heard, he was on “vacation” overseas. Good riddance.

The individual that put together the POS software for the store had heard about my employment needs. He gave me a job the day after I left MacLife. He ran a company designing and implementing multi-platform applications for various small and medium businesses in the Treasure Valley. It was good for a while, but eventually he stopped paying me for he work that I did. He was under the impression that anything that he could not be payed for, I couldn’t be payed for either. It boils down to me working for him and his business more then working on his clients. He told me that I could not be payed for anything he was not billing me for, even though I was still putting in more then 40 hours a week of work. He also accused me of fretting away the extremely small paychecks I was getting from him. Towards the end of my relationship with him, I was getting paychecks in the 300 to 400 dollar range, for 2 weeks of work. I could not make my rent, or pay my car payment on that amount of money, and he was accusing me of frivolous spending. I could not eat. He on the other hand had a drug problem, that always managed to land him in financial trouble. He would say to me “I don’t have enough money to pay you your full check this week. I will make it up to you next week,” then go out back to smoke a joint. I decided to end that professional relationship, before I went broke from no money, or worse, some criminal charges due to his drug use. While I don’t think pot is bad, and would love to see it legalized, at the same time I don’t think a business owner should be getting high with his employees wages. THAT is what finally got under my skin enough for me to quit.

So, I was unemployed, with bills pilling up faster then I could manage. My wife and I started sending my resume all over the Treasure Valley, but nothing ever stuck. I didn’t even get an interview. Desperate times. We ended up moving in with a friend from work, and spent the better part of 3 months in a small, cramped, damp basement, with our two cats. During this time, we continued to send my resume out, and broadened our scope to include the entire North-West. I got a few hits, but nothing very concrete.

Fast forward to April of 06. My wife noticed a job posting for “Linux Gurus Needed!” She sent them my resume, and they called me for an interview. In Redmond WA. With Microsoft. They needed me to be there in less then a week, without paying for any travel. Not really a problem, but extremely unexpected. I went in for the interview, and got offered a job 2 hours afterwards. We moved the week after my interview.

And that brings us more-or-less up to date.