About a year into my first job (around the end of '99), as a "graduate" programmer at [company] I was rewarded with a large pay raise. I was promoted from graduate pay to a junior programmers pay scale, increasing my salary by about 20%.

I celebrated by taking some friends to dinner. I remember it cost only around $100 but it felt darn good.

It was to be my last pay raise until 2004. It was the last gasp of my time in the dot.com boom. [Company] outsourced the department and I left to work for MP3.com.au. A year after that I was sold to a doomed dot.com. Three months later after some handover work I left there to work for my current company. I walked straight into a "wage freeze" that wasn't lifted until my new company finished merging with another, over three years later.

Last year I received a pay raise which was half of what I wanted. It was half of an agreed two part step to equalise my pay after the freeze. At the time it was insanely frustrating, but I was happy enough. It pushed us over the edge to allow us to afford the house we wanted. A little backyard, a little puppy.

Wednesday I received the real results of my performance review (TWO!). I've received the other half of the raise I wanted, plus some.

This time, instead of celebrating with friends, it was beer and fish+chips at home (our home!). The extra money is already spent (saving for wedding, improved insurance, house maintenance) before it's even in the bank.

How times change.

Peers that are still with my company (those that didn't take voluntary redundancies or leave in disgust for higher paying jobs, contracting or university years ago), complain of a downgraded market. I suppose (and assume) the joy of having a lower salary than my peers these past four years is that I get to enjoy a pay raise now. My anger of years ago has faded to nothing. Priorities have changed.

For the first time in four years I'm happy with my salary, my job and the work I'm doing.

The old me is in the back of my head, disturbed by this happiness asking all sorts of silly questions like "what about the band" and "argh?!". He aches to find something new to hate-about, like house prices, interest rates, inflation and tax rates.

The new me doesn't feel the need to create stress where there is none.

I haven't changed.

At Yahoo News:

Transformers, the long-planned, live-action movie based on the robot-morphing cartoon, comic and toy franchise, will roll into theaters July 4, 2007, DreamWorks and Paramount Pictures announced Wednesday. Michael Bay (The Island, The Rock) will direct; Steven Spielberg will executive produce.

...via Slashdot.

Sure, War Of The Worlds might have looked nice, but it was still a steaming pile of family-oriented thriller turd.

We've got two years to stress about just how much worse his influence can get.