Finance::Quote
Finance::Quote 1.05 has been released, mainly bugfixes but a few enhancements to make the life of people writing modules easier. Available on SourceForge and your local CPAN store.

Consluting
Getting pretty busy, actually. Have a few contracts that I'm working on, as well as trying to get back into open source properly. Obsidian is moving along, and people are pushing work through it, which is great.

Shall post a link to my resume soon, but people should feel free to e-mail me (pjf at cpan.org) if they're impatient or want to throw work at me without seeing the resume. :)

Fruit
Have ooodles of blood plums thanks to the tree outside. I think about 30% of my food by weight comes from eating blood-plums.

Obsidian
Going into business with a number of extremely clueful people. Idea is to have something similar to CyberSource but with a smaller group, more flexibility, and with some serious tenders for larger projects. Some things are quite scary, I'll probably want to have a good talk to a clueful accountant.

Open Source
One of the big reasons for me dropping full-time work is so that I can spend more time on fun things like open-source. For the last couple of months I've been doing next to zip, I'm hoping to change that soon. I'm still figuring out exactly what my week will look like, but I'm trying for 2 days of (paid) work, 2 days of open-source/other projects, and 3 days of fun.

I'll be trying to find the time to send a letter or two off to a couple of the CyberSource crew. If nothing else I want to better understand how they work, and if I end up doing some work on the side I won't be dissapointed.

You know you're a geek when...
Your partner comes to you with the perl script from Cryptonomicon claiming that she may have found some syntax problems, but after further discussion it's discovered that it's just the formatting that's misleading. Furthermore, you go on to have a meaningful discussion about how they could probably have the script run faster if they avoided the use of $&.

I find I never have enough time in the day to do everything I want. The two things that take up the most time are work and sleep, and I'm unwilling to give up sleep.

That sums it up nicely, I guess. I want a life again. Currently I'm doing management work, not coding, not design, not the things I'm good at, nor the things I want to be learning. Sure, I make a great catalyst. My presence helps everyone else do their jobs and work more effectively, but I don't actually seem to get any work done myself because I'm too busy shunting work.

Can I say I'm happy about leaving my job? Well, I'm certainly happy for me -- I've got plenty of people jumping at the chance to grab me as a consultant, so I'm not too concerned about not getting work. Likewise, if things do go badly I've got a good chunk of savings and a few standing invitations to go back to full-time employment. I stand to gain a lot -- my home office is underneath an apricot tree, I'll be working with some of the most clueful people I've ever met, and there'll be opportunities for me to learn the things I'm interested in and do the things I want to do. The risk is well worth the potential gain here.

However there are some people I will miss, and who I know will find things harder when I'm gone. To those people, I'm sorry. I love working with you, you're great people, but I'm going to go insane if I continue with things the way they are. I'm sure that we won't lose touch, in fact I very very much hope that we can work together again in the future.

Right now I'm trying to write my final letter to submit on Friday. It's certainly not the easiest of tasks, and I'd like things to go as smoothly as possible with me leaving. It won't go smoothly, of course, there's no denying that I'll be leaving a rather large hole, but I'm hoping I can put forward recommendations that will help.

It's getting late, and I should be getting home before dark. I'm sure I'll have much more to write before all of this is over.