Or at least that’s what I feel I’ve been in for the last two days. Saturday is still a blur. I got there on time and was determined to make the office mine. HA! Silly me. George and Kevin decided to show me the inventory. The parts area of the business takes up a space about 12ft by 10ft right in the middle of the living/dining room. A big wire shelf unit and five black shelf units. All sorts of bins and bags of parts are organized on the shelves. right, just keep dreaming! Well, they think it is organized. If they let me get my hands on those shelves, I’ll label the bins and put them in a logical order. Not that I expect that any time soon. It really is a mess. What my mom would call “boyz organization”, because the only people it works for are boyz.
By the time we stopped for lunch I sort of understood what were routers and antennas. I know where the power cables are kept and what an RJ45 is. That’s the little plastic thingy on the end of CAT 5 cable. I gave up trying to take notes, because George and Kevin were like two little kids. Talking over one another in the effort to show me what was the coolest thing on the shelf. toyz, boyz, …
After lunch, I tried again to organize my office. I got a little farther. The cupboard in my area holds all the ‘office’ products. Paper, pens, plastic paperclips, etc. I made a joke about thinking this was the age of the paperless office. George and Jake just laughed. I think we probably use just as much paper as a pre-computer age office. Even though we buy stuff online, there has to be a printed copy of the invoice. Or, you get something in email and you have to print it out. Weird. I’ve also discovered that I’m odd. I read equally well off of the computer screen or off printed paper. Apparently, not everyone comprehends it equally. Which is why George prints off everything!
I also spent part of my time learning about my computer. I’ve never had a laptop, let alone a computer that was less than 6 years old and third or fourth hand. I always ended up with my brother’s hand-me-downs. This laptop isn’t new, but it is in very good shape. George said I could take home if I wanted. geeep! I’m nervous enough just using it. I think I’ll wait a bit. Plus, they have DSL at the office. I have dial-up here at home, and its so slooooow.
The most confusing thing was the Buzzword Bingo. So many acronyms, oddball words, slang and concepts. Bloody confusing at times! Dropped packets, latency, skip, dependancies, HTML, DSL, RJ45, Cat5E, Ubiquity, Netstumbler, BSD, and my favorite, Ubuntu! in case you don’t know, it’s an operating system based on Linux. I have to admit that I was glad to go home!
Sunday I went shopping. I actually drove into the city to shop for once. I know I needed new clothes. Too much of my stuff was only fit for Burger Bar. Or, it still smells of french fries even after a trip to the dry cleaners. I got new jeans, a few blouses and a skirt. It will be so nice to wear a skirt to work.
Today I got to work five minutes late. I got caught by the train. I felt really bad about it and was trying to apologize when both Kevin and George told me to not worry about it. So I took a deep breath and went to make myself a cup of tea. Everyone here except Jake drinks tea. Its this English stuff called PG Tips. Strong! I like it though. It’s not as rough on my stomach either.
Still never got my office organized. I have it in three main piles. Old notes, things to be filed, and the OMHG’s pile. When I get to it, I think I’ll ask George what to do with the stuff. I also got my first bit of reading to do. Deploying License-Free Wireless Wide-Area Networks. Looks dry enough to rival Grey’s Anatomy. Oh well. I guess I’ll take my new book to bed. Too bad I don’t have a cup of that tea. Makes my Lipton’s taste weak.
