First Day Rocked!

Ack! So much to say! So little time!

First, let me start with the badge picture. OMG. It looks horrible. The ONLY redeeming quality it has is that my name is in 1/2 inch letters under my picture, completely detracting from the picture itself. And to make it WORSE!, the evil mean security 'lady' said to me after she got my badge together, "Oh. Aren't you lucky. You got a good picture." I looked at it and almost screamed! It is SO bad, that when I picked up my kids from school, they looked at the picture and said, "Who is that? (pause) Is that supposed to be you?" Oh well.

Security is very tight at my new job. I got a 10 minute lecture on just how to badge in and out and what happens if I mess it up and what happens if I'm a frequent offender and all the more secured places in the building and you can only use this printer for this system or that printer from that system and never should the systems ever meet and on and on and on...

I passed my one background investigation but am now in the process of yet another. Who knows when I'll be able to officially get on all their systems. I was hoping for tomorrow, but I'll be lucky if it's Monday.

I didn't post on this, but I meant to. My buddy, K., said to me, "I'm a little worried for you as some of this work we have is so mundane and I know you and so I'm trying to put some good stuff in there." I replied, "Pulease. I drive a van 4 hours a day. How much more mundane can you get than that?" Then I realized... when I'm in my van, I listen to CDs or my Alternative Rock the whole time.

You have to understand, in my old job it was what we would call a bullpen... 100 engineers in one room, desk after desk after desk and not a note of music. Music was strictly forbidden. NONE. EVER. So then I thought, "Holy Crap, Lions Tours! I'm going to be doing some of this mundane work with NO MUSIC!"

So I said to him on Friday, "K, this is my only concern. When I'm bored at least I get to listen to music" and he said, "Oh. You're allowed to listen to music here. Just bring a headset..."

Whaaa?!! I nearly flipped out. What a great job! I get to work WITH MUSIC! My sister thinks I'm a nut and she keeps saying, "I think you used to work in a prison. Everyone has music in their work place." But I didn't! But now I do!! Yippee!!!

Here's the kicker though. I'm over my head right now. I am learning all new systems and I don't know this particular product. I'm pulling blue prints, taking system notes and trying to jog my memory from a similar product. (K. keeps telling me all this stuff is in my dormant memory and it will come back. I don't have the heart to tell him otherwise.) So there will be no listening to music until I have my feet firmly planted, and I can go through these systems in my sleep. I give it 2 weeks.

The toughest part for me is going to be... not working more than the 10-15 hours I have scheduled. Today was everything I hoped it would be... and then some!