“That which is of the nature to be born is of the nature to die.”

So, a few years back when I decided I’d had enough of languishing in life’s waiting room, I moved up to my current city of residence to be with my wife, who at the time was my long-time girlfriend. For obvious reasons we hit it off immediately, but in a lot of ways the move only worked because of one factor.

I’d moved to this city without much plan - a throwaway job on the graveyard shift of the sort a high school senior would be lucky to have - but it paid the bills long enough for me to find my next, current, and soon to be former employer - Vault 29.

I’ve been working here for over 3 years, a long time in this industry. Last night, a meeting was called for less than 20 hours later - at 8:00pm on a Sunday. This could only be bad news, but even going into it knowing that doesn’t soften the blow. We were told, after our busiest summer and best fiscal year ever, we’d been sold to a mini-conglom, a Hospitality Group. It was packaged as a good thing, but in the end, you’re still finding out you’re laid off a few weeks before Christmas.

Naturally I reapplied so I’m not going to say anything about my potential new employers. From the way the move was pitched the resident staff stand to gain considerably from the layouts. But I’m the melancholy type, prone to the fantasy-novel-reader’s fallacy of assigning meaning to objects. To me the problem with the Ship of Thesius argument is that everyone thinks the ship gets less itself which each replaced and repaired part rather than moreso.

When I was hired here, the restaurant didn’t exist. I had to call the managers interviewing me because I thought, surely, this boarded up, smoke-damaged building could not possibly be the right place. I was hired virtually immediately - one of the first hires - and there is only one other employee with the same service record of me currently here. The restaraunt is beautiful - I’m currently running a scraper to archive all the photos of it I can find. It was built in an old bank and it shows in all the best ways.

The new owners, in keeping with their very successful business model and brand, are completely rennovating and reconstructing the place, so even if I’m rehired I’m likely without work for at least a few weeks. I don’t know how cooking is in your part of the world, but where I live, I’m paycheque to paycheque and frankly lucky to make it even that far.

I’m sad to see the restaurant go, but its important to note that the Vault doesn’t close its doors when the lease gets signed over and the keys are exchanged. Every night that place closed. And every day it opened up just a little bit different.

I was moving on anyway - in one way or another. These forrays into development and security research weren’t just idle hackery. Well, they were, but it was idle hackery with a purpose.

It doesn’t do to dwell, and yet, somehow I feel like I am an air-pirate, whose deposed captain has been forced to sell the ship for scrap, and I am standing on the docks in Lower Valua, watching that old skyworthy thing be torn down for its component steel, seeing in every rivit pulled from its plating and every scar on my hands the long, hot, often painful work that turning her into something with a personality had been.

The reed that cannot bend will break, but… I dunno. Today I feel a little stiff.

If for some reason you want to help out - and I’m not saying you have to - I’m mostly just looking for leads on new job opportunities for techish, junior positions. Or anything, really.

However, I also have a ko-fi.com account, and I did recently write a book, currently in paperback, which has an upcoming e-book release as well.