scary times

what's scary for a geek?  well, layoffs is one but i believe that is true for most everybody.   however, layoffs and bankruptcies of the big boys in the industry is a very frightful thing.  i had to message my hubby last week that our daddy, nortel, looks to be out of the game.   :/   this is not as pervasive as the bad practices which caused the dot.com bubble to pop back in 2000. this is a bit of bad management, bad choices, and an even nastier economy.

this morning when i pulled up the news i got to see this, "Microsoft slashes up to 5,000 jobs."  yes, it's normal to be afraid but don't be afraid and helpless.  be prepared and if you are laid-off, work with what ya got.  try not to get mad, the anger will just block your vision and way to achieving your goal; anger is generally a waste of time... try to take care of it through a nice, non-addictive video game.

you can definitely stay geek and be unemployed; however, how is one supposed to afford tools to tinker in the trade without monetary backing?  you can't really,  without the help from corporate or fellow geeks who don't mind sharing or offloading their gear to you.

here are some ideas for the unemployed tech on keeping geek:

1. if you're like me... you may be living off of some of your the gear that your old company "retired" and although retired, you can still play with the interfaces.  get creative and don't let those skills disappear on you.
   
2. this may sound a bit wacky to the average tech geek but get together with fellow geeks or if you don't have many of those who you can peaceably hang around with, head off to a cool tech conference in your industry and start making friends.   =D
   
3. social networking!  some of y'all might not have liked parts of #2 above but it shouldn't be painful to join linkedin, facebook, plaxo, myspace, or friendster.
4. don't disappear - keep friends updated with the use of tweets on twitter.  this is cool because it's possible for you to update your twitter profile and have that status go out to plaxo and facebook.  
5. k.i.t. - keeping in touch --  there are so many ways to get a hold of and catch up with others.   i prefer to use digsby, a multi protocol IM client that lets you chat with all your friends on AIM, MSN, Yahoo, ICQ, Google Talk, and Jabber with one simple to manage buddy list. on top of that, you can take a look at and update your twitter, linkedin, and facebook status'.  digsby is the client to go with for e-mail notifications, social network updates, and instant messaging all in one free client.