Goddamn tired....
So - the first week of the new job is now under my belt, and I gotta say - it's tough, but in a good way.
The handover plan between me and the guy whose place I am stepping into went to hell in a handcart when his contract start date was moved up, so all of a sudden, rather than a weeks work of being introduced to stuff and shown round, I had a single day to absorb as much as possible! Felt like I was in a wind-tunnel! And as if that wasn't bad enough, Leon (my head of department) introduced me to everybody during the meet-and-greet tour in the following manner: "This is Ben - he's our new web designer, a second dan black belt in karate and competed for England a couple of years back" - major embarressment! Forgot that was on the CV after all!
But it has proved useful - turns out that a bunch of guys in the company got inspired, contacted a shotokan sensei and started their own club on Friday lunchtimes! So I went last week. Obviously I'm miles ahead of them (they're all orange belts), but it's really good to retread the basics.
Anyway, with the assistance of Oli (head of web dev. and the tech guy from my interview), I was able to start being productive by day three, which they say they're pretty impressed with. I've also had a crash course in "good" XHTML, CSS and SQL server, all of which I needed - and all of which gave me a damn good laugh at how primitive IPS was by comparison.
Thursday night was cool, and also a real help in gelling with the company - a senior exec was leaving, so we had a leaving do in a bar in St. Albans - free bar! So I went along, had a few beers and watched a number of the crew - including Leon! - get drunk on scales ranging from pretty wasted to utterly shitfaced!
Anyway, the location of the company, coupled with the flexitime options, makes things very convenient for training - when we start putting the website upgrade together, I'll probably be working late a lot of nights and then going directly to training... like I did tonight! Went to help with the kids, so training started at 5:45pm. Black belt session finished at 9:30pm... no stop, no quit, this is great (bloody tiring though)!
So it's time to hit the sack. Got a bunch of webpages to upgrade tomorrow, a training course in the afternoon, some discount coupon codes to set up and a report to modify... and I'm sure that Oli and/or Leon will come up with something else that needs doing!
The handover plan between me and the guy whose place I am stepping into went to hell in a handcart when his contract start date was moved up, so all of a sudden, rather than a weeks work of being introduced to stuff and shown round, I had a single day to absorb as much as possible! Felt like I was in a wind-tunnel! And as if that wasn't bad enough, Leon (my head of department) introduced me to everybody during the meet-and-greet tour in the following manner: "This is Ben - he's our new web designer, a second dan black belt in karate and competed for England a couple of years back" - major embarressment! Forgot that was on the CV after all!
But it has proved useful - turns out that a bunch of guys in the company got inspired, contacted a shotokan sensei and started their own club on Friday lunchtimes! So I went last week. Obviously I'm miles ahead of them (they're all orange belts), but it's really good to retread the basics.
Anyway, with the assistance of Oli (head of web dev. and the tech guy from my interview), I was able to start being productive by day three, which they say they're pretty impressed with. I've also had a crash course in "good" XHTML, CSS and SQL server, all of which I needed - and all of which gave me a damn good laugh at how primitive IPS was by comparison.
Thursday night was cool, and also a real help in gelling with the company - a senior exec was leaving, so we had a leaving do in a bar in St. Albans - free bar! So I went along, had a few beers and watched a number of the crew - including Leon! - get drunk on scales ranging from pretty wasted to utterly shitfaced!
Anyway, the location of the company, coupled with the flexitime options, makes things very convenient for training - when we start putting the website upgrade together, I'll probably be working late a lot of nights and then going directly to training... like I did tonight! Went to help with the kids, so training started at 5:45pm. Black belt session finished at 9:30pm... no stop, no quit, this is great (bloody tiring though)!
So it's time to hit the sack. Got a bunch of webpages to upgrade tomorrow, a training course in the afternoon, some discount coupon codes to set up and a report to modify... and I'm sure that Oli and/or Leon will come up with something else that needs doing!