I didn't mean to imply that I'm 5-7 months from a funding event. I have 5-7 months left of savings. I keep hearing that funding prospects look good, but I don't know for sure because I'm not directly involved in the fundraising, which is good, because I'd probably have an aneurysm if I had to deal with that. I'd rather work on Wall Street than be trying to raise money.

Can you use Clojure for the Java work? I'd only do Java projects if I could use Clojure as often as humanly possible.

In general I would say no, but you can always get lucky and hit on a "progressive" Java project.

I totally feel with you, but seriously, Java is not so bad that I would rather starve or freeze to death than code in Java.

The mediocre, median case of the useless Web 2.0 startup founder is that he fails or exits badly and re-enters the "real economy". The median case of the financier is that he makes millions and stays in the industry for decades. Well, it was that way until 2008 happened. Now this is less clear.

How do you find (decent) part-time work in technology? That may be what I have to do, but I have no idea how to go about it.

Ask friends. If you don't have friends in the local tech community, find out what tech groups there are in your area and visit them. I don't know about New York, but in Seattle there are dozens focused on every aspect of technology you can imagine (Mac programming, Perl, PHP, security, blogging, computer networking, business networking, et cetera).

I moved to Seattle two years ago and knew virtually nobody. I met a lot of people through local groups like SaturdayHouse, Six Hour Startup, and nPost, got to know people, and even found a job through a friend of a friend.

It can be difficult and take time to find the kind of employment that pays and allows you the freedom to do what you love, but it is possible. I wish you much luck.

I may have something for you here in NYC. Shoot me an email.

Go to events and talk to as many people as you can there... http://www.meetup.com/ny-tech/ and other smaller tech meetups http://nextny.org/

Nate Westheimer (http://innonate.com/) is the new organizer of the NY tech meetup. He has started an experiment doing office hours to have short (15 minute) meetings with people. http://innonate.com/2008/12/15/office-hours/ Sign up and go talk to him, I can almost guarantee he knows a handful of people who are looking for part time programming help.

Depends what kind of programming you do, but the standard method is consulting. There are a lot of people and companies with projects they need implemented, and will pay by the hour for someone to build it.