Switch
Taking a quick look at the logs, I am proud to have noticed that, for the first time, the leading OS hitting this site is Macintosh, barely edging Windows XP.

Nothing could be finer ...
... than Duke getting its ass handed to it by, well, anybody, but especially by the very middle-of-the-pack Wake Forest. The best thing: It's rendering Dick Vitale speechless. Well, almost.

Meanwhile, elsewhere in the sports world, the University of Colorado has scheduled a news conference -- for midnight EST. It's a bad, bad day in Boulder, which apparently is turning into a bad, bad night, and Gary Barnett is probably thinking that having a girl kicker was a really, really bad idea.

Which leads me to another thought: Who is Lawrence Frank and why is everbody treating him like the second coming of Red Auerbach?

This afternoon's visual: I was riding in a rented Hyundai with a Danish co-worker who was singing along with a Jimmy Buffett tape down a back road, with a steep hill to our left and the Potomac River to our right. This road wound around and curved with the river, with scenery that qualifies to be described as pastoral.

Then we rounded a curve, and all of a sudden, there was the Washington Monument.

And now, it's time for sleep. I have systems to implement and planes to catch. Back to the Edge, tomorrow. I'll leave it to you to figure out how I got from Dick Vitale to the Washington Monument via Colorado.

Foreign territory
I work for a software company. That implies that I have some general knowledge of computers. I have just that -- general knowledge. Slightly more knowledge than the average end-user. I don't have the benefit of formal education or intense training; I basically learned what I learned by poking around until I found something that confused me, and then I clicked on "Help" and did whatever it said.

When you work for a software company, though, general knowledge is not enough. I know this. I don't think I really sold them on the idea that my knowledge of the inner workings of a computer goes beyond general. What I do as well as anybody and better than most is manipulate page-design programs. I can remember keyboard shortcuts and draw boxes and apply styles at high speed, and I can assemble said pages in such a way that they don't make the printer choke when I hit Apple-P. More importantly to this company, I can tell other people how to do that.

But: when it comes time to RAID the SCSI with a Gigabit switch, that's where I have to get off the train. I'm in the process of very quickly teaching myself how to do that, how to speak to the Oracle, how to talk in abbreviations and acronyms (JPEG your own TIFF, you EPS! Or I'll PDF your ATAPI.) Today I was in a project meeting, where the hard-core inner workings of hardware and networks were being discussed. I nodded along and said "yeah" at the appropriate points and kept up as best as I could, but I have to confess they lost me at "gigabit switch." I drew the diagram on my legal pad, though, so I have it to refer to when I look up what "RAID" stands for. (Quick explanation: RAID refers to a server drive setup; on the server that was the topic of today's session, the drives are RAID Level 1: the data is written to the server's hard drive and is simultaneously written to another hard drive. If the first hard drive goes kerblooey, the second hard drive can be plugged in to the first hard drive's slot with no loss of data. RAID stands for Redundant Array of Independent Disks. And yes, I wrote the explanation from memory, but I had to look up what the acronym stood for.)

I have some experience at this. When I built The Freelance Gig from scratch -- a gig which included some hard-core hardware setup -- I went in knowing basically nothing. I came out four months later with a Web site of which I'm really proud and some good experience breaking into a computer and installing cards and calibrating monitors and printers. Then, of course, I went right back to being a journalist, and promptly relegated a lot of what I learned to some long-term memory that so far has been difficult to access.

Bottom line is this: I have a lot to learn, and fast. This is what I signed up for, so I'm OK with that. I can toss around the acronyms with the best of them. At some point -- some point very soon -- I'm going to have to actually know what they mean.

