Tuesday, August 30, 2005

Two Days In, and the Road Ahead Looks Pretty Long For the last two days, I have been working dilligently in my new job.  I have moved all of the meager professional  posessions into my new offices.  I have made sure that my small collection of Star Wars Figures--with some contributions made by and my thanks to Snay--is in my office.  I have also made sure to prominently display the many spiffs I have acquired after years of attending various conferences.  For the most part, the job is starting great.  I love the commute, and the coworkers are pretty cool people.  I have not had a lot of chance to get to know all of them, but I expect that to change with some time.  I have tried to spend the last couple of days getting up to speed on things, but that has been tough.  The good thing about being eagerly anticipated is that everyone has been waiting for my arrival, and it is exciting to be a part of that.  The bad thing about this anticipation is that all technical problems had been tabled until my arrival.  Thus, I was presented with a variety of issues upon my arrival to resolve.  Additionally, I continue to get a growing list of items to place on my radar.  Then, there are the items I want to place on the radar from my observations.  Of course, I have yet to configure my laptop with all of my preferred tools.  It is up and running for the most part, but I have yet to delve into the configuration of the environment there.  Additionally, folks coming to you with a problem when the only machine you are using is a SuSE 9.3 Professional laptop is not the best way to troubleshoot problems on Windows.  My laptop also leaves something to be desired, as it has insufficient RAM and a smallish display resolution, but that will change with time.  I am somewhat held hostage to what outside consultants have done in this environment.  Of course, as I expected, there is an absence of documentation from said consultants.  The gentleman I met on Monday can expect to enjoy some quality time with me in the very near future.  So, I have the following list of things I need to get my grubby hands on in the near-term: some Active Directory and Windows Server 2003 Reference Books as my library is pretty lopsided in favor of Novell texts; an explanation of why someone decided that they would setup folder synchronization in Windows clients to the Windows server (more on this later); a fan for the office, as it is somewhat warmer than I prefer; and a non-fluorescent light I am really excited by this opportunity.  I am getting my introduction to the world of a small and rapidly growing business, and observing the results of choices made to expedite growth.  As I thought, though, I do feel as though I am fighting for air in my new realm.  I expect this to last about a week or so.  Once I get the small things straightened out, the larger things will easily fall into place.  Right now, it looks like getting there will be the difficult part.  Time to get some sleep and hit the gym in the morning.  11:02:30 PM    comment []  trackback []