One year and counting...

Well... it was exactly one year ago today that I last walked into the offices of Be Incorporated as an employee; although I admit I had already been notified of the fact that I was being laid off. Was I angry at being laid off? Yes. But I understood the need, and I was perfectly willing to work the last two weeks that I was under the impression we were still to work.

When I got to work, most of the engineering staff, quality assurance staff, and others, were planning on playing Unreal Tournament for the day. Even the managers were mostly in on it, and no one — managers or underlings — complained about the idea. It was just going to be a day to blow off steam, and learn to accept what was happening. But my boss, and that of my friend Jon, decided that we had to turn our keys in right then and there. Every few minutes, he came back to see if we had finished cleaning up our cubicle and were ready to turn in our keys. The ungrateful bastard suddenly didn't trust us. Why the hell not? Our access to the Be source code had already been cutoff. What harm could we do?

Well, Jon and I packed our bags, turned in our keys, and left. I made a few stops back at the office to get things I had forgotten, and to talk to Misty, the receptionist, who was also a good friend of mine. But I felt like I was being betrayed. I wrote a long e-mail to Jean-Louis about the whole situation. I later wrote an apology for that e-mail, because I wrote it while still very angry. I must admit, that I greatly enjoyed my time at Be, and I would do it again, from the beginning if I could. JLG has been one of the greatest bosses, directly or indirectly, that I've ever had the opportunity to work with. He's the only head of a company that I ever actually felt comfortable approaching about anything.

Well... all that is fine and good, but it doesn't do me much good right now. Today also marks the one year mark since I last had a job. Despite the constant searching I've been doing, and a hand full of interviews, I have not worked in a year. Furthermore, my unemployment insurance is gone. Although I got an extension earlier this year, I was not able to get a second extension because the State of California no longer qualified for the Federal second extension. It's completely out of my control, and I get screwed.

So, I'm in the dumps right now. No where to go but up.

So, with that in mind, I'm working on a few projects. The most important one to me is a lottery web project that has the potential to bring in some money. It's something that I've been working on for one operating system or another for more than ten years, but never quite completed. So, the latest interation is being developed for the web, and is already far more promising than any previous version. I'll give you more details on it as I get closer to finishing it.

Another project I'm working on is Themis; a web browser for BeOS. (Yes, for BeOS, and yes I still use BeOS.) Few people know I work on this project, because they don't see my name. Well, to put it simply and plainly: I'm Z3R0 One, the founder, lead programmer, and project leader. See the web site for Themis for more information on the "Z3R0 One" personna and the project, but I was originally doing it because it needed to be done. Now I'm doing it for experience that I can put on my resume. If you happen to want to throw a few coins my way because of this project, I will not complain. :)

Lastly, I'd like to thank my family both in Michigan and in California for all their support, love, and help. I couldn't make it without them. Especially Lori, my wife.

I guess that about does it for this entry... Take care, live, love, and be happy.