By a strange turn of events, I saw Office Space on Saturday evening. It honestly couldn't have come at a better time.

Working 8-7 or so every day, most of the friends that I have that know about the blog wonder how I've made time to write it all. The answer is my credo of "blog first, think later" and a series of breaks that I get throughout the day. Mornings and afternoons I get breaks from 10-10:15 and 3-3:15 respectively. I also get an hour lunch which I rarely actually eat on and I take a personal break from 5-5:15. Some days I stay after I've finished my work and write something. Also, at various points during the day, I get a minute here and there while a complex query is running and polish it and send it out (hence the variety of times you see on the posts).

I write posts nights or weekends, but I generally post them during the week so that weblogs knows that I'm actually writing stuff.

On Wednesday of last week, I was directed to write a program that swipes everyone's Internet cache, compiles it into a report, and sends it off to the company president. I asked if he was looking to make sure that no one was accessing porn sites or whatnot and he replied that he didn't want anyone looking at anything non-business related, on the clock or off. New policy.

I've thought of dozens of ways to circumvent this new rule. I could keep my own cache clear, I could check and see if other browsers set up folders independent of the standard directory. Regarding the blog, I could simply email my posts in (emails are not monitored -- yet). But I'm not going to. Given my signature carelessness, I'd screw it up at some point and get caught.

So I've spent the last five days or so figuring out what I am going to do, and unfortunately continuing RAWbservations at its current pace is not a feasible option without making sacrifices that I'm not prepared to make. I've thought about slowing it down and posting less, but I question whether or not I can do that. No, I'm not deluding myself into suggesting that I am a productive blogger. I don't post nearly as much as I'd like to. That's exactly the problem. I always want to post more. I always have more to say. I couldn't cut back below my already minimal (in my eyes) amount of posting. That means I'd either start putting my job on the line, cut in to my personal writing time, or cut in to my already minimal free time and social life.

At the same time I'm really reluctant to give up the world of blogging. It's hard to express how much I've really enjoyed it all. My first thought of anything interesting happening in my day is "I should blog this!" I get roughly 50 visits on a given day that I'm not linked by someone else and 30 or so on a weekend day, which may not be much compared to many, but impresses the hell out of me. I could have gotten more if I'd found a niche or stuck to more sober and substantive topics, but I wrote exactly what I wanted to and a couple dozen people a day wanted to read it. Most of whom don't know me (most of my friends are only vaguely aware of the blog).

Well, before I start crying and saying "You like me, you really like me!" I should say that I'm not going to retire completely. I'm not going to do RAWbservations anymore, but I'm certain I'll think of something. The basic problem is that I won't do enough blogging to carry a blog (in my view). That leads to a number of options. Perhaps some illustrious blogger or team blog will invite me to join them. Maybe I'll find some other bloggers in similar situations and we can start up a group blog. I've got a couple other ideas, including a humorous tech blog that I've already set up but never actually started, a blog with my best friend Jay (topic undisclosed), or recruit some other people and do a team blog of that sort. If nothing else, I may start posting on Blogcritics as I'm kinda obliged to do.. Whatever I do, I'll announce it here. Whatever I do, though, it won't be RAWbservations. And whatever it is, I'm probably going to take a couple weeks off to think about it and... ahem... start looking for a new job.

I told my boss that I couldn't have it ready until 1/20/3, so until then posting will resume as normal. So till then my motto shall be "RAWbservations, get it till it's cooked!"