Well, the second week of Carcosa Corp is over. Lots of meetings over
the last couple of days, still getting all my ducks in a row. My workload
is increasing, but I'm also getting more used to the pacing. Test on a
development box and verify it works in general, then test on a staging
server, and let the developers verify it does what they want, on the
same exact config as production. Then schedule an update during a window
and verify again. It's very different than what I'm used to, but then
again this is a whole different ball of wax. I keep saying that, and it's
starting to sink in. Next week I get to play cable monkey, but I'm only
tracing patch cables and moving them from one switch to another. Again,
not my choice of fun, but I feel more motivated here, and not just for
the moneys, but because I like my coworkers. That's pretty good motivation.
Speaking of monies, I got paid yesterday, paper check. That's...different. (direct deposit should
kick in in a week or two). Not quite a full week, but a nice chunk of
change. Mostly either going to pad the savings, or pay down credit cards.
Going to spoil myself a little too, a smidge. *grin* I deserve it.
Tonight is watching 'The Thing' (both the 1982 and the recent prequel),
updating stuff, fixing some stuff for a friend of mine, general tinkering.
How to relax on a Friday when you're a geek. Tomorrow is adulting during
the day, and visiting some friends I haven't seen in too long in the
evening. Fun fun fun. Then next week it's back to work, and getting
stuff in order. Go me! And on that note, I'm calling this a post. Catch
you all later.
It's Friday night, and I've survived my first week at Carcosa Corp. Today
was another decent day, finished up that Exchange issue, well it's pending
the people who are going to use it testing it, but it worked for me.
Had one meeting and one conf call, where I got to see some of the virtual
guts of the setup. I forget how much stuff you can monitor with Cacti besides
network stats. Day went by pretty quick, I turned in my hours to both my
manager and to the staffing firm (guess they need a name too). Left
at 5, came home, made a quick lazy dinner and have been watching movies.
So, one week. So what's the verdict? It's different. If there was a
scale of corpness, with a company run by Discordians on one end, and
the Laundry on the other...well the Shoggoth Pit would be about 1/3rd of
the way on the curve towards utterly random, and Carcosa is about 2/3rds
of the way towards Bob Howard's average days. This is _not_ a complaint,
I keep saying this, but it's just not what I'm used to. Also, the
pacing is different. For years, if I was asked 'What have you done?',
I'd have to come up with a laundry list of tickets and issues I solved
to be ok. Carcosa is slower paced, with more double and triple checks,
meetings to make sure that everyone is on the same page. So instead of
leaping to fix a problem, and later figuring out that the fix was something
else, they test, they research, and they have the infrastructure setup so
that unless things are really buggered, we think twice, fix once. I think
once I stop feeling the urge to go 110mph, I'll be comfortable. Also,
my team are a fun bunch, and the other people I've interacted with so far
are pretty friendly. There's a cafetera downstairs that's pretty decent,
and I don't mind hanging out with my coworkers, vs my usual sitting at
my desk in a book. Plus the 15 min commute doesn't hurt.
So long paragraph short, I like this place. I'm sure there will be things
that get on my nerves, but that's life. And I don't want to get too
attached, as it is a 6 month contract. We'll see how things go.
Otherwise, things are pretty kosher. I've lost a couple of pounds, I'm
sleeping less but not having crazy times waking up. Less Code Red, and
less snacking. I haven't been walking much, but I'm still moving around a
bunch, and I added a notification on my workstation to remind me to get up
and move around every hour. All good things. So, I'm going to have a
nice relaxing weekend, and I'll catch you all later.
