All of the early Robert Heinlein are fun. Lots of great stuff out there.

-c

Put together a very detailed checklist of everything you are going to hand off. Make him own the list and take notes then make him do a review with you and his manager of what he's learned and then have both of them sign off on the training. Be available for quick questions but keep very detailed notes about how much time you are spending during the first couple of weeks. When he calls you should ask what he's done already with the problem to make sure he isn't getting into the default behavior of calling you first. You need to make sure he can be successful (as in the don't burn bridges philosophy) but at the same time is taking ownership of the job.

Good luck,
-c

If you continue to present yourself as a "programmer" you will continue to get programming assignments. What sort of projects are you good at? What types of problems can you solve? Think of yourself as a business instead of as an 'employee'. The old "You Weren't Meant to Have A Boss" mindset (see: http://www.paulgraham.com/boss.html ).

Get out there and do something cool, don't sit around waiting for someone to tell you what to do!

This could end up in the same museum as "No one will ever want a computer in their house" (Ken Olsen), "The world only needs 7 computers", and "640K memory will always be enough". It's a bad idea to make long-term generalizations based on the first release of a new form factor.

It looks like someone at the Times made a mistake.

I just received this from NYTimes:
"Dear New York Times Reader,
You may have received an e-mail today from The New York Times with the subject line “Important information regarding your subscription."
This e-mail was sent by us in error. Please disregard the message. We apologize for any confusion this may have caused.
Sincerely,
The New York Times"