Overwhelmed

Well, I'm past the one week mark in my new job, and I am officially overwhelmed. There's a lot to take in, and everything seems so new to me. I can't believe how stale my professional skills have become over the past few years. I don't even know where to begin. It's incredible how much I have to pack into my brain every day, just to try to get up to speed, and I'm not even talking about what I need to know about the customer's systems that I need to design and build. If you thought I wasn't updating my blog enough over the past few months, you will probably be disappointed with the next couple of months. I'm going into lock down mode. 'Back to school' as we are calling it around here.

The people at my new job are all incredibly smart and the place just buzzes with energy. Everyone is a true beliver in what they are doing and that we can get the job done. There is very little of the cynicism or defeatism that infested my last job. Here, if you can't do the work, you won't be there long. It's really driving me to educate myself and get ahead of the curve.

The commute makes for a long day. I get up at 5:00AM to be at the train by 5:40 to get a good parking spot. The train leaves at 6:02, and arrives in Seattle at 6:50. From there it's up the stairs, across the street, around the corner and down the stairs to the bus tunnel. Hop on the closest bus, take it 3 stops. Off the bus, up 3 escalators, walk about 5 blocks (jay walk when you can or you'll be there forever), up four flights of stairs, and you're there. Normal time, about 7:05 AM.

I leave the office between 3:50 and 3:55 and reverse the route to get to the train which leaves at 4:20, and I arrive at home around 5:15PM. The total time in transit is about 3 hours a day, which is about double what it used to take me to get to my last job, but so far I've read 2 books and 2 magazines (1 technical book, 2 technical mags and one novel). I consider that time well spent.

I do really miss the hour and a half to two hours a day I was spending with the kids in the afternoon, and by Friday last week, I was ready for the weekend, which was again far too full for our liking. But I try to make the evening time and the time on the weekend quality time as much as possible. We did put a brighter nightlight in their room so I can see them before I leave in the morning, and I turned one of our leftover Christmas cards into a bookmark. It's not a substitute, but it helps.

Anyway, it's far more likely that my other blog (devscape.blogspot.com) will see more action in the coming weeks than this one will, as I document some of the techincal stuff I am learning. If you are really interested in design patterns, LIQ, SQL Server 2005, ASP.NET 3.5, Sharepoint, CSLA, EntityFrameworks, etc, please feel free to stop by and comment, or give me crap for not posting there either.

Otherwise, I'll try to post here when I can, and when I have the energy.