Observations from the middle seat
Thoughts I’m thinking while I’m cruising from over the Eastern Seaboard at 37,000 feet, en route from MCO to DCA while hoping my suitcase doesn’t wind up at CLT:
--Here’s the thing about traveling: Everybody’s in front of you. No matter what time you get to the airport, no matter how quickly you get to the gate, no matter whether you were singled out for the security screening, it seems like the whole damn world is in front of me. The real challenge is trying to pleasant and civil to others – remember, the whole damn world is in front of them, too – while wanting to scream, “Would you puh-LEEZE GET THE F--- OUT OF MY WAY?”
--I guess you get used to the whole ear-popping thing after a while. Meanwhile, I was practically Marlee Matlin-level deaf for four of seven days last week. And there’s not enough gum in the world to make it stop happening for me. Any ideas on dealing with that would be more than welcome.
--I’m in seat 11E of a new Airbus A319 as I write this, in which the archaic “No Smoking” light has been changed to a very 21st-century “Please Turn Off Electronic Devices” light. I’m trying to imagine what it must have been like back in the day, when that old “No Smoking” light went off and half the cabin lit up. I can imagine few things more awful. Even more awful than that sinking feeling you get when you see “B” or “E” as the letter in your seat number.
--Laptop + iTunes = good trip.

Life on the road
Headed out today for Business Trip No. 3, back to the home office in the D.C. 'burbs. Dragging a nasty cold with me, an ailment which hopped on for the ride during the last trip to Maryland and hung on with me all the way to Oklahoma and back. Certainly not the ideal way to enjoy a life-changing event.

The demons in my nose have distracted me from the joy of getting out from behind a desk for the first time since I was a globe-trotting sportswriter (well, at least, a Rand McNally Road Atlas-trotting sportswriter). The scenes are very cool:

A D.C. Metro subway packed with Georgetown University students, all dressed up in their politico-wannabe attire, loudly debating the issues of the day but interspersing "dude," "like" and "whatever," as reminders of how old they actually were.

A quarter-inch-thick sheet of ice atop the snow in Maryland, something I hadn't seen for eight years (and would do just fine to not see for eight more.)

A young woman and her year-old son waiting for a plane to Fort Sill, Okla., to see off her husband, who was being deployed to Iraq. The mother and son started their journey at 4:30 EST that morning, driving three hours to the airport in Charleston, W.Va. They changed planes in Chicago. They changed planes in St. Louis. I met them when they were changing planes in Dallas, at about 5 p.m. CST, for the final leg of their journey. The kid was handling things pretty well; he was running around the waiting area with all the vigor and energy a kid that age should have. Mom was pretty worn out, but her spirits were high, too, considering she was getting ready to send her husband off to war. Look behind her eyes, though, and you could see the fear.

Coming back from Oklahoma via Dallas, I found myself crammed into a 737 full of the usual bunch of kids getting ready for a week on the Edge at one of the theme parks -- and NASCAR fans. Entire families headed for the Daytona 500, decked out in the gear of their favorite drivers (mostly Dale Earnhardt Jr.), talking about their ticket situations ("Don't have 'em yet, but I'm ready to pay") and their accommodations (one said, "We got a place down by Disney; I think that's pretty close," obviously not knowing Disney is about 70 miles from the track, and with this weekend's traffic, that's going to be a long damn 70 miles.) I was tempted to share my knowledge of a back way to Daytona Beach, but then, I decided, they get to go to the race and I don't. They can figure it out for themselves.

And, oh yeah, my new job? Let's just say that I'm learning there's a whole lot I don't know. But that's part of the fun.

Allow me to be the first to ask: "WTF?"
I'm somewhere in southwestern Oklahoma. The Grammys are on the TV screen in my hotel room. It's 10:23 p.m. CST, near the end of the show. There are women dancing around in what I guess are Indian costumes, and some guy is, um, singing, and there are people dressed up like Revolutionary War drummers and marching band guys.

Bottom line: I have no idea what I'm watching.

Clear as mud
Just wrapped up Business Trip No. 1, to the current company headquarters in the D.C. ‘burbs. Am in the airport waiting to embark on the next trip, to a little hamlet in southwest Oklahoma adjacent to a big army base. Still trying to figure out this business-travel thing; still overpacking, still at the airport way too early. I guess it takes some time to find the rhythm. All the waiting certainly gives me plenty of time to assess the situation.

