I do both. I have a day job that pays pretty well and I work on the side to pay for my toys. Before I took my current "full-time" position, I did consulting/contract work for over a decade, including owning a staffing company. For me, if I want to make $100K, I bill around $100/hr. If I like the project or I've been working on it for years, then the rate tends to be lower because I rarely raise my rate once a project is rolling. Why the $100K to $100/hr ratio? When you are consulting there is a lot of extra overhead that you can't directly bill for. Generating invoices, unbilled travel (when you normally tele-commute), hardware, office space, broadband, E&O insurance, advertising, etc. And that's just doing the work, not living. You have to include vacation time, sick days, other personal time, retirement, insurance, etc. No one honestly works every possible day. If you want an apples to apples comparison then you have to throw in everything that takes place as part of "working." If you're good at what you do you client list will grow. If you suck, then you'd better take a perm job and hide as long as you can until they figure it out. I tend to turn down work because I don't want or need more work to fill my imaginary "free time." The ratio works for me. Your experience may vary.

Whenever I've made a jump I discuss this possibility with my next employer. "It they cut me when I give notice, how soon can I start with you?" If my new employer isn't ready for me to start, then I take the time off and relax. Mostly it's about planning ahead.

:laugh: That would be why I never watch NASCAR. MotoGP is much more exciting. I'm working on a training module to teach at-risk high school students a little bit of programming beyond the HTML/JavaScript they are already working with. I'll be using Small Basic. Easier to install. No solution/project files. Less overhead and no background knowledge required to start coding when compared to VS. "New" and start writing some code.

Meh, We all know technology is a moving target. Expecting anything to be stable in a sales/marketing stand-point is a fool's errand. In the end, you have to follow your gut. MS changes direction on a whim which is why this hornets nest got stirred up. We are all waiting for that other shoe to drop and MS to yank the rug out from under us. So we read the quotes as we wanted to read them. Silverlight isn't going away. Microsoft has 250 programmers working on developing SL. 250. That's not a dead product. It didn't take center stage at PDC, but that doesn't mean it is dead. IMHO: In the Windows platform world... If you are building desktop apps, go with WPF. (Disclaimer: I write WPF apps.) Why? Because it is a lot more powerful and flexible than WinForms. Sorry for those stuck in WinForm hell, but it's true. It is a lot of work to move to a XAML way of thinking, but it is worth it. Look into MVVM. If you are building web apps, go with your gut. My first gig out of college was as a webmaster. I wrote everything in Perl. I still support clients using PHP. That should give you some idea of my love of the Microsoft aka Evil Empire. If you want to deploy "anywhere", look at Silverlight but understand it's limitations. If you are writing WP7 apps, Silverlight or XNA are the only 2 ways to go. I've written a couple WP7 apps. It was easy after doing 2 years of WPF app development. Sticking with WinForms may be fine for your needs. But the sky is not falling when it comes to WPF. Unless you have to have Silverlight's Web-based features, go with WPF. The ideas you'll learning WPF will downgrade to SL. My $0.02 Ivan

Code or death? I am not sure which would be preferable some days... Today is one of those days and it is only 09:30 on the left coast. It's a Monday. When I was in school, I took some kind of interest/disposition test offered by the University Career Placement office. My test results pointed toward software development or research science. You might look around and see if you can find a similar service offered by someone in your area. That might give you an insight into area(s) you had not previously considered.