As I mentioned previously I have been covering my bases by applying for a job despite my desire to go freelance. Just a few minutes ago the president of the company I was talking to called me and made me an offer. It's not a stellar offer, but it's good, reliable, easy money. And actually, it would be a raise from my current salary even though I'd be moving to a non-profit...

They called me on my work number, so I didn't really feel comfortable discussing it openly, but they'll be sending me the full details of the offer by email. What I know so far is that if I were to take this job I'd be getting an approximately 15% raise, significantly better hours (10-6 instead of 8-5:30), and somewhat greater responsibility (the only IT guy instead of part of a team of 4) for a smaller organization (one office instead of 18). On the other hand I expect the benefits package to not be as good as my current deal (about half the vacation time, not quite as good health, no vision, and not sure about dental yet).

The practical side of me, of course, says take the job. But if I were in the mood to listen to my practical side I probably wouldn't be doing any of this in the first place. I know that what I want to do is turn down the offer and go freelance, but do I have the courage of my convictions? I have until Wednesday to decide, although they'd prefer for me to get back to them by Monday. And they have two other people that want this job, so I don't think there's much room for negotiation (besides, this offer would already make me one of the more highly paid people in the office).

I think I've made up my mind, but I'm curious what other people think. So here's a nice little poll:

In the spirit of making my blog more fun I've added a few things. The first is a countdown clock which you can see just to the right of the title for the blog (unless you happen to be reading this via the feed...). As of right now it reads 'T-22 days', there being 22 days until things really start to happen. 22 days from now it will read 'T+0 days', and will continue to count up from there, providing a running tally for how long I've been in business in Boston. The countdown is just an extremely simple PHP script, took only a couple seconds to write, but I think it's a pretty fun little feature to have.

The other thing i did was to sign up for FeedBurner which will let me keep track of the activity on the feed for my blog. This is mostly to satisfy my own curiosity (and possibly my ego a little), but I suppose could be somewhat interesting for others. They also offer various other services to help get more out of your feed, although for the moment I'm mostly interested in seeing how they measure the stats. That let's me put a little image on my site that displays how many subscribers I currently have like this: I'll probably be putting it in the side bar somewhere, although I may wait until the number's a little less depressing...

Nothing really all that fascinating, but it's fun to look at the different things you can do with a blog.