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This time around we offer up the opportunity for you to become a member of the Department of Clue Enforcement, an independent agency with offices and representatives all around the world! Candidates should be more clueful than an amoeba and you should demonstrate a passion for softly thwacking those who insist that instruction manuals should be read by people other than themselves. And those other people should tell them how to do things. At three in the morning. On a Tuesday.

The four sponsorship levels (Minion, Evil Genius-in-Training, Evil Genius and Dark Regent) are once again available as well as the omnipresent no-frills membership option! Remember that for every sponsorship we get, our ability to pick and choose advertisers goes up incrementally. It also means we'll be around longer! You'll note that some of the sponsorship levels include the famed Big Foam Cluebat as a spiff; this is appropriate given the department you'll be working for. Cluebats will also be available separately very soon.

Sponsorships will also be purchaseable as gifts shortly! We're still elbows deep in working out all of the hairy "ifs" involved, but we're getting there.

This drive will run until April 7, giving you a full calendar month to burn a hole in your pocket! (We're thoughtful that way) And yes, "nag" strips will rear their heads a total of three or four times during the drive, but only if you haven't bought a membership/sponsorship (and again, if you want to see the nag strips, all you have to do is log out if you're one of the folks who paid).

My thanks to everyone who's supported UF in the gazillion ways available thus far!

• Cluebats R Us! Our fine friends over at Computer Gear have found a good source of Big Foam Bats! They should be available in fairly short order, and what I've seen so far looks pretty cool. They're not your standard foam baseball bat, no sir. They're big and flat, approaching a cricket bat, and they'll have Big Foam Cluebat™ printed on the side in big letters. And they should be quite affordable!
• On the Cluebat front, Unix Admin and UFie Gena S. wrote in with this delightful anecdote: Hello! I work as a Unix System Administrator and have managed to convert one of my co-workers (Tom) into a User Friendly fan. During the recent "Big Foam Clue Bat" storyline, Tom became inspired and created his own rendition of the concept. I've attached a picture of the result, which is also posted on my website. CAUTION: Hosted on Angelfire. There may be pr0n ads and spyware, visit link at your own risk.

  Thanks Gena! That'll teach Mark a lesson! (Um, what did he do?)

• Just a reminder on upcoming conferences I'll be attending: Linux Northwest Fest in Bellingham in April, PenguinCon in Michigan in May and Duckon XII in Chicago in June. Wherever I go I'm sure you'll find me looking for a good source of beer. Or Penguin Mints. Especially those freaky good Cinnamon ones. I still remember the first time I found those blasted things. I ate four tins in three hours and nearly died.
• Thank you to everyone who offered up Bacon-wrapped Chicken at their home if I'm in their town. I kind of posted that in jest, but I should've known better. In any case, I'm very happy to say I'll be descending like a locust on a household local to me here in Vancouver this month. I have the coolest audience. :)
• Last Chance to join Team UFies in the Vancouver Sun Run, at least with the spiffy Team UFies 2003 T-shirt. You have until March 7 to get in on th Team UFies 'Corporate' deal. Details are here.
• Another Dust Puppy sighting! This in from Richard W.: While playing the new computer game Master of Orion 3, I happened to be making some spies to defend myself against other spies. The naming of the spies is rather random (I have a social spie named Mutant Squirrel), and often amusing.

  And then one of my research spies popped up with the name of Dust Puppy.

  Always knew the little guy was a little more than he let on...if you want a screen shot, I should be able to reload a save and get one for you.

  I swear that was Pitr's idea. And my thanks to the developer who included the fuzzball in the game!

I have a few other things to mention but they haven't completely gelled yet. Give me a few days congeal time and I'll post more. Thank you for your kind attention!

Rich

I'm an old-timer in the IT world (I suppose), since I've been in the industry since 1993. I felt the sting of the IT meltdown here in Ottawa when I was laid off from a biotech company here in town. Since then I've been looking for a new job (contract or permanent), and I haven't met much success....read full story & view resume

Chris

I have a few years in the field as a tech servicing a variety of network and computing equipment; LANs included. The tough part for me is that I'm a) young so I'm disregarded sometimes for being a PFY, and b) my location puts off a lot of employers: in the middle of northwest Wisconsin, and that is a remote area....read full story & view resume

Daniel

I'm smart. I'm versatile. I can do and have done a little bit of everything. I've attempted to learn everything I can about those flashing blinking boxes of joy, because I think breaking them, fixing them, and/or making them do tricks is FUN. ...read full story & view resume

Sunny

I'm a homeschooled student in Maryland who would be in her junior year of high school. I'm looking for a part-time job for three reasons: 1) I can use the money to pay for college. 2) I need some experience so I can get my foot in the door once I get OUT of college.3) I just love computers, love being around them, love working with them. I even get a rush out of helping users -- if I can make someone's day better by helping them with my knowledge, it makes me happy, too....read full story & view resume

Nathan

I've been programming since I was five years old and have been working in the industry since I was fourteen. Finding a good software development job in this economy has been very frustrating endeavour, especially because my qualifications seem to scare off a lot of entry-level positions...read full story & view resume

Two more Quicksearches have been added, suggestions that came from the Geekfinder news items comments last month. We'll see how they do (clickthrus) and if they prove popular. Check out these Geekfinder Quicksearches
Technical Writer +175 available jobs
Technical Support +600 available jobs
Systems Administrator +400 available jobs
Network Administrator +100 available jobs
Network Engineer +225 available jobs
Software Developer +275 available jobs
Database Administrator +200 available jobs
Quality Assurance +650 available jobs