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.”

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With the impending change of administration already dampening the air around the halls of power, and political appointees spotted reading worn copies of What Color is Your Parachute, the Rat has decided that maybe–just maybe–it’s time to start thinking outside the command bunker. After all, the wirebiter is close to hitting his FERS number. And with a wave of retirements coming in a year, the Rat started thinking that maybe he should avoid the rush, and make room for one of his worthy underlings.

“Of course, first, that means I have to find worthy underlings,” he sighed.

He’s thought several times of joining in the CIO shuffle, waiting for senior IT feds to be called up to take over other jobs and quietly sliding in to fill their shoes. However, his last gig as “acting” exposed him enough to political appointees that he was all too happy to give up the sunlight for a chance to recover from the radiation burns.

And then there’s the consideration of what exactly he would do with his time if he left his well-appointed cubicle in the Network Operations Center, with coffee available in five steps in any direction and the power to crush network abusers at the tips of his well-worn claws.

 “I suppose I could always occupy myself with applying the latest Windows patches,” he snickered, seeing the latest seven-pack get shipped out by Redmond in early June. “That would be at least part-time job security somewhere.”

 Of course, considering that, as recently reported, the world spends 200 billion hours a year watching TV–much of it nearly as entertaining as watching patches download and install–the Rat figures there are plenty of free hands available for that semi-automated task.

“I could always turn my powers to evil,” he mused. “With all that free time, I could bring the world to its knees with e-mail scams that are properly spelled…”

“I think you should blog,” his wife said to him. “You spend all your time complaining about things…why not make a business out of it?”

“I think complaining has already been commoditized,” he replied with repressed ire. “What would be my value-add?”

 “You’re a cranky giant techno-rat, and you want to know what your value-add is?” Mrs. Rat smiled. “I think people would pay to not have to listen to you complain in person.”