Six weeks in and...
I think I'm getting the hang of the new job. I have the occasional dumb with Outlook, but only because there's a few features I don't use frequently at all. It just sucks when one of my bosses has to point it out to me. Blargh. It happens. Otherwise, I get a lot of thanks from him and from my other boss, who often calls my ideas creative (but totally in a good way, not like saying "bless your heart" down south.) I just hope this doesn't mean that at some point this job is going to become boring, like my old one. I'm already starting to have time to actually play on the internet, again--like posting on Dreamwidth/LJ. ;}
The 40th high school reunion was fun. I didn't interact with that many people. As I've mentioned before, social anxiety can whack me pretty well, sometimes. It did, however, allow me to reconnect with my bestie from high school. We haven't made any solid plans to do anything, yet, but I'm hoping it means we do keep in touch better than we have over the past 18-19 years. We used to be the type to keep in touch with Christmas cards every year, but the odd thing was, as soon as I moved back to Madison, it's like we both dropped out of sight. Eh. Life happens: she had a kid barely into elementary school and I was working on my degree. Who has time when that kind of stuff is going on? I barely had time for my own daughter, when she moved in with me while I was working full-time and going to school part-time. Now, though, it would be nice to stay in touch. Also friended a few other classmates on Facebook and got e-mail addresses for others. Overall, it was a great decision to go.
Oh! Saw a former coworker outside work, yesterday, when I was on my way to catch the shuttle to my parking lot. We sat there and bad-mouthed the old work place like pros. He used to teach math for the Independent Learning department, which, when I worked with them was known as UW-Learning Innovations. It's been renamed UW-Continuing Education, Outreach and E-Learning (CEOEL). He says that CEOEL stands for Chief Evil Ogredom by the Egregiously Lousy. We both have a little contempt for the way the program was, and still is, run. They won't offer any online math classes (they did, taught by this coworker, but they cancelled them out of spite when he said he wouldn't put them in a video format, only paper.) Seriously, with all the emphasis on STEM courses and they won't offer online math through continuing education? The regular UW math department offered a few online courses (taught by this same person), but then discontinued them, too. WTF? UW-Madison, for all its innovation in other areas, is shooting itself in the foot in others. Plus, what is it going to do once its online master's program in engineering starts and some of the enrollees are lacking some of these math classes? Geez.
Anyway, life has been interesting! Have some words. :)
The 40th high school reunion was fun. I didn't interact with that many people. As I've mentioned before, social anxiety can whack me pretty well, sometimes. It did, however, allow me to reconnect with my bestie from high school. We haven't made any solid plans to do anything, yet, but I'm hoping it means we do keep in touch better than we have over the past 18-19 years. We used to be the type to keep in touch with Christmas cards every year, but the odd thing was, as soon as I moved back to Madison, it's like we both dropped out of sight. Eh. Life happens: she had a kid barely into elementary school and I was working on my degree. Who has time when that kind of stuff is going on? I barely had time for my own daughter, when she moved in with me while I was working full-time and going to school part-time. Now, though, it would be nice to stay in touch. Also friended a few other classmates on Facebook and got e-mail addresses for others. Overall, it was a great decision to go.
Oh! Saw a former coworker outside work, yesterday, when I was on my way to catch the shuttle to my parking lot. We sat there and bad-mouthed the old work place like pros. He used to teach math for the Independent Learning department, which, when I worked with them was known as UW-Learning Innovations. It's been renamed UW-Continuing Education, Outreach and E-Learning (CEOEL). He says that CEOEL stands for Chief Evil Ogredom by the Egregiously Lousy. We both have a little contempt for the way the program was, and still is, run. They won't offer any online math classes (they did, taught by this coworker, but they cancelled them out of spite when he said he wouldn't put them in a video format, only paper.) Seriously, with all the emphasis on STEM courses and they won't offer online math through continuing education? The regular UW math department offered a few online courses (taught by this same person), but then discontinued them, too. WTF? UW-Madison, for all its innovation in other areas, is shooting itself in the foot in others. Plus, what is it going to do once its online master's program in engineering starts and some of the enrollees are lacking some of these math classes? Geez.
Anyway, life has been interesting! Have some words. :)