5 years ago this month, i answered an email that came across a listserv i was on as a part of my residential computing consultant job. i wish i still had it. a project at the carolina population center was looking for someone to work on a microsoft access database. i was looking for a summer job.

i answered the email—as i was in the habit of doing at that point in my life (i was working several campus jobs concurrently). i knew microsoft word, powerpoint, and excel, so why not access? after interviewing, i was offered the position, to replace someone who was leaving in a month for the peace corps. i was going to be responsible for a financial database that would track $47 million dollars.

later i would go on to build a health indicators database that would send me to kazakhstan, cambodia, tanzania, and ghana. somehow in the midst of all this i managed to graduate from unc with a bachelor’s degree in linguistics and a masters of science in information science. for my masters project i redeveloped the access-based financial system for the web using php and mysql. then i wrote a sixty-six page paper describing what i’d done.

over the last year i’ve been adjusting to life on the outside. i worked on a few other projects, i traveled to ghana in november, but otherwise i’ve worked pretty consistently on developing and extending the web-based financial system. until now. april 2005 is my last month at measure evaluation.

i’ve accepted a position as a senior web producer with o’reilly media, inc. starting in may.