When your blog ... (Work)

... no longer shows up in your history ... you need to post. In an attempt to NOT have just one really long "month+ recap" post, I am going to do individual posts for various topics and whats been going on in my life. That way, no post seems too big to do and I will actually post them. Pictures to follow.

Work

[for info related to Em, see the end of the article]

Yesterday Em and I went to a Sogeti picnic up in St. Peters. I was a little worried about it since I wasn't sure how many people would be showing up and how many of those I would know, but it turned out to be a great time. Some of the highlights included trying to setup a large airfilled-bouncing-tent thing for the kids despite none of us knowing how, the persistant posistive urging to play volleyball, the great weather and the food!. It turns out that one of our consultants competes in Barebeque contests and has his own large smoker trailer ... and he made all of the meat. It was SO good. Beef brisket, pulled pork, chicken, bratwurst, baked beans, potato salad ... I was full for hours.

To go along with our picnice, this week is Sogeti's Employee Appreciation Week. I stil haven't figure out what exactly that means but we have several national phone calls and the promise of fun and excitement ;-)

Some interesting stuff has been going on with work (Sogeti and my client). Over the past few weeks I helped out with our office's first try at the wonderful world of college career fairs at SLU. It was a lot of fun, just like the ones at UD, even if the computer related programs there are pretty small. I wasn't able to make it to one in Rolla the next week but our recruiter said it was very good.

Also, a few weekend ago I was lucky enough to attend the No Fluff Just Stuff conference here in town. Basically its a small traveling conference devoted to Java and Open Source technologies with an emphasis on being drivin by pasionate individuals and not corporate sponsors. I was able to go last year on Sark's dime and with a little encouragement to Sogeti, got to spend F/Sat/Sun listening to guys from around the country talk about what they love. Without delving into too much detail, I saw some great talks on Java Memory managment, the Eclipse Rick Client Platform, Java Security frameworks and contributing to Open Source projects. Yeah I am a huge nerd and gave up 24+ hours of my life spread over a weekend to my nerdly-persuits. But it was worth it. :-)

Helping out with the fair and going to NFJS couldn't have come at a better time b/c our annual reviews are starting now. I had to turn in my review paperwork last week and have to fill out some promotion paperwork this week. A big change from what Sark did, Sogeti has a Promotion Review Board which anyone who is seeking a promotion must go before and "state their case". Its not as big of a deal as it sounds but it is definetely different than what I was planning on.

A couple things have also been going on at my client. Not long after my last posts I was finally able to move into a real cube here at work (being my first in 2.5 years of consulting). I am proud to say I have 3.5 walls now and if I turn my chair around I can see a window. :-D The other day I had my second installment of TDD/TFD classes which was a whole day of hands on examples in TDD. It was interesting (even more so in seeing some of the other developers work with IntelliJ and use shortcuts I didn't even know existed) but a bit long given how much I took away from it. Hopefully soon they will start using it on my app or I will be reassigned.

Finally, but far from least, Em started out at her new job this past week and its going well. Each night over the dinner table I try to unravvle a little bit more of the mystery that is School Counseling. So far I have been able to find out that 3 things: 1) It really takes someone who cares about kids to do, 2) There is NO WAY I could ever do what she does and 3) the fact that I work with software problems every day makes it hard to relate to your everyday office problems. I have a TON of respect for Em in making it this far and for still wanting to try and make a difference. Also, a big second paycheck is going to be great for our personal finances... ;-)