My trip last week took me to a nearly empty office. A couple of customers were in for some training. The trainer and a couple of other employees were there. The company headquarters is preparing for a move to the Western Edge. Like any move, trepidation is coming along for the ride. Those who know they are going are anxious. Those who don’t know yet if they’re going are even more anxious. For a few, it’s an easy decision; they’ve lived in the D.C. ‘burbs all their lives, and all they know about the Edge is tourists and big flying cockroaches and alligators and retirees. They like their seasons; the fact that it can be 85 degrees any day of the year isn’t a big selling point to them. But facing the prospect of being home and unemployed has its faults, too. So they wait, with trepidation.

My trepidation, of course, goes the other way. I know where I’m going to be living. What I don’t know yet is what I’m going to be doing or how exactly I’m going to do it. I’m dealing in abstractions, figurative and literal: I have an e-mail address, but no password. I have a cell phone, but no number. I have a computer, but no software. I have a job, but no real knowledge of how I’m supposed to do it. I have a stack of airline tickets, but am not yet sure what to do once the plane lands.

It’ll all clarify at some point, I’m sure. In a few weeks, I’ll be accessing that e-mail and using that cell phone and blasting away on that computer and finding more normal stuff about which to be worried. Right now, I’ll lug all my stuff to the next place and wait.

Now, everything changes
I'm an hour away from walking out of a newsroom as a journalist for the last time.

Things I think when I first wake up

If you're talking about the Super Bowl, and you're talking about anything other than the fact that the Panthers simply ran out of time or that Tom Brady is Joe Montana reincarnated or that Adam Vinatieri is making Scott Norwood really think about what might have been, then you fell for it. You got punk'd by Janet Jackson (who has been irrelevant for almost 15 years) and MTV.

Speaking of ... I always thought the hype around the Super Bowl commercials was basically well-deserved, because for many years, those commercials were a showcase for American creativity. This year, it was more like a showcase for American coarseness. We're taking this "edgy" thing a little bit too far, folks. Flatulence was funny as hell in the third grade. Not so much anymore. Look at the "edge," y'all; it's behind you.

Tonight, I design my last page as a professional journalist. I have two more days in the office after tonight, tidying up, cleaning off desks and hard drives, and tying up loose ends.

How is it that the smallest person in my house is by far the loudest? The Young Daughter, 3, has earned a new nickname: the Diva of Decibels. She loves the sound of her own voice, more than she loves life itself. Good for her. At least I always know where she is.

Beautiful blue sky and low 70s today on the Edge. A good day on which to begin the rest of my life.

For no good reason
Here's where I've been. States in which I've been on the ground at some point in my life are in red. Wonder what I have against the Virginias?



create your own

SPECIAL REPORT
Wonder what's behind this door?
On Feb. 4, 1986, I entered a newsroom for the first time as a professional journalist.

I was a “professional journalist” in my own mind, at least. In reality, I was a 17-year-old senior in high school, hired for a very clerical position in the sports department of the Anytown Daily Bugle. My stated duties were to answer phones in the sports department, transcribe scores, take information from callers and do whatever the full-timers wanted me to do.

But the management had heard me express interest in being a writer, so they decided to test me with an assignment during that first week. My first bylined story appeared on Sunday, Feb. 9, 1986. I became one of the full-timers a year and a half later. From there I moved on to experience every aspect of the newsgathering process, and used some very latent artistic skill to settle into a niche as a page designer who had a knack for making the computer do whatever I wanted it to do.

I’ve done a lot of different things as a “professional journalist.” I’ve worked at four different newspapers; from Anytown to Cincinnati to the Edge to the Very Large Metropolitan Area, back to the Edge. I’ve written stories, edited copy, designed pages, drawn graphics, managed projects, supervised people and even took photos for a story a couple of times. I’ve learned a lot, won a few minor awards and the respect of the people with whom I’ve worked. I’ve made a good deal of money, more than many people who do this job.

