This is going to be a fairly long entry… It will be cut, to spare the people who have me on their friends page. This way you can skip a bit.

Inside will be the workings of my head. I will say lots of honest things. Who knows if I should or shouldn’t. But it’s how I am.


You know… you just get used to it after a while. The pain doesn’t hurt as much after the first burning.

Yesterday, I had oral surgery at a periodontist. While numb, in the chair, and with implements in my mouth, my manager called me. I had the Doc rush thru the rest of the work. And went back to the office. An hour later, I took my towel and went home.

I was at my worst before I knew what was going on. I lost it for about 15 minutes. shimmeringjemmy and w3woody were truly what kept me sane at that point.

Let me back up. In 1999 I moved away from Pgh to Calif. A startup was offering to move me here and put me in a commercial job. They weren’t offering a lot, but it was here. In January of 2001 that abruptly came to the end. 70% of us were laid off, because the company bled money faster than a hemophiliac.

Fortunately, I went to Mac World a week later and was able to get a position working for Symantec working on Norton Utilities for the Macintosh.

So, the most common question is… How am I. I’ve been in touch with ‘others‘ in the same predicament and we’re doing okay. When you’ve been laid off once you take precautions. I didn’t take as much as I wanted, but at least this time, there was severance. For those with the same sense of humor as me, there was 6.66 weeks of severance.

They also bought out my Stock purchase program. So in truth, (if I don’t run off to tahiti) I have enough to support my house hold for 2 good months and 3 tight ones. Probably longer if I really stretch. The bad news is, the immanent plans for a house have evaporated.

I will be in San Francisco next week for WWDC. I am still ironing out the arrangements of where I will be staying, but that isn’t a real concern right now. The rest of this week will be focussed on getting the resume to stand up and bark again, getting new business cards and prepping my plan of attack for the conference. Personally, I plan to have a new job within 45 days.

Personally, I hope that misinformation doesn’t leak to the rumours sites about this. Because, in truth, I really can only say that I’ve been laid off and that’s it.

I hold no ill will towards the company. It was a corporate decision. Someone who really didn’t know me decided I was one of the acceptable losses. time will tell whether that was accurate or not. I will happily go on record saying that Norton Utilities 8.0 that we just finished is the best damned piece of software out there for drive utilities. When used correctly you can absolutely save a disk from the brink of hell. And I am sick of all the whiney people out there that complain because it reports more errors than other software. (Oh, god! It finds all these problems no one else does, why does it have to find all these errors.) Um, Duh.

I will make no comment on the future of Mac products from the company, because I’m no longer in a position to evaluate.

From those who read this, I merely ask your prayers and energy to help keep me focussed and on the path, and the reward of a new and better job sooner than later.

I am aggressively eager to being the search and will post as new information is available.

Thank you all for your kind supportive words.

« »