stripethree

Or something like that. Today was my first day at SAIC as a Software Design Engineer. Day one was filled with what one would expect day one to be filled with at an IT/contractor/programming position: setting up accounts and passwords, meeting people who you will soon be writing countless lines of code alongside, and getting access to all the wonderful resources you are going to be using. I have to say, I was pretty stoked early in the day as upon arrival I realized my pre-built office desktop was running something unexpected: openSUSE. That’s right, not Windows! It will be an excellent experience for me, as I get to gain knowledge on another flavor of Linux that I have not yet used. I am hoping this is the tip of the iceberg as far as things to come since to me, it speaks volumes when a company (or a division, in this case) understands the tools needed and provides them, up front, to the people that will be getting the work done. Now, if I can just figure out how to get one of those shiny iMacs into my office as well… I suppose one shouldn’t be too greedy at the start, right?

I will also say, it was nice to return home in the evening and not be wiped out from having to rise before the sun at 4:00am. Waking up at 6:45ish was down right sleeping in!

T’was a busy weekend and was happy with things I got done in many aspects.

Started off Friday with some much needed painting on the side mirror caps. After the journey across country these were looking pretty rough.

Got them back on the car so as not to rock the Terminator 2 side mirror look and headed off to Tucson for a gathering of Volkswagens. Yes, I drove an hour to go to a VW gathering and no, there isn’t much going on in Sierra Vista. I definitely noticed that driving on AZ90 and I10 at night is a bit eerie as there is nothing lighting the road other than the cars driving on it, which were few and far between. There were many times where beyond the span of my cars exterior lights, nothing but blackness. Got to Tucson and hung around for a while with some of the local folks chatting about cars and such. Went to Applebees and grabbed a drink and some food and hung out for a while. Good peoples. By the time I got home, that was basically it for the evening. I wish that gathering were closer, because over 100 miles roundtrip isn’t going to happen on but a few Fridays.

Saturday I got off my rear end and finally installed a pair of parts on the car that I’ve had for over a year.

This was quote the undertaking since door panels had to come off, interior panels had to come off, wire had to be threaded above the glove box but below the air bag, etc. This was all motiviated by the desire to replace the speaker cover on the passenger side which someone cracked when loading my car to move. Whoops. At least it’s a cheap part. Anyway, by the time I got to the passenger side stuff and saw how the speaker cover is held in and that it would have needed to be drilled out, I decided I’d deal with the crack for now. VW uses T20s everywhere, why couldn’t they have here, why’d they have to make things difficult? The door lock slides went in and in addition to looking sharp with the brushed aluminum and the blue LEDs and such and such, they don’t rattle!. They fit much better than the OEM parts and I only managed to break two of those silly one time use door clips.

Next up was some computer nerd action. The thought process is that I should work on starting a web business, because seeing kids five years my junior rake in cash for stuff I know I have the skills to learn and do sure starts a motivational fire under me. So, I decided it was time to learn something new (on top of the Enterprise Java class I’m already taking no less). I poked around, and since I’ve been doing all sorts of fun database application stuff of late, stumbled upon demos and setup for Ruby on Rails. Now, I’ve heard of RoR before, but never really had reason to look into it. Once I did, I was happily off in nerd heaven, rubbing my hands together with a sinister grin thinking off all the fun database applications I could write. You can laugh, it is kind of funny. I went and set it all up on the Cube so I can have some fun and learn some cool stuff.

So hopefully I can keep the motivation high and something fun and interesting can come of this little endeavor.

For the evening’s activities, we went down to Bisbee, which is a small town on top of the border, about a half hour away. We went for a chocolate tasting, a charity event taking place at the library in downtown (I use the term loosely) Bisbee. Once we found the place, paid our way in, and got our tickets we were off to spend said tickets on chocolate treats of all varieties.

Everything was quite delicious, even more so since we skipped dinner to attend. We then walked around town for a few and noticed that although it seemed straight out of 1975, the town was a bit livelier than Sierra Vista. We met up with some folks and found a local bar. A few beers, some pool, and some intensely competitive shuffleboard action and we decided to see what else the town had to offer. We found another bar, much more populated and with the added bonus of live music. Drinks, more pool, and we were just about the last to leave for the night.

Sunday was a lazier day and all we really did was go out to dinner after I watched Maryland topple Duke. All I will say about that is #1: Yay; #2 why can’t they play like that every game?

Thanks to EBay however, I did recieve a nice new keyboard for my laptop to replace the aging, worn out unit that was already down a key and prime to loose some more.

Using the new one made it apparent just how beaten down the old one was, and I have a real ‘K’ key again! I guess after over three years of daily use and abuse, the refresher was necessary. I also have a new battery on the way so I can hopefully end the days of being tethered to a power cable. EBay is fantastic, I’d put off both replacing these parts because they cost over $200 from Apple and many parts resellers online. I scoured EBay for some reliable sources and found both things, in their original packaging, for under $100 total. Score.

For dinner, we went to a small, local, Italian place that prides themselves on their pizza. It was good, very good, I just had to remove some of the excessive amount of cheese from it. They deliver too, thus I am now faced with finding excuses as to why I didn’t make lunch, and instead ordered in from Delios. Yum.

That’s all for now, time to go wrestle with WebLogic a few minutes more in an attempt to get something accomplished on this class assignment before Heroes starts.