Best of all, I’ve done exactly what I wanted to do with my life. And, from Feb. 4, 1986, to where I sit right now, I always said that as soon as it felt like “work,” I’d quit and go do something else.

Easier said than done, of course. In 1988, when I was given a full-time job and could actually call myself a bona fide “professional journalist” without fear of contradiction, I celebrated by quitting college. I knew even then that decision would shackle me to the news business for the rest of my life. I was OK with that 15 years ago. I was OK with that five years ago.

But somewhere along the way, my job has started to feel more and more like work. Tough cookies for me; as a rapidly aging white male, my window of opportunity was about to close on my craned neck.

I didn’t plan it this way, but this is how it will happen:

On Feb. 4, 2004 – 18 years to the day after I dubbed myself a “professional journalist” – I will make good on that boast to “quit when it becomes ‘work.’ ” I’ll walk out of a newsroom as a journalist for the last time.

I’ve accepted a position with a software company that specializes in products for newspapers, magazines and web sites. I’ll be helping to design and implement “Content Management Systems,” basically big databases which hold all the electronic tools necessary to get the news from notebook to print to the web. I’ll be training people to make the computer do whatever they want it to do.

I’ve been making a lot of noise about leaving the newspaper business for the better part of the last two years (see here, and here and, well, here too). The time had long since passed for me to quit bitching and start looking. My first idea was to get serious about finishing my formal education, and that was my original plan for 2004. Then this opportunity came up – the software company was looking for people with newsroom experience to help implement its system in newsrooms. I can bring “newsroom experience” to the table, 18 years’ worth. The rest of it, I figure, I’ll learn as I go.

It’s the first real “job” I’ve ever had. I’ve signed a bunch of non-disclosure agreements and non-compete clauses and other business-y like stuff. I’ll be working with business people and sales people and technogeeks rather than creative people with a nose for the truth.

In past jobs, I’d have to travel for business once, maybe twice a year. In this job, I’ll be traveling to two, maybe three states in a given week. The posting said “50 percent travel;” the people with whom I interviewed say during busy times, it’ll be more like 70 percent. I’ll be a “business traveler.” Right now, I find that kind of cool. In three years, I’m sure I’ll be weary of it.

And yeah, we’ll have to move from the house that we really like in the city we really like. After school’s out in May, we’ll be seeking another house we really like, 90 miles to the west, on the Western Edge.

The money will be good, marginally better than I’m currently earning. The opportunities for advancement will largely be determined by me. Yeah, it’s a volatile industry, but this company seems to be particularly well-positioned to be a player as the new trends in publishing – particularly the electronic variety -- emerge. (Now, that sentence sounded like a Business Person, didn’t it? See how quickly I adapt.) Most of all, I’ll be living my life according to a reasonably set, planned schedule, and won’t be knocked off track by space shuttles falling out of the sky or terrorists blowing stuff up in Morocco or election cycles. I’ll have my holidays and most of my weekends. When I’m not on the road, I’ll be working 8:30-5:30 Monday through Friday, a work schedule that is the envy of all journalists. Even with all the travel, it can be argued I’ll get more time with my family than I get in my current job. Nothing is more important than that.

I’m not going to be terribly far from my basic skill set, and I’m not going to be far from the business in which I’ve spent my entire life. But in some ways, I’ll be a million miles away.

In other words, it’s everything for which I’ve been asking.

Onward, immediately, to the next thing. On Feb. 4, I’ll walk out of the newsroom as a journalist for the last time. I’ll board a plane that night and start our new life on Feb. 5. Not much time for reflection. Certainly no time for sadness or regret.

And, for the first time in a long time, I’m looking forward to the next 18 years of my career.

Well, duh
In a big red bar across top of my favorite news site's home page:

"BREAKING NEWS: Parts of Patriot Act ruled unconstitutional"

Am searching for the most intellectual way to put this ... searching ... searching ... hey, there it is: "No shit, Sherlock."

