I sent a slightly different version of this to a couple of mailing lists in a time of desperate need. It resulted in a deluge of encouragement, tips, references, contacts, and a few outright offers of employment. It just goes to show that love conquers all, especially when love has a thousand well-connected geeks on its side.

You remember that part in Snow Crash when YT was in trouble and she called a Code and thousands of anonymous skaters zoomed up and saved her? Didn't that just kick ass?

This is EXACTLY LIKE THAT.

Dear beloved sweet readers, I'm calling a Code.

Think about this: what's the noblest deed you've ever done?

/home fills up and you nuke someone's Pink Floyd mp3s. Nah.

Some old lady needs her groceries lugged upstairs. Nuh-uh.

You did the dishes without anybody asking. Perhaps.

But what if you made it possible for a lovesick brother-in-arms to be reunited with his one-and-only? Massive nobility bombshell right there, baby. Noble out the ying-yang. Your karma would go north like a HarryPotter.com IPO. Noble like Braveheart. Noble like Gandhi. That's pretty freakin' noble. Noble for LIFE. Damn.

Here's the backstory: it's kinda disjointed, feel free to take notes. Pursuant to the as-yet-undocumented random rambling I Did on My Summer Vacation, I fell in love with a woman in London. (Oops!) Long story short, me go London now. And due to my regrettable long-term dependency on food and shelter, I need a job. In London. Preferably a UNIX sysadmin job. Some cool company with great people. In London. But alas, a horrendous accident at the time of my birth, namely, I was born in Waukegan, Illinois, caused me to be marked for life as a (collective gasp) US CITIZEN, which means that I need to find a UK company willing to sponsor me for a visa.

In London.

By, say, Friday?

I'm banking on Six Degrees Serendipitosity and Infinite-Number-of-Monkeys Sociotechnology here, folks, so please-oh-please, rack your brains, your friends' brains, rack any rackable brains you can rack, for any job possibilities which may get me from this drear desolate Point A to a most fantabulous Point B. Yes, in a way, I am in fact asking you to SEND THIS TO EVERYONE YOU KNOW. I may even post a summary. But my poor meerkat of a mind is currently fixed on a woman several thousand miles to the right of Pacific Standard Time, and so I can't promise anything but gratitude everlasting. Gratitude everlasting and a hundred bucks to the one who directly scores me an actual honest-to-goodness job offer by 5 PM PST Friday August 25, fifty bucks after.

Do it for love, do it for the brag rights, do it out of mindless greed, but I beg of the Collective, somebody get me a groovy UNIX SA job in London. Double sprinkles if it's close to the Victoria line.

Love, Benjy

benjy@monkeybagel.com

P.S. My CV/resume is online at

http://www.feen.com/resume.txt

Postscript: By Friday I had a ticket to London and two dozen or so invitations to interview.