Good luck on the job search. I was riffed at age 55, and let me tell you, it was not easy. Hopefully you won’t have age-ism to deal with.

O-Capn has lots of good advice, but I have a different view about just one thing…some companies will give hiring approval for a position that, for budgetary reasons, must be filled during this calandar year. Otherwise, they lose approval and have to re-request it in next years budget. So don’t be entirely pessamistic about getting hired at this time of year!!!

it will let you archive to an external disk, online (2 gigs of online space) or to dvds/cds. i use it with my powerbook and it is well worth the 100$/year just for the remote backup space / email services alone… its something to look into.

Patrick

I have actually done the freelance thing for about 18 months 3-4 years ago. It was not bad really. Pay turned out to be fairly good and obviously the hours were cool. But I feel that I thrive on interaction with people and working towards a common goal with others. Call my old fashion, but I just love the idea of being a part of something bigger than myself.

Thanks for the suggestions though. Definitely food for thought.

One other thing… in some ways the creative director title is meaningless to me. Granted, I do want to carry on that path managing clients and people if needed. However I’d hate to move further away from actual design at this point in my life. The past two places I’ve been able to do it all so to speak. I’d love to find something like this again. If it means the title is Senior Designer (or whatever), so be it.

By employers, I meant clients/companies I work with. One isn’t going to cut it, well. . . unless you’re a huge fan of Ramen Pride.

My more important point is that Gabe’s resume (and from what I’ve seen of his book) is solid across different fields. I think he could make a go of it, if he’s interestd in being self-employed. Some people aren’t and that’s fine too and I can see that it might be difficult to go on your own once you’ve hit the Creative Director mark.

Gabe – sorry to hear about the HD dying. Give DriveSavers a shot at recovering your data like Grumpy suggested. I’ve used them in the past and had good luck with them.

Good luck on the job search…

Neither of my drives that failed threw any D.U.M.B. warnings; pretty disappointing. I don’t know what’s warranted by the drive manufacturers, but I doubt recovery of your data is included. The first drive that went bad was purchased through OWC; they seem like a good company, but would only replace the drive, and would do nothing to help get my data back.

Pretty please?

One of the best decisions of my life. And one of the scariest. But in hindsight, it’s not. I have 9-12 employers. Barring something ridiculous happening, all 9-12 aren’t going to lay me off. . . . I’ve been too busy to finish my site and do the personal projects I want to do.

You obviously have the skill set, motivation and talent. I spent a couple of years developing a client base before I left, so that helped. But it sounds like you’re in a similar situation: If your current employer can’t give you full time hours, I’d start moonlighting.

Web? Print? Whaddya want to work on?

No. It just made a very slight noise and I got the flashing folder with the question mark. It continues to do that even now when I go to start it up. I’ve fixed lots of drives over the years and I’ve never seen something act like this.

I don’t have an 2.5 enclosure… I gave it to a friend awhile back who had this very issue.

That does sound pretty bad, but I don’t think there is enough information to figure out the problem.

When you went to boot up after the crash, did it continue to make this noise? If so, then do not stick it in a desktop mac like I suggested. (You’d have to have an adapter anyhow.)

I don’t think I’m going to try the circuit idea. To be honest I think there is physically something very wrong with the drive. The noise it made as it was crashing sounded sort of like a torturing a cat. …Not that I would know of course.

Thanks for the info! I’ve always wondered how much those services cost.

Gabe,

This is one of those risky procedures, but one possibly thing to try, if you are not going the Drive Savers route.

Find the exact same hard drive. Specifically, you want the same firmware. Difficult, but perhaps possible to get. (ask around here if anyone can lend you one?). Make sure it works.

Swap circuit boards. This should not require disassembly of the HD internals (ie, platters). (this tip was from Engadget or Gizmodo)

The other thing, much more risky, was recently posted on Engadget:

http://www.engadget.com/entry/1234000883068489/

Did you get ANY S.M.A.R.T. status warnings? Clicking? Is the HD still under warranty (soem HD’s have a 3 year warranty, even if the laptop is out of warranty)?

Oh, also, I’m assuming you know all this stuff, but did you:

Try the HD in a desktop mac? Disconnect/connect the cables? Pray to Steve Jobs?

• Tim, great info on the “ruggedized” drives. Unfortunately, I’ve got a hunch that the 7200 RPM drive would be too hot (and as others said too noisy) for the PowerBook enclosure. The 4200 RPM drive that came with my ‘Book was hot (and is now dead) and the 5400 RPM drive that I put in before that died worked great, was noticeably faster, not too much hotter, and is now also dead.

• I’m on my 3rd hard drive in this puppy, the 2nd in as many months. Blech.

• I had a great drive today. :-)