Oh bugger - I got that wrong then.
Oh, and, have you got any use for an unemployed Russian translator?

I've always heard it in my head as linux, sounds like Linus. I thought Linus would be a good picture for it, if I had any clue what a linux was, or is, or whatever. And how come nobody ever names their kid Linus? Answer that, ULS.

Dear Unemployed Linux Sysadmin:

What do you do with all your free time?

I divide up my time as: 1/4 reading the entire internets, 1/4 Cellar-fying, 1/4 learning new things that may help me get a job, and 1/4 feeling sorry for myself.

Dear UnEmSysAd,
I know it is the leading fad but is this unemployment thing really so cool that everyone should be doing it? I mean at some point someone has to work, no? Or was that a meme started by the man to keep us from taking our cubicles down?

You can have my cubicle when you pry it from my cold dead hands.

And thanks for the time Cellar-fying, UT. :)

An unemployed Linux sysadmin named Toad
Answers your questions about being unempload
As if you need telling
A subterranian dwelling
Is his quarter-time virtual abode.

(My question: What's the deal with the pinchy economy? Where's the jobs at Mang?)

I would rather work than not work. There are definitely more cool things about working than about not working. The money is the coolest part. I mean, it seems like I have free time and could just about do anything, road trip to Vegas etc. but since there is no money, I can't do that anyway.

Work gives us a scaffold to organize our lives around as well. Good luck bro, it is rough out there.

The other thing is that unemployment definitely gives you an incentive not to work, and that is this:

they give you half your previous salary

and therefore you will not take a job that pays 3/5ths of your previous salary. Let's see, $100 more a week to do shit-level customer support work... no I will stay out, and use my time to look for something better.

And there is some incentive not to take things that pay 4/5ths, although I would certainly take that... because if you become unemployed at a new lower salary, you will only get half of the new level salary, yuh see.

This applies both to me, well-paid IP expert, and to the boy, 22-year-old unskilled laborer. In the good economy he could do construction for $14/hour. But now he could only get, say, landscaping work at $8/hour. That's not a good deal because he would be laid off at the end of the landscaping season, and then his unemployment would be truly pathetic, instead of the tiny amount he gets now.

Dear Unemployed Linux Sysadmin:

How do you plan to control your CO2 emissions under the new Cap and Trade policy? Any plans to sell them on Ebay or the Cellar?

Dear Unemployed Linux Sysadmin:

What do unemployed people eat for dinner on a regular basis? Have you considered growing your own or raising chickens to supplement your diet?

Being unemployed has lowered my carbon footprint as I drive far less and consume less. I'm going to save them, and use them up with a big celebratory barn burning.

Ownership of farm animals is prohibited in my township's residential zoning, but there will be a bumper crop of tomatoes, squash, and sunflower seeds this year.

Shawnee, actually I do know someone who named her son Linus. She is an e-mail friend of mine, actually one of few I've actually met in person, and she lives in Cologne, Germany. Her son's name is pronounced "lee-noose."

But yeah, I'd also imagined Linux like Linus from the Peanuts.

Going with what UT said -- I'd rather work than not work too. I do a lot of trash-talking about how awesome it is to freelance, but if my devotion to motherhood did not prevent me from getting a regular full-time job, I'd jump on it in an instant. If anyone would have me.

Oh, they would have you alright...