update I've been saying this to my offline friends; I'll extend it to y'all: if any of my readers want to do "lunch", I'm down.

Well, now that my current boss told the company, it's probably cool for me to announce that I have a new job.

To proactively avoid a conflict between my website and my career, I don't mention my employers (or clients) by name. An intrepid enough Googler can probably piece it together with some effort, but it's sufficiently difficult.

In any case, I enjoyed my four years at the old gig and learned a lot over that time. I picked up Python, Linux, MySQL, Apache, CVS, emacs and the bash shell. I also got to work with some talented people and learn by working alongside more experienced developers.

I grew both professionally and personally over that time, going from a inexperienced and opinionated (those two often go hand-in-hand!) programmer to a more savvy and thoughtful developer.

I can tell you this about the new job:

• Most of the development is in PHP, on Windows. I plan to really sharpen my skills with the language and to better familiarize myself with coding on IIS (the Windows web server software). I've enjoyed the work I've done in PHP, but I'm not an expert in it yet, and you can look forward to some nice rants about the language. For starters: it looks too much like Perl and some of the syntax (e.g. for OOP) is retarded.
• Don't worry, fellow geeks: I still plan to do lots of Python programming, mostly for personal projects.
• It's not just coding. I will be architecting and doing specifications and have a whole lot to learn in that realm. Sometimes I enjoy "getting my hands dirty", so to speak, but it will be interesting to hand off my plans to someone else and then polish their work.
• It's in downtown DC, which means I'll be Metro-ing to work for the first time, and during rush hour to boot.

No more comments! Either someone has violated Godwin's Law, I'm tired of the discussion or, most likely, the ten-week window has closed. You can, however, contact me through email.