It’s been said that “all good things must come to an end”, and this is certainly true today.

Captain Picard in the TNG finale, “All Good Things”Today marks the end of my tenure with a company in Richmond, which now makes me unemployed for the first time in almost five years.  Though I had wanted to stay just a few more months, I think this is a decent time to leave.  The programming team has some very talented people, and the upcoming projects will give them more than enough to satisfy both their need to provide solutions, as well as free their creative processes.

I will miss the Dilbert-like environment, but from what I’ve heard throughout the blogosphere, almost all technology-based jobs bear a passing resemblance to what we see in the comic.

So what will I do now?  Well … I guess I can sleep in until 6:30 am, now.  This used to be something I could only treat myself with on weekends.  Now everyday is a weekend!  Hehehe.

Seriously, though … I do have some prospects for work in Japan.  I currently have an all-day interview scheduled for this coming Wednesday, and there is some thick documentation I need to write for some of my previous applications.  Reiko and I are currently in the midst of stepping up the time-table regarding my legal residency status in Japan, and we’ll be at the mercy of both the Japanese and Canadian embassies regarding this.  Heck, for the first week that I’ll have off work, I’ll probably be doing just as much work (if not more) as I do when employed full time and working side-jobs.

But it should be interesting.  Oddly enough, there seems to be fewer university students bidding on available contract work through guru.com, and this will give me the opportunity to earn some quick cash in my downtime.  On top of this, there are a few local companies that are looking for temporary labourers and willing to pay upwards of $20 an hour.  It’ll be a pay cut, but since they pay in cash at the end of every day, I won’t complain.

All this said, I will miss working at this company.  In the last few weeks I have felt my blood pressure shoot through the roof as I try to accomplish all my tasks before leaving.  In some cases I was successful … in others, I failed to complete the projects in time.  I could say the projects were “stalled” … but they could have kept going if I would have pushed harder.  For that reason I’ll apologize to my co-workers, but I know they’ll carry the torch and solve the business problem.

As with any workplace, I’ve made many friends and even a few enemies.  It’ll be weird not to have my daily dose of friendly abuse, not-so-friendly abuse, and idle banter … but we adapt.  After all, those of us who don’t can’t pay the bills.

So without further adieu, I’d like to thank everyone I’ve worked with there, even the people I often argued against.  While I might no longer be able to quietly protect your data and solve the complex business problems, I know for a fact that the future is still bright for all of us.