It didn't take a constitutional scholar to figure that one out. Here's hoping they keep thinking straight and rule the rest of the damn thing unconstitutional.

Margin of error: Infinite
John Kerry has a slim lead over Howard Dean and John Edwards in advance of the New Hampshire primary. Wait, Kerry and Dean are neck-and-neck, with Edwards a distant third. No, no, check that. Kerry has a 13-point lead over Dean. Who's John Edwards?

You know, we could have avoided that whole mess in Florida in 2000 by simply not having had the election. We should just let Zogby and Gallup and the Anytown Daily Bugle call people up and ask them how they would vote if the election were to be held. Have some pinheaded math geek run some formulas to determine the "margin of error," and then present the results as a fait accompli. So much easier to pass the results off as "news," when the candidates aren't making much news of their own; so much more suited to American's attention spans.

Try this idea: Read about the candidates. You don't even have to read a newspaper, although I'd prefer that you do. You can click around on the Web. Hell, watch TV, if you must. Research the issues. Form your own opinions. Then vote for the candidate that best matches yours.

Yeah, it takes a little bit of effort. But it sure seems to me to make a lot more sense than letting the media and a few polling firms choose your leaders.

Forecast: Windy
Winds of change blowing again. Where I'll be dropped, nobody knows. More later.

Referral
Go here. Read to the end. And smile, send along good thoughts and prayers, and high-five the person sitting next to you.

Life is good. It really is. And for a bunch of people for whom I care deeply, it's about to get better in ways they can't even imagine.

Dad, when's Mom coming home? She cooked the books better
Item: Top Enron theives get much-deserved vacations as guests of the United States Government. Mr. Fastow gets 10 years, Mrs. Fastow gets five months. She serves her term first so he can, ahem, stay at home with the kids until Mom's out of jail. When Mom gets home, she's on house arrest for five months while Dad goes and serves his time.

These assholes enriched themselves by almost $30 million by stealing money. It wasn't "creative accounting." It wasn't "shifting resources." It was stealing money. They deserve to rot in prison just as much as a petty thief does. Pardon me if I doubt their qualifications as parents.

And if, in those five months when his wife is cooling her heels at the federal spa, Mr. Fastow doesn't hire a babysitter and run off to some offshore tax shelter, I'll take back calling him an asshole.

Rrrrrrrrring
The real world is calling again. Guess I'd better go see what it wants.

Current mood: Muddled

I find myself suddenly in need of a USB hub. My Christmas haul included a digital camera and a scanner, and I received a hand-me-down Lexmark printer a few days later. All of these devices are USB, which is glorious. Between my two computers, I have eight USB ports, but two of the Mac's four ports are taken by the keyboard and the mouse.

The sun shines in a beautiful blue sky out the window to my right. However, it's not quite 50 degrees. To most Floridians, that's friggin' cold.

I've finally found a minute to answer e-mails that have been sitting in my Inbox for close to a month. Sorry, y'all. I'll try to get better about that.

I find myself on a rotating work schedule for the first time in a long time. This, of course, will be better than my previous work schedule, which was simply, "Be there all the time." For four weeks, I'll work Monday through Friday; for the next four weeks, I work Tuesday through Saturday, with Saturday being a night shift. Then, in four weeks, I switch back. There are worse scenarios, certainly. In an odd development, my job has actually been sort of fun the last week or two, now that Holiday Hell is over. This of course only adds to the confusion about my future; on Jan. 2, I was totally ready to give up newspapers and go work in a cubicle. Now, I'm reminded that some of the quirks of working in a newsroom are really very cool. It's enough to make you think ... well, to make you think I should probably be committed.

My mother's getting married in a few months. This is not something that, really, should not be a footnote in a series of bullet points. But she's been living with the guy for the last five years, so it's really something that was kind of inevitable has that kind of anticlimactic feeling of inevitability. I'm not 100 percent sure how I should feel about it, frankly. He's a fantastic guy, and being married to him will probably add years to my mother's life. And I'm happy that she's going to be doing something that makes her happy, after years of making decisions that have made her amazingly unhappy.

