Day 63: Transition…or, do I still remember all my passwords???

We watched more online training videos today (Zzzzz…), and had more guest speakers come in. I have to say, the DevOps speaker was very interesting, as I’m still learning about that. The other speakers were great, too. During the presentation by the Release Management speaker, however, I saw a lot of stunned deer-in-the-headlights expressions from fellow students who haven’t had any experience with the IT release process. I was thisclose to blurting out, “You poor souls—you have NO idea what you’re in for!” I also wanted to add that, even if everything in the release process is carefully followed anal-retentively to the letter, the resultant release can be a complete fiasco. I still remember the time years ago when a department did a demo to the masses (a “lunch-and-learn”, or as I call it, a “ruin-your-free-lunch-time-and-learn”) for a major release for a years-long project. They had to STOP the demo and end the meeting. Why? Because they couldn’t get past the first page of the site. Angry red error messages in big capital letters were blazing across the screen like a really bad scene in a Star Trek movie where the Klingons are about to blow up the ship.

The only good thing you could say about this is that at least I got to eat the rest of my lunch in peace…

As far as my transition plan goes, the good news is that my coworker emailed me the complete list of what I need on my new laptop, and what network accesses I’ll need. In fact, tech support has already granted me some of the accesses.

The bad news? My new laptop is going to take possibly 23 DAYS to come in. I desperately need a new one, as my regular work laptop is an ancient 2014 model that takes 10 minutes just to fire up when you turn it on, never mind anything else. We were provided lovely, sleek little laptops for our training that were just a dream to work with, but that was only for training. I can’t tell you how horrible it was to give back my wonderful laptop yesterday and revert back to my giant, crappy laptop that has all the speed, agility, and nimbleness of an aircraft carrier. My biggest nightmare is that my new laptop will take ages to arrive, and that the department will make me do BA stuff again, and I’ll be forever stuck again in the same rut. I’m probably being hysterical over nothing. My coworker assured me that, at worst, they’ll probably just have me study documentation and do Pluralsight Java videos until my laptop shows up.

More training videos…my favorite…

Day 62: Achoo!

I have a cold.

It was only a matter of time. We’ve all been cooped up in a classroom in the basement of our building for three months now. Several people have been sick over the course of our bootcamp. I’m just happy I never caught whatever that one guy had that caused him to stay home due to vomiting. I’m currently chugalugging Theraflu, hoping to stave off the worst of this. I’d just as soon NOT show up at my old department/new job next Monday morning with the Bubonic Plague. It could bring down the mood…

We spent most of today doing self-study “new hire” online trainings. We’re allowed to skip over some topics we might already be familiar with…things like “How to Fill Out a Timesheet.” Other topics are a bit more relevant. This, in turn, was punctuated with guest speakers. I have to say I was especially appreciative of the IT educational resources speaker. We now have a license through the company for Pluralsight. I’ve joked before about how I don’t get much out of just watching coding videos, but I think the combination of this and W3 Schools should help. My goal, going forward, is to learn Java.

I’m also trying to figure out how to keep my JavaScript/Node.js knowledge fresh, as I’m not going to be using it for my everyday work. One thing I thought of was to perhaps finish the server we started for the final project. We only built it out far enough for our required site pages. Over the years, I’ve seen too many developer friends let their skills go stale because they got complacent in their jobs—I don’t want that to happen to me.

On a cheerier note, I’ve been in touch with my manager. He’s got someone preparing a transition plan for me—It’s my coworker who has also been through Code Academy! That should be a plus. She should have an idea of where the gaps are, and what accesses and additional training I’ll need.

I just hope I remember where I sit…