Friday was one month and one week that I've actually been working at the New Job, after all the background check brouhaha. So far, things are going very well — my team has a below-average number of trouble spots, my peers have been welcoming and helpful, my boss (though extremely busy) has been supportive. I'm now beginning to get assignments and interact with our internal customers, and pursuing various issues to start calling my own.
Really, the biggest problem I have is a very interior office, right next to the building core, such I can almost see the power draining out of my phone as it struggles to maintain a bar of signal. There's wifi, so that's not bad, but for voice my phone is always running hot and I basically have to leave it plugged in all the time.
Not quite sure what to do about that one. But I guess if I were to have problems, that would be the simplest to have.
What's striking is how _un_like a "government agency" (or the public perception of same) my workplace is. This isn't a bunch of stereotypical entitled civil servants sleeping in their cubes and building up their pensions. The past and present IT chiefs, both of them from private industry, have done a lot to not only instill a real sense of public service (that what we do, IT-wise, actually affects the lives of the citizenry), but that even beyond that there's room and opportunity and a thirst for real innovation. We're doing a ton of interesting projects, and it's amazing how interesting the work is (heck, it's amazing how interesting it is to see all the odd nooks and crannies of the public organization we support).
I've begun to develop a regular rhythm around the work day — up at 5:15, which means if I don't lollygag I can make the train that gets me there around 6:30; otherwise, it's 6:45, either of which gets me to the office by 7 walking from the nearest light rail station. There's a Daz Bog along the way that I grab a nice iced coffee from (that will change sooner or later to un-iced), and into the office. That's really the only coffee I drink in the morning, plus usually something caffeinated at lunch, as everyone at the office carries water bottles, and I've taken to doing the same. There is a good soup and sandwich place nearby, and there's an interior "walking trail" — 1/10 mile a circuit — that lets me get in some good walking over the course of lunch.
Out by 4, home by 5 — and then all the stuff that has to happen there, all the Intertubular bits that I don't have access to from work, time with the family, a smackerel of dinner, some TV, and &c. That stuff feels a lot more compressed than it did during my 10 months unemployed, or even the previous few years on the last job, but I'm coping.
So far, so good.
And now for the Vogues (and the extended title sequence of an early season of the Drew Carey Show.)
My cube is in the basement away from on the opposite side of the building from any windows, so I know that pain.
But it sounds like you landed at a great place, so woot! 🙂