So Alex has broken the news; he's taken the blue pill. Alex has been working for the Patterns and Practices group at Microsoft on contract for some time, writing documentation for products such as Enterprise Library and the application blocks. They finally saw sense and offered him a full time position, which he's accepted; my glowing reference obviously didn't put them off.
It's not like we're going to stop talking - our long rambling chats on the phone will no doubt continue - but I'll certainly miss working closely with Alex; not that we've done a huge amount of that recently, we haven't written a book for about 18 months or so, if not longer, but it still felt as though we were working together. The Dave and Al site will continue and may even get rewritten; now is a good time to bring it up to date.
Now all I need to do is a find a company stupid enough willing to pay me a decent salary and let me work from home. I've been working for myself for over ten years and while the freedom and diversity is great, it might be nice to have a guaranteed salary again. I could buy things. Like door knobs. And carpets. What luxury.