It's All New

Good Things:

• No silly rules.  My old employer had all these rules - no open toed shoes, no popping popcorn in the building, once a month you had to make a donation to some charity in order to wear jeans, etc, etc.  All those things are gone at this place.  They wear jeans every Friday, without paying for it.  I saw a woman yesterday wearing dress shorts.  That would have been a big No-No at the last place, but apparently not here.
• Room temperature is actually room temperature!  You heard me complain about my office being 67 degrees.  I think it is 76 degrees in this office.  I am comfortable.  Don't get me wrong, I could stand for it to be a little warmer, but I'm not shivering.  I sent an email off to the guy who sat in the office next to me at the other place telling him that I was wearing a short sleeve shirt and no socks.  He responded that he was wearing two shirts and two pair of socks.  That's ridiculous.  Oh, and they laid off the building manager ... so no hope of that getting resolved any time soon, either.  (Update: By the end of the day, I've decided that I won't wear sandals again.  My feet were cold by the end of the day.)
  
• The office isn't falling apart.  I never thought about it, but the other building was just not a nice place to work in terms of physical attributes.  I mean, duh, it was in College Park so the area was depressing.  But inside the building, the bathrooms had little things broken that hadn't been fixed for years.  (And no, it was not the fault of the building manager - he was fairly new.)  The finishes inside the building were cheap - ugly counters and walls, etc, etc.  This place is pretty nice.  It's a lot newer and it's leased (rather than owned), so it's in good condition.  The bathroom is in tact and well appointed.  All the offices have decent furniture.  Frankly, it's a little inspiring.
• New challenges.  Well, OK, so far this work isn't terribly challenging.  But hopefully that will come.  I do have at least one puzzle to work out with one of their servers.  I don't know if I can fix it, but I'm going to try when I get a chance.
• Being viewed as an expert.  To be perfectly honest, my old boss was standing in my way.  I know a lot of stuff about a lot of stuff, but he always seemed to know more.  If someone wanted an opinion, they went to him.  Not many people knew that he would often then come to me.  But even then, he used me as a sounding board when he had two options that he really couldn't decide between - he'd let me make the final decision.  I'm getting questions from people in three or four disparate departments.  It's cool to be able to help them out.
• Being able to run errands around the office, including filling up today for $2.34!! I dropped off my film at a Wolf on the way home.  Next up, find a dry cleaner.
  

Not So Good Things:

• Living in cubicle land again.  It took me 9 years to get an office at the last place.  I had to fight for it tooth and nail and then I even had to design it myself.  I am now back among the cubicle dwellers.  This isn't too bad, but there is someone sitting near me who likes to whistle.  I didn't have to deal with that when I had an office.  There's also the status thing, but I'm not thinking about that.  I really am just glad to be working.  If they decide that I'm valuable enough to get an office, then bully for me.  If not, I'm still taking home a paycheck.
• Being new.  After 11 years at the old place, I could answer pretty much any question about the business or history of the company.  And if I didn't know the answer, I knew who did.  It's very strange being a blank slate.  Of course, I'm figuring it out.  And it was interesting today to realize that people are talking about me behind the scenes.  One guy asked why I wasn't a permanent hire because "they need me."  I told him that was a good banner to carry, he should repeat that message to as many people as possible.  :-)
• Never knowing how long it will take to get to work. Traffic lights suck.
  

Interesting Things:

• New personalities.  There is at least one person I've dealt with a little bit who is fairly difficult to get along with.  I won't say more, but ... wow ... very difficult.
• No meetings.  It's been so long since I've not had lots of meetings on my schedule.  So far, I've got some training set up for next week.  But that's it.

That's enough for now.

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