Posted by Sanders Kaufman on 08/31/07 00:47

Shelly wrote:
> "Sanders Kaufman" <bucky@kaufman.net> wrote in message

>> Wow - the one place that's even *more* republican than Texas.
>> God help you.
>
> Tell me about it! I lived in Massachusetts for 37 uears. I was billing the
> customers for 55 hours a week. 50 weeks a year from 1990 until 2000 when the
> Bush depression hit that area. I was doing application development throught
> the temp agencies for 6-18 month assignments. Then, for the first time in
> my life I was out of work for 17 of the next 26 months. I finally took a
> job in southeast Florida teaching high school math for 1/3 what I had been
> making. I also picked up PHP and web development on the side (self-taught,
> as with everything else). Now I live here in a fantastic place called The
> Villages (www.thevillages.com). However, there is no work here for me, so
> I have to learn new skills (just as I did many times before). The one
> immutable fact is that I will not move from here -- even though I am a
> Libertarian.

[Cross-Posted to alt.politics.republicans]

Up until that last word, you could have been my doppleganger.

I was makin' bacon until 1999. I got my MCSD in 2000, and was ready to
make a leap in my career - then the Bush bomb hit. A bunch of clients
refused to pay, and no new Microsoft ones were coming along - except for
some churches and porn sites. (And who wants to work on *those*?!)

Then 9/11 hit, and the "civilian contractors" took the last of the vc
money. Now, the best IT jobs around here are with PATRIOT ACT
contractors and NGO's (non-governmental organizations).

There's also a lot of Microsoft IT work with the churches (although
that's drying up) and with the faith-based prisons that have sprouted up
around here - but I'd rather teach children how to color in the lines.

My girlfriend is IT director for a company that provides telecom
services to prisons while I'm *hoping* to make my bills by substituting
at Dallas Schools, and am at a the point where development is just a
semi-profitable hobby.

When she talks about what's going on at work, I feel like a 1950's
housewife who can only say "Wow, I wanna do stuff like that" - even
though her husband is a bio-warfare researcher.

Still - I think, that choosing this economic depression to pick up
Linux/Apache/MySQL/PHP was a good thing.

There's a huge sucking sound coming from the market in Political Action
Committees and from individuals who want to sell their tchotchkies on
the web. Ideas like EggsByMail.com won't fly anymore, but
GrammaBrownsAfghans.com will. Similarly, political bloggers are
learning how to monetize their sermons through advertising.

Setting up a Microsoft solution (with ActiveDirectory, .NET and all the
hardware) would be a seriously expensive overkill for ole' Gramma Brown
or the local Union Hall, but a little PHP thing that lets them upload
photos and articles, and download PayPal cash would be just about right.

Small business. PHP.

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