Tonight, I ventured into Boulder to attend BLUG.

As I entered the Fleming Law building, I spotted Jaeger a few meters ahead, and followed him into room 104. We converged with a couple of other people who had wandered into the mostly vacant room, and started chatting idly.

I convinced myself we were in the right room, since I knew for certain the email matched the regex /10?/, BLUG had been held there in the past, and we weren't the only ones who had wandered in. But after a couple minutes, one of the people returned and alerted us to the fact that it appeared to have started the hall. Room 103. Oops.

The main speakers were a couple that had started a consulting company implementing Linux solutions for small businesses, and made quite a successful living at it. They gave various tips on getting going in the business.

One thing that gave me encouragement was that when they read off a checklist of protocols, programs and technologies one should learn, I could mentally check off that I already have at least a fairly decent knowledge of all of them.

Of course, as mentioned, convincing people you're not an idiot who's just posing as a clueful person is the real trick.

When the drawing for books came around, I got lucky and my number was picked. Of the volumes available, I chose "J2EE Security For Servlets, EJBs, and Web Services".

Having done some dabbling in Java again a few months ago (much of which was documented here), I came to the conclusion that while a lot of the stuff is very cool, it's probably simpler, easier, and faster to do most small to mid-size projects in php or perl. If one is doing something Really Huge that requires multiple distributed servers to distribute the load, concurrent access to data sources while maintaining db integrety, and other such ambitious objectives, then Java technologies would likely save time and headaches. But for me right now, Java is (a) a toy, (b) an item to pad my resume.

After BLUG, several of us wandered over to Cafe Sole, where I tried a cup of this "Chai" thing Jaeger likes to rave about (it's actually not bad), Jaeger attempted to get Kiesa's laptop working on the wireless LAN (sadly, he failed to make it connect under Linux, but got it working under W2K), and we chatted with a couple of the other BLUG people who had showed up.

Right now, my blood stream probably has a higher caffeine content than it has had since the last big fest in Lincoln, due in part to the complimentary coffee we were given while we waited for them to make our chai.

Some of the things that were said at BLUG helped to raise my level of confidence in my own financial future just a smidgen. While there's no denying that the job market sucks right now, there are signs that things might be improving in the not too far future.

Meanwhile, even though scottgalvin.com enterprises may not or may not become enough of an income stream to sustain me. (By "sustain" in the optimal sense, I mean make enough money with enough regularity to be able to kiss this parental dependence thing goodbye again.)

Even if the worst case happens, and it crashes and burns, at least it's an opportunity to keep my skills from going dull. On the off chance that we really pull it off, it would be Very Cool to be able to make a living independent of the corporate BS routine. (See recent content solutions discussion.)

So again, I believe cautious optimism is warranted. Prudence is advisable. Keep my eyes open for new opportunities. Courage is an asset. The belt might need to be tightened for a while, metaphorically speaking. But no matter what, as long as there is life, there is a new day ahead.