It's been a long time so I thought I'd try and get some stuff posted in here, in case anyone cares, which I'm certain they don't.
December 3, 2004 was my last day working at BuffNET. At the end of the day I picked up my silver frame with the picture of Joe with honey mustard on his nose, and the teddy bear he gave me the day that picture was taken, and the mouse pad with the picture of us at sunset on the Point Gratiot beach, and my BuffNET coffee mug which I received on my first day and never removed from its box. I put them all in a plastic bag with eighteen months worth of papers, and walked down the stairs for the last time, and out the door, and closed a chapter of my life. I'm being melodramatic, but it was a little bittersweet. It was a nice place to work and I'm glad I got the experience.
It's been two weeks since then, two weeks of getting acquainted with my new job at Frontier Science. It's been a bit overwhelming for a lot of reasons. First of all, there were 9 of us at BuffNET, whereas Frontier has 4 different branches (Buffalo, Boston, Madison, and somewhere in Scotland) and over 100 employees just at ours. So as you can imagine the corporate environment itself has been an adjustment. Thankfully everyone I have met has been very nice and helpful and willing to answer questions. Other overwhelming things: right off the bat I have to learn 2 new languages (Perl and ColdFusion); I was hired as someone's replacement so I inherit all of his old projects and code (and bugs); the company is in the middle of a major server switchover and nobody really has any idea what's supposed to go where or what the procedures are for doing things; on my second day there, another programmer put his notice in and will be leaving at the end of the month so now they also have to worry about replacing HIM. ;) Lots going on, as you can see.
Having gotten through the second week I can honestly say I think I'm beginning to get the hang of things. I've fully completed one (fairly simple) project. I've been working on a second but it's giving me a headache because no one seems to know exactly what I'm supposed to be doing with it (and it's not like I haven't asked). And I'm starting to familiarize myself with what seems to be my major inherited project, which is huge and ugly and written in Perl. That's been fun to play around with and if anything has gotten me a lot more familiar with the setup of the servers and the databases, as well as the basics of Perl. So I'd say that after two weeks I'm doing reasonably well. I like the company, I like that being part of it makes me a (albeit small) part of some important work. My career identity crisis is, for the moment, solved.
There are also the perks. First of all the obvious ones like tons of vacation and sick time (21 days per year), full healthcare, dental, not to mention the substantially higher pay. Then, I got to choose my own schedule, so I am working 7:30-3:30 (and it's so nice having so much time in the evenings!). This week I got my first pay check, where the pay raise really started to sink in -- I made more in 8 days than I would in 10 at BuffNET. And this wasn't even a full check, my regular ones will be even higher! So that was neat. Also this week the company Christmas gifts were handed out, and I was included despite my newness. I received a great fleece vest with the company logo on Tuesday. On Thursday, Parkside Coffee handed out promotional bags with a free pound of gourmet coffee (not that I drink coffee but still). Today was the office Christmas party, meaning that not only did I get to not really do any work, but I had some delicious free food and received the following: a 2005 weekly planner, a coffee mug, and a giant umbrella (all with the company logo), and a $100 Mastercard gift card. HOLY CRAP. Yeah I've been sheltered, but man. They just handed me $100, just for working there. I'd say I picked a good time to start. ;) But seriously, on top of that I'm also expecting my final paycheck from BuffNET (which is for 1 week plus my 1 remaining vacation day)... so at the moment I'm feeling very wealthy. Luckily I got all my Christmas shopping done BEFORE I came into all this extra cash or I would have gone really overboard (and I already think I may have overdone it :().
In other news, Joe and I put the Christmas tree up last weekend, and it has remained standing for a full week so far. It leans precariously, and the lights at the top have a tendency to blink and/or go out, and there is no tinsel, and no ornaments on the bottom 3 layers of branches, and the branches are bent horribly out of shape where the cat has been climbing it, and ornaments have been mysteriously discovered in the kitchen. But it's my tree and I love it. :) I don't have a tree skirt but a blanket is doing the job, and there's a nice-looking pile of presents stacked underneath.
I finished my shopping on Wednesday and am pretty satisfied. Just a few left to wrap and I'll be all set. The only thing that's been plaguing me lately is the fact that I got carried away in my buying for Joe. It's a weird feeling, because I loved picking things out for him and I love giving him presents, but I know he thinks there are too many, and I know he didn't get me as many, and I'm afraid he feels bad about that, and that's the last thing I wanted. :( It's not a contest and it has nothing to do with "who loves who more" or anything stupid like that. I didn't mean to make things so lopsided. What's done is done at this point... I just wanted to do something nice for the man I love because he's done so many wonderful things for me all year. That's all.
Anyhow, I'm looking forward to Christmas. :) It will be nice to see my sister and parents and family and Molly and the Arnold's. It's gonna be a really short weekend. :P But nice. :)
There are a lot of other things I've been thinking about but I think for now I'm going to wrap up (because... umm... I need to go do some wrapping!). :P Maybe tomorrow I'll get the chance to come back on here and muse about the wonderfulness of my Joe, whom I adore. But you already knew that. :)