The Ever Astounding Advogato Employment Status Update
With this post, I am now an Advogato cliché! Hooray for me! Ahem.
This whole "shifting from consulting to permanent employment" thing is both exciting and irritating all at once. I’ve done consulting either by myself or within a company for too long now, and would like an opportunity to work in a team, rather than having to be the crucial link or driving force. Much closer to how I work with GNOME, really - it’s so nice to be a part of a thriving team.
Yes, I’m on an upward swing. 
I’ve had a fairly negative week or two all things considered, but it has finished well enough. Have an interview on Monday morning with a systems manager who uses… Evolution. Then I have acouple of good clients lined up to round out the day. So it can’t be all that bad, really.
GNOME
Gearing up for 2.1.1 release. Looking like a nice incremental update to the development series, nothing especially interesting thus far. We’re also looking at doing a 2.0.3 release in early November, to keep the ongoing bug and accessibility fixes rolling out.
Oh, if you haven’t tried building Mozilla 1.2b with Xft2 support yet, run, don’t walk, to your nearest mirror and download the nightly source tarball. It’s very sexy, especially with unhinted, anti-aliased fonts. Can’t wait for Galeon 2 for yummy GNOME/Mozilla lovin’!
Love & Free Software
Dude, I’m gobsmacked every day by the behaviour of some (ab)users of Free Software. I’d say you’re providing insight into just about everyone who works on it! I’ve explained it a couple of times to audiences and people involved in Free Software communities like this:
Arse: So, that’s a pretty shitty car you’ve got. Look at how dirty it is! What kind of fuckwit would drive a car like that? I bet you can’t even drive it. Can you? You can’t! You’re hopeless.
Dude: Um, ok.
Arse: So, can I borrow your keys?
In the end, after all of this raving and ranting, the person is still asking you to do something. Asking for a favour. Perhaps it’s the medium, I don’t know. But on a purely selfish level, if you want something, you do what it takes to get it, whether it’s politeness, dressing up, etc. You don’t shout and flame, simply because it’s ineffective and does not produce results. It amazes me that this concept is so hard to grasp, even for the kinds of selfish people who are so demanding and unkind.
Life
It’s heartwarming to have someone to call when things go right. Even more so than the comfort of having someone to be miserable with when things go wrong.
