originally posted march 20, 2003

ebb and flow

Things just keep going faster, but I'm keeping my life under control as best I can.

a "baptism by fire"

My first project has finished its first phase, and is quickly headed into the second phase. It is, to quote the project leader, a "baptism by fire" for the engineering newbie.

First of all, I should reiterate that the phrase "The New Guy" is meaningless where I work. I started two months ago as employee number 39 by my count. This week, new hires will swell our ranks to about 50 people -- again, by my unofficial count. That's an increase of some 25% in two months. At this rate of growth, we would easily grow to more than 100 engineers in the next year.

In any case, my first project was an RFP (Request For Proposals) involving a large consumer-products company. They bought millions of bottlecaps for their various products from 22 suppliers. Unfortunately for us, the specs kept on changing and the deadlines were incredibly tight. This being my first project, I made a few assumptions and a few modifications to do things the way I see fit. Not a good idea: when I asked my co-workers for troubleshooting, we ended up spending lots of time backtracking through my changes. With such a small staff and a dynamic range of projects, I felt pushed through my first project. Fortunately, I managed to learn quite a lot during my first project -- there was some frustration but ultimately a good result.

The last two weeks have both been 60-hour work weeks spanning six days each. The wide range of employees' schedules means that there is likely one engineer in the office at every hour of every day. Pitt-Ohio Express, which owns our building, has been astounded at the hours we CombineNet people keep when projects come due.

Despite the long hours, days at work aren't always tense. My co-workers have been very helpful during this project, and many a man-hour is spent relieving tensions at the foosball table. My foosing skills are still sorely lacking, especially against the experts on our staff. We also have a couple of comfortable couches in our "developers den." Appropriately enough, the couches came from a now-defunct start-up along with a few of our current employees.

shifting social circles

Since many of my friends from school will be leaving in May, I've started spending more time with my co-workers. Most of the engineers are just a few years out of school, and outings for food and recreation are pretty frequent.

The Foundry Ale Works, a brewpub just a stone's throw from work, features free wireless Internet access through Telerama. I tried it out one Tuesday as I sat at the bar to get dinner and beer. The bartender, a Point Park College student, asked me a few questions to help study for a computer literacy class exam. I helped out as best I could, and she thanked me for my time. Flash forward to Friday of that week, as I headed out to the Foundry with three co-workers. Much to their surprise, the same waitress greeted me with a "Hi!" of recognition and said that her test went well. My reward: a free round of beers for our table. Bonus.

can't cook, won't cook

With all this time at work and with co-workers, there's one thing that has been completely neglected: cooking.

I know I should be cooking -- it's arguably more healthy than the take-out I eat daily, and it should be less expensive as well. However, there are a few problems that prevent me from cooking for myself.

the expense

Food goes bad. Cooking for one requires me to buy staple foods in smaller quantities, monitoring them to make sure that things don't go bad. Meat can be frozen and defrosted as needed, but that leads to a problem with...

the time commitment

Although this week has been more forgiving, my last two weeks have been defined by days when I come home exhausted at 9:00 PM or later. The last thing I want to do is spend an hour preparing to cook, cooking, eating, and cleaning up. I already have precious little time to read, watch TV, or play games as it is -- the last thing I need is something else to occupy my time. On top of all that, there's...

the skill factor

I have no cooking experience. I never had to cook dinner when I was in high school, and my dorm had no serviceable kitchen until my last semester at college. My mom bought me a copy of Help! My Apartment Has a Kitchen Cookbook, but I have had precious little time to read it. When work is defined by long days and tight deadlines, I don't want to deal with precision measurements and preparation instructions. Undercooked meat is very dangerous. Say what you will about restaurant chains, but their failure rate is several orders of magnitude less than mine.

I might start cooking sometime this year, but what little foodstuff I have is slowly going bad in my fridge as I speak. At least I have enough alcohol to forget about whatever I want to.

toy of the month club

I have a toy budget. Each month, I can buy one thing for myself or bank the money for future toy purchases. Last month I bought a ReplayTV, which until recently was recording every program I wanted without a problem. Only when I chose to record the recent Children of Dune miniseries at high quality did I run into problems. Each two-hour episode occupies a whopping 4.76 GB of space, and ReplayTV is known to have problems when its hard drive approaches its capacity. Last night I tried to watch the third episode joined in progress, but ran into technical difficulties. Badness.

This month's toy is designed to combat the consequences of long days spent sitting in front of a desk. It's a PlayStation 2, bought solely for the purpose of playing Dance Dance Revolution as a means of exercise. By playing for about an hour a day, I might be able to reverse my ever-increasing weight -- approaching 170 pounds, some 10 pounds from six months ago. It's not a huge difference, but I need to reverse the trend so I don't have to spend a month's toy budget on new clothes. More on this project will follow.

It's a crazy world out there, but at least my slice of it is doing well.

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