How much do I make? Sometimes, I simply can’t put a price on what I do.

Two years ago, I was kidnapped by monkeys, who appeared to be in a trance. They took me to the top of the Swayambhunath Buddhist complex, in Kathmandu. I was told that this was the Monkey Temple. As a monk translated the wishes of the holy monkeys, I discovered that I was required to rewrite the OS of their ancient computer, which had failed to reboot, back in 1839. Since then, they had searched the world for a programmer competent to handle the situation. They were about to give up, as they stumbled onto me, and realized that I was the reincarnation of ChiChu Gomptar, the lead programmer for the CS monkey gang, which had served their monkey king, the creator of this computer. I was flummoxed by its design, as it was made of smooth stones, uniform beads, colored sand, and wooden levers inlaid with gold. I told them that I couldn’t remember anything from my past life. They gave me something to smoke, saying that it would connect me, through the eternal ether, to my previous memories.

It did, and after 25 days of extreme programming, of which I recall no details, I had completed the monumental task. I stood up, and ceremoniously dropped the special IPL bead onto the machine, which then awoke from its 170-year slumber with a mighty roar. The holy monkeys were pleased. They handed over a small golden box, with mysterious carvings. It seemed empty, and I was told not to open it unless my circumstances had become truly dire. I thanked them, both for the box, and for the tremendous experience. Unfortunately, I was not able to sell them continued maintenance for their new OS, but that was mostly due to their language not having the word “maintenance”. Anyway, I have those memories, and this box to use when things go really bad, plus the always-present hope of future adventure.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swayambhunath http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Initial_Program_Load

Please withdraw the free-update offer. We will not hold you to it.

Really. Please. I’m a TextMate customer and I’ve been using the same license since 2006.¹ This is an application that I use every day to do most or all of my job. And I bet many of your customers will say the same thing.

Given the value that we get out of TextMate, it’s already grossly underpriced. Please let us give you more money.

You promised the free update in a different era, probably expecting different circumstances. Things have changed.

If the free-update offer still stands when TextMate 2 ships, I will not take you up on it. I’m buying TextMate 2 as a new customer at full price. And I bet many other developers will gladly do the same.

I’ll be doing the same. TextMate is my operating system. Everything below it is the kernel.

More than the witty tech pieces, I read XKCD for these types of pieces. Even more, though, I enjoy the romantic ones.

Wants.