At the company I worked at, the entire IT staff got laid off. I got my notice in August that my last day would be in January. I was the last person to be laid off because I had a major project due.
Wow, these last few months were a nightmare, Not only did I had to push myself to get this project done on time, I had unemployment to look forward to when I was done [sad]. Our database guy on this project jumped ship, so I had to quickly get up to speed on Microsoft SQL Server. Our QA guy was also laid off, so our clients had to do QA. The clients kept wanting a bunch of minor changes (and a few major ones) done, even up until the last minute. We used a third-party data-bound grid control that was buggy as hell; their web forums described many kludgy workarounds to get certain features to work. I dropped my kendo classes to save a little cash. Fortunately, the project is now finished.
Despite the rant above, it's been a great company to work at. I've been with them for eight years. Our bosses were always good to us, even during this final project. Early on at this company, they took us on a Carribbean cruise, and even though we were paid during the cruise, we never had to discuss work. One year, the company even sent us to GenCon for the hell of it. Good times, good times.
So now that I'm laid off, I'm going to temporarily move in with family in my hometown. I'm going to update my resume and start looking around various job websites. I'm going to go talk to some of our former clients in the government's IT department and see if I can go work for them.
Even though I've been quite busy these past few months, I was able to put in a little bit of time to do some development on my terrain engine, Land-o-Rama. Now I can finally write about it! I'll start uploading journal entries for Land-o-Rama tonight.