Back in the day, this is the point at which I'd pull the paper out of the typewriter, wad it up, toss it toward the wastebasket (probably missing to the left) and get on with my day. I'm reminded that the sound of pulling paper out of a typewriter was a pretty satisfying sound. No such satisfaction here.

Happy birthday to The Wife
Have you done exactly what you wanted to do for the last 10 years, and done so at the very highest levels possible, on your own terms?

Yeah, me neither.

But she has. This is why I found it puzzling that she's spending her 33rd birthday feeling like she hasn't accomplished anything.

Had she set another goal 10 years ago, she'd be sitting in a mahogany-paneled office somewhere, busting her ass at her $350,000-a-year job doing whatever the hell it was she wanted to do.

Instead, she chose another path. Back in early 1994, before the Old Daughter was born, she decided she was going to be the best stay-at-home mom on the planet. And she dedicated herself 100 percent to that goal. She read all the books. She surrounded herself with friends who shared her philosophies. We whittled down some debt and set some financial priorities. I took a series of better jobs.

After one uneventful pregnancy, we went through very difficult times bringing the next two kids into the world. She was undeterred, however; through every heartbreak, she found the strength to keep trying. She read more books, she talked to doctors, she discovered the Internet along the way. She asked questions. She got answers.

We now have three fantastic children. Not one of them has spent a second in day care. Every one of them is learning what they need to learn to be outstanding members of society, and they're doing so because their mother cares enough to make it her responsibility to see to it that happens. And when The Wife makes something her responsiblity, it happens, whatever "it" is.

Brief interlude from the Old Daughter ... she made her mom a poster for her birthday that reads (unedited) as follows:
"HAPPY BIRTHDAY DEAR MOMMY!
Here is 5 reasons why you should be happy about 'getting old' as you call it
1. You get to see new things
2. You wouldn't want time to stand still, would you?
3. You'd get to see your grandchildren.
4. You would see your children grow up.
5. Just because you should!
Here are 3 reasons you get older ...
1. Because you do
2. Because it just happens
3. Because you're a human being.
So be happy about being 33!"

Let's be honest here: If it were up to me, I probably wouldn't change a light bulb until every bulb in the house had burned out. The Wife doesn't operate that way. Problem? Solve it. Challenge? Meet it. Rule? Break it, if necessary. That's what she's teaching our children (well, all but the last part.) That's what she's taught me.

Brief interlude from the past ...
When The Wife was in college, she found herself in a required math class. She's just as mathematically challenged as anybody, and more so than most. She was already figuring her grade-point average as if she was getting a "D" in that class. Being pre-demoralized, she decided to change the course of the future. She stayed after class, she did her homework, she badgered the professor when she got stuck.

Her reward at the end of the semester: A big, shining "A."

Don't tell me she can't do anything she wants to.

Everybody who meets my wife comes away from that meeting a better person. I sure as hell did. I'm proud to know her, and I'm not sure what I did to earn the privilege of growing old with her.

Dispatches from the real world
Last Friday, while I was for the first time interviewing for a job outside the insular world of newspapers, a man sat in the editor's chair at one of the United States' largest and most respected papers. He was a man who had three Pulitzer Prizes in his pocket. He had reached the pinnacle of his profession, and he had done so by being a tough reporter and a fair boss. Many young reporters cited him as a mentor, saying he had helped them develop the skills they need to do a difficult job, and do it very well.

Meanwhile, I was 100 miles from home on Friday morning, sitting in the lobby of a Courtyard Marriott next to a gas fireplace (totally unnecessary in Florida, even in January), talking to a guy about newspaper computer systems. The guy carries a Vice President-of-something-or-other for this small Danish company that is looking to gain a foothold in the fairly competitive market of newspaper publishing systems. This company's philosophy recognizes that the print newspaper is fast becoming a thing of the past, and its system purports to integrate the print side with the web side better than anybody else's system.

