[JohnBooty]

  The "my own distro" part is about more than sysadmin. 
  I'm fairly proud of it and recruiters have sometimes 
  contacted me specifically because of the project.

Yeah, I agree that this is really impressive. Everybody's advising you to trim older things off of your resume and perhaps that's good advice but starting/maintaining your own distro seems like something to leave on. One question: why not name the distro on your resume so people can check it out and verify and/or be impressed by it?

[ams6110]

What I would say is rather than trim old stuff indiscriminately, focus on what it is you want to do (or what is relevant to the position you are applying for) and remove stuff you've done but don't want to do again (I've done COBOL programming but I've NEVER put that fact on a resume). Resumes do not need to be exhaustive lists of everything you've ever done.

I would suggest applying for university IT jobs. Their salaries will pale compared to what SV pays, but you will be able to live, the hours are sane, the work environment tends to be decent, the benefits tend to be excellent, and if you are at least moderately competent and ethical you're unlikely to get fired.

[OldCoder]

The distro is named LACLIN.

LACLIN will be 10 years old, in its current incarnation, on Christmas Eve 2014. I use it for all of my work. But I haven't created a public release yet.

I'd hoped to create a public release this year but I needed to suspend development in 2012 due to unforeseen circumstances. Work will resume if things stabilize.

[JohnBooty]

I looked at OldCoder.org and saw that you do have extensive screenshots of your distro. Very cool!

I don't mean to myopically focus on your distro but since you said you're quite proud of it (and you should be!) ...perhaps mentioning the distro by name on your resume, and also by name on your site, could make it much easier for people to make the leap from your resume to finding out about it on your site.

Best of luck to you!!

[OldCoder]

Thanks both for the suggestion and the best of luck. I'll do as you suggest at some point.