For those of you who have followed the trevails of the Packet Rat over the past 15 years, thanks for reading.   The Rat’s print ramblings have come to an end; here is the last Packet Rat destined for dead trees:

For nearly 15 years, the Rat has been musing in third-person on these pages. A lot has come to pass in that time—when he began, many of those he served with “information services” didn’t even have e-mail addresses.

But now, it’s time for another change, as the wirebiter prepares to re-invent himself again. “Old techies never die,” he told his wife as he sat down to scrawl one last set of missives for the print medium. “They just go into consulting.”

“And old columnists never die,” Mrs. Rat said with a smirk. “They just go online.”

Yes, it’s true. After years of threatening to, the cyberodent is going totally electronic, taking his raw, unfiltered snark directly to the people. Or, at least the three or four that will visit his blog at thepacketrat.com. Like his mom, his dad, and—mostly out of pity—his wife.

“I’m sure the federal folks at Microsoft and Sun and Oracle are all just shaking in their boots thinking about the tens of people who might be exposed to my ire,” the Rat reflected.

It’s true that the Rat has left many unkind words in his wake for various vendors of technology, as well as a few for colleagues in the government service. And now, he’ll be able to deliver those unkind words from his Crackberry as he waits at the Metro stop.

“See,” he explained as he sipped coffee at the impromptu retirement party staged for him in the network operations center kitchenette,” now I can alienate not just co-workers, but potential future employers, all without the filter of someone who checks my spelling.”

“Oh, look!” he squealed as his Crackberry chirped. “I got a comment already on my Census address list rant!”

As he fired off a reply on his chicklet keyboard, everyone in the room edged a little bit further away.

“It was me,” whispered his wife to one of his now-former co-workers. “It really helps to encourage him. Otherwise, he keeps coming in to reconfigure my spam filters.”