How's business, you ask?

Thought for the day: a business plan that includes the words "win the lottery" is not planning a business.

I've spent much of the last two days looking through online job-ads, and a disspiriting time it was too. There appears to be no market for the database toolkit software that I've spent the last five years learning. Much as people talk about continuing education and career flexibility and such, there appears to be only a tiny market for people without a computer science degree. And while the population is ageing rapidly, there is apparently no place in IT for people who are more than five years out of university.

I really don't know what to do.

Ageing Yuppie isn't answering mail or returning phone calls. I assume he wants to wait until he can tell me some good news, i.e. a job that starts "tomorrow morning," not realizing that the information "there's nothing before December at the earliest" would be nearly as useful.

The Münsters are still farting about. It appears that my contact there is only a middleman, that his company is offering translation services to someone else, and that this someone is being terminally indecisive.

G and U have been selected (drawn from the hat) for another competition, which we have already started and hope to have finished in mid-October, shortly before her baby is due. But that's like playing the lottery, I will be paid only a nominal amount (250 Euros) for my time.

I need to spend 5600 Euros to update my copy of the database toolkit to the newest version. Sales of my database and associated consultancy have earned me 2177 Euros so far this year.

Damn, damn, damn, damn, damn, damn, damn, damn, damn, damn, damn and damn.

I shall now do the logical thing and walk downtown for a cappuccino before heading to the office for work on the competition. To leave you in a better mood, here's XKCD on romance and dating, a former ad executive who loves his job at Starbuks and nice short post by Jeffrey Zeldman on his daughter's first day of pre-school:

Nothing says Buddhism like raising a child. To cherish what has already changed as you look upon it. To hold most tightly what you must most let go.

[Updated: a kind of follow-up on the former-ad-executive story, about the store manager who hired him.]