Well, I've done several things lately to make progress on my quest to invent a new career not involving Microsoft:

  1. I let my current boss know that I expected not to be with the company past early 2008.

  2. I spent a bundle of money on a new Mac (which should be here on Monday).

  3. I've let the publishers I've been writing articles for know that I'm not interested in continuing to tackle Microsoft-related topics. This means an immediate income drop, but on the flipside it frees up some time.

  4. I've started setting aside a solid, real, uninterrupted hour a day to work on new stuff - my equivalent of Google's "20% time," more or less. The past few days this time has gone to brainstorming on a few ideas for relatively small applications that I can (I hope) build with Ruby on Rails as a way to get some hands-on time in that environment. Next week I plan to pick one and start building.


To sum it up, I've been slowly snipping away my safety net, in the hopes of forcing myself into a new world. With any luck, this strategy will work.