End of the day and...
After being frozen and depressed about seemingly another day of pointless nothingness, I'm feeling a bit better this evening.
My supervisor finally handed over the bit of the manual on Oracle Warehouse Builder that tells me a little about how to do things in it rather than just advertising the features. Yay. She 'forgot'. I have this feeling about her...
It was definitely more of a process thing than a "here's how that thing works and why and what it does", but at least it's a start and I was able to start putting that information into practise to work out how to make the small change request that was assigned to me. I need to see someone else tomorrow to find out how to test it (and every 'expert' in the building keeps telling me that they don't really know how to use it and are you sure that full outer joins really exist in relational databases?) but at least I got to do something, it might be useful and I got to learn something and put it into practise.
Surely there must be some better documentation on Oracle Warehouse Builder than this 'manual' (pah!) and odd queries dotted around cyberspace. Anyone?
I also got to have lunch and a chat with a couple of other programmers that I think I'm going to like. Er, L is from China and C is from India. I fail at making friends with the natives. We were swapping 'OMG, how different is Canada?' stories and I was getting recs for actual decent Chinese and Indian restaurants. I knew they were hiding out there somewhere. I also got a rec for a store that does a fair bit of importing groceries from around the world. I have to take the kittens to the vet this weekend, but possibly next weekend I might spend the afternoon in the city investigating. There are a few odds and ends food-wise that I'd like to find sources for. Can you believe that nobody seems to have heard of double cream here? Eeep! Hopefully this place might at least be able to recommend a source even if they don't stock it. I refuse to accept that whipping cream is the thickest cream I will be able to buy here. And someone here must stock Yorkshire Tea...
Anyway, the upshot is that I was feeling much happier when I got home. I listened to Chris Evans while I made supper, watched the first episode of Archer's Goon while I ate and then spent the evening cuddling with my kittens in my armchair. I'm still feeling better now and I'm actually going to try sleeping without my knock-out tea tonight.
It's amazing how much it can get you down to be miserable and lonely at work. I think that previously I've been able to vent to Mum about it over supper each night and she's usually found a way to cheer me up. Now I've got to learn how to cope with this kind of thing without her input and it's been harder than I'd imagined. I have the sense that this will be the week that I'll look back on as my wobble week, the first time when I've asked myself whether this was the right decision, and feel proud of myself for getting through. My work is going to be interesting when people finally get around to training me and I can communicate with people at work if I try!
My supervisor finally handed over the bit of the manual on Oracle Warehouse Builder that tells me a little about how to do things in it rather than just advertising the features. Yay. She 'forgot'. I have this feeling about her...
It was definitely more of a process thing than a "here's how that thing works and why and what it does", but at least it's a start and I was able to start putting that information into practise to work out how to make the small change request that was assigned to me. I need to see someone else tomorrow to find out how to test it (and every 'expert' in the building keeps telling me that they don't really know how to use it and are you sure that full outer joins really exist in relational databases?) but at least I got to do something, it might be useful and I got to learn something and put it into practise.
Surely there must be some better documentation on Oracle Warehouse Builder than this 'manual' (pah!) and odd queries dotted around cyberspace. Anyone?
I also got to have lunch and a chat with a couple of other programmers that I think I'm going to like. Er, L is from China and C is from India. I fail at making friends with the natives. We were swapping 'OMG, how different is Canada?' stories and I was getting recs for actual decent Chinese and Indian restaurants. I knew they were hiding out there somewhere. I also got a rec for a store that does a fair bit of importing groceries from around the world. I have to take the kittens to the vet this weekend, but possibly next weekend I might spend the afternoon in the city investigating. There are a few odds and ends food-wise that I'd like to find sources for. Can you believe that nobody seems to have heard of double cream here? Eeep! Hopefully this place might at least be able to recommend a source even if they don't stock it. I refuse to accept that whipping cream is the thickest cream I will be able to buy here. And someone here must stock Yorkshire Tea...
Anyway, the upshot is that I was feeling much happier when I got home. I listened to Chris Evans while I made supper, watched the first episode of Archer's Goon while I ate and then spent the evening cuddling with my kittens in my armchair. I'm still feeling better now and I'm actually going to try sleeping without my knock-out tea tonight.
It's amazing how much it can get you down to be miserable and lonely at work. I think that previously I've been able to vent to Mum about it over supper each night and she's usually found a way to cheer me up. Now I've got to learn how to cope with this kind of thing without her input and it's been harder than I'd imagined. I have the sense that this will be the week that I'll look back on as my wobble week, the first time when I've asked myself whether this was the right decision, and feel proud of myself for getting through. My work is going to be interesting when people finally get around to training me and I can communicate with people at work if I try!