Burvil's Life: Sanctification in Progress

Well, the first week is done. Nothing I hadn’t expected – a lot more boxes to manage (and tons of reading to go along with that ), as well as a faster pace of things. It’s a usual adjustment process. Been learning a lot, too – there’s stuff here I haven’t worked with before. Kinda feels like I’m starting undergrad again.

Nonetheless, there are some things I miss, like:

• Being a true local admin on my own desktop (they really tie down the security on these machines – even so far as taking out the floppy and CD/DVD drives so you can’t boot off them),
• MacOS support,
• The 9/80 schedule,
• A (relatively) big office (I have a cubicle now).

Well, after three going-away lunches, a poem I read about folks in my department and how unique it is, and five packed boxes, I can finally say I have a sense of closure to this job. For now, at least It was nice to actually get some sleep last night after cramming all these last minute things in at work this past week. I seem to have a skewed sense of how long things will take – I kept thinking I was just about done wrapping things up, when something else kept popping up that I forgot.

One of the top questions I’d been getting from people as I leave is – ‘So, can I get free service or discount if I mention your name?’ Well, you can get free service calls. Sorry, that’s about it. But hey, if you are in fact continually having problems, that might actually a solace, not having to pay for someone to come out and troubleshoot your setup. I start on Monday, so I’ll find out details in the coming week and post it then.

In the past week, I’d talked to so many people that knew who left the company and came back. I can see why – it’s not just the benefits (which I found to be quite generous) – but there’s something about working there that’s warm and welcoming, and makes it hard to leave…. and once you do leave, you realize how different things are in other companies. Well, we’ll see where God leads me.

Well, I had a nice going away lunch with some sysadmins at my company last week, and there’s another one this Thursday with my own department. But the reality of switching hadn’t really, really start to set in until my manager sent out a mass email, and a coworker sent another mass email to my division announcing this week’s going away lunch. Not that I could really go back on my word at this point… I guess it’s just nervous anticipation of what lies ahead – looking forward to it, but somewhat anxious, too. Sorta like when I left DC – there’s part of me that will always be with the people I served for four years.

It also struck me that each profession seems to have its own jargon that could be really misconstrued, or even blown out of proportion. For example, I’ve worked at multiple jobs before, but this time around, when I got the email regarding paperwork for my _termination_, it struck me as odd why such a word was chosen. Maybe it has to do with the fact that this is the longest I’d ever been at one company. But it made me wonder – who started using it when referring to ending a period of employment?

Not that I would favor a wholesale change in words like this. I still find it ridiculous that LA County would deem the use of master/slave on hard drives offensive. Likewise, there is software like this where they refer to a backup server controlled by a master server as a device server, not a slave server.

But again, in the end, it’s just words….