I'm going to need to act with a little more purpose in the new year, I've been at the crossroads for a number of weeks and been distracted. Job loss, Christmas and all the fall out of the two kind of had me standing still. I wasn't actually standing still, but I wasn't anywhere near as productive as I should have been or as I'm used to being. Other things just got in they way, not the least of which was my the pursuit of more than just "see-ya, best of luck!" from my previous employer; an ongoing process, but now out of my hands so I can refocus on what is actually important.
As a family we're in a position to stave off the wolves until at least March. It won't be necessarily the most comfortable standard of living, but we won't have to move and we certainly wont starve - we'll just have to cut out some luxuries. I'm actively looking for any bits of work we might get to quote for in the new year.
I'm also polishing up my CV over the holidays and I'll be sending that out anywhere that looks like a good opportunity. I'm not sure how easy it's going to be to replace the 2 1/2 days a week I worked for my previous employer though. So full time offers might be a tough call, and they'd depend on the progress we're making with goroam and the position and the opportunity it offers. I wouldn't expect a prospective employer to back me any less than 100%, so I couldn't in good faith take a job unless I could give them the same.
In the meantime I'm working on goroam's newest project. A local search and exploration application, we've been working on the goals for a few months now (as I said above, I've been a bit distracted, so it's been a lot of talk), and I think we've got a pretty good idea of where we're going. I've enlisted the help of a friend a fellow coder to give me a hand getting it out the door with some evening and weekend work in his spare time. I've finished most of the user management stuff and started wireframimg up the core pages and they're really coming together well. I think I'm going to start posting details as they emerge and we'll be running an open beta as soon as enough features come together for a release.
Basically I'm doing everything I can to make sure I don't run out of money in the new year, and everything I can to protect myself against the loss of earnings from loosing the major part of my income. If anyone out there knows of any work going, drop me a line: andrew[dot]mccall[at]goraom[dot]net - we do bespoke coding, maintenance and web projects in a number of languages from PHP, ASP to Java.
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