I work for a company that at one time tried to position itself as a "dot com" and as a result I've seen a lot of friends and colleagues come and go over the years. This inevitably results in a "farewell" email of one form or another. For reasons both morbid and practical I archived many of these emails. I named this mail folder "I quit", although it might more accurately be named "I've been laid off". I find the variety of length, content, and tone fascinating. Some are short but sincere: "It has been a privilege (and a blast) working with you, but I am moving on..." Others are business-like and more than a little bitter: "As of [date] I will be resigning from my position as [title] of [department]." Others strive to be poetic: "...and so castles made of sand, fall in the sea, eventually." Others wax philosophical: "I imagine it was probably a dreich, sodden morning as two gentlemen nervously paced the stony, moss-covered steps..."

Going through my mail yesterday afternoon, I had a sensation while flipping through the April 18th edition of InfoWorld magazine similar to the one I have when looking through my "I quit" archive. It seems that InfoWorld is changing formats a bit and has bid farewell to a number of its columnists. I'm not a regular reader of InfoWorld, and probably couldn't identify any of its columnists by name, but the number of farewell columns is still a little sad, a little chilling, and strangely, morbidly fascinating nevertheless. You can see an index of InfoWorld columns on their site, but it looks like that probably changes from month to month.