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The big tech pubs have been shuffling their A-team players lately. Steven Levy jumped from Newsweek to Wired. Dan Lyons left Forbes to replace Levy at Newsweek. Forbes is now doing some high-end poaching of its own. (Can we vote for Brendan Koerner?) And the New York Times is staffing up for battle with the Wall Street Journal. Here at Valleywag, we heard that perpetual hanger-on, WSJ book reviewer, Wired kibbitzer and Bono impersonator Paul Boutin was being pulled into interviews for some of these big gigs. Paul, we told him, why bother? No matter where you end up, every single article you write will be 100-worded and openly mocked on Valleywag. Why don't you just finally join the team and post the stuff yourself here? Cracked Boutin, "That seems easier." He starts July 1.

The back story: Boutin and I met 11 years ago when we were both working at a dotcom called HotWired, a long-forgotten online offshoot of Wired. He emailed me asking for schwag from Suck.com, the site on which I worked; I left stickers and postcards and every other sort of branded giveaway on his chair, from which he was invariably absent. We eventually managed to meet — our door-desks were only 30 yards apart, after all. From those virtual beginnings came a fine bromance, and any number of coconspiratorial collaborations. Over the years, though, we never managed to draw a paycheck from the same place at the same time.

Until now. While he's contributed to Valleywag in countless ways since its inception, his work has always been tempered by employment obligations elsewhere. No more! At last, Paul's all ours — which means, gentle readers, he's all yours.

Boutin's not the only one signing on for more. Alaska Miller, one of our more vociferous commenters, is joining us as a summer intern. And while we're sad to lose calendarist Dianne de Guzman, who's starting a master's program in journalism at the University of Southern California in August, we're happy to have found a replacement, Adriana Nunez, who will pick up her duties starting in July.