While we were sitting next to that unnecessary fireplace contemplating the future of newspapers, this editor up the coast had no particular reason to contemplate his own future. Being Jan. 2, it was likely he was ready to sweep away the debris of a particularly bad 2003 -- besides the big news that we all had to deal with, his paper had a short but ugly labor dispute, also. In that part of the country, it seems, labor disputes are always ugly. This editor's newspaper had been purchased a few years ago by a large, stridently anti-union corporation, and he was feeling pressure from the home office to get the profits back up to where they were before they made a few piddly concessions to the union.

The unnecessary fireplace crackled as the sun shone in the floor-to-ceiling windows. The VP-of-whatever asked me questions about my skills, my history, and my future desires. It's known that I haven't enjoyed my last few years as a journalist, and that I've been contemplating other avenues. Part of me really wants a regular job with regular hours, a job in which I don't live at the whims of whichever terrorist is in a bad mood that day. Part of me wants to try something completely new and different, something outside of the comfort zone I've spent all of my adult life -- and the last year or two of my adolescence -- building. It would involve some risk, certainly. The job involves a lot of travel, it would at some point sooner rather than later involve me moving the family 100 miles to the southwest, and perhaps most frightening, would involve something that I haven't been doing for the last 18 years. There's a chance I wouldn't know how to do it. I know how to do my current job, as well as anyone and better than most. In that, I have solid job security. To give that up in mid-career for something that brings with it not only the risk that I would suck at it but also the risk of being part of a volatile tech industry, well, some would say that's a questionable decision.

I have no Pulitzer Prizes; if I did, I could give you a solid guarantee that I would never be in a position where I would be fired from a newspaper. My current skills earn me respect from my co-workers; a Big Award of some sort would earn me respect from the industry at large. I'd be like this editor up the coast, sitting pretty at the helm of a large newspaper.

My conversation with the VP-of-Whatever went fairly well. He told me to expect a call in the next couple of days from the president of the company. We exchanged business cards and I headed back home, with 100 miles of road in front of me on which to contemplate my future.

As promised, on Monday, the president of the company did call. I was knocked off guard by the strictly-business attitude of the guy. He seemed to have little passion for publishing, or computers, or, really anything. He was a Businessman. I've spent years cultivating a deep contempt for Businessmen. Soulless assholes who care nothing more than making a buck, who hire people based only on what they can see on paper, who don't create anything. This guy came across on the phone as one of those people. He clucked-cluck at my lack of a college degree. He questioned my stated desire to not move immediately, noting that for a while, I'd have a Very Long Commute. He was calling from the home office in Maryland; we ended the conversation with him saying he'd be in Florida later this month, and we'd set up a face-to-face meeting then.

Roughly the time that phone in Maryland hung up, a newspaper editor elsewhere in Maryland was headed into his boss's office, a newspaper editor with credentials as solid as anybody's.

He walked out of that office with the unsteady gait of a man with a boot firmly planted in his ass.

The publisher cited her desire to have a "true partner" in explaining her decision to fire the man who had been her paper's editor since 2000, before her corporation bought the newspaper. She said this guy was an "excellent journalist, but our partnership was not where I wanted it to be in terms of where we can take the newsroom in the future."

In short: She didn't like the guy. So she shitcanned him. His replacement: The editor of the newspaper for which I work, owned by the same corporation. His departure was announced to us at a staff meeting at 10:30 a.m. Tuesday. At 5 p.m. Tuesday, he was in the other newspaper, introducing himself to his new staff, which was less than pleased to meet him.

This means things will change at my place of employment very soon. The editor will lure people from our paper up the coast to work with him. A new editor will come in and change things to fit his or her needs. It likely won't affect me very much at all. It could affect me a lot.

I'm left wondering, though ... my concern was about job security at a small company in a volatile industry in which I have no real credentials.

Apparently, when it comes down to it, having rock-solid credentials at a large, stable company doesn't do you much good sometimes, either.