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April 01, 2004

A Long Week That's Finally Over

Okay, where to begin...

Gnome 2.6 was released this week. I'm stoked by the release notes on the newest version, as it seems that they've made some great strides recently. I'm sure that the Novell aquisition of Ximian has been a great help in that department. I'm currently debating downloading and installing it on my machine, but I think I'll wait a little bit to see if there's a Mandrake 10 RPM in a few days that will make the install go easier. I've had some issues in the past downloading and installing Gnome ... and it's not the fault of Gnome or its developers. Even though I've been using Linux as long as I have been, I'm still uncomfortable with certain things like installing a major desktop.

Anyhow, here's some links:
http://www.gnome.org/start/2.6/ <-- Gnome 2.6 Page
http://www.gnome.org/start/2.6/notes/rnwhatsnew.html <-- Changes from 2.4 to 2.6

Speaking of Gnome, my second round with Mandrake 10 has been a better experience than before. Gnome has yet to crap out on me as of yet. The more I think about it, I really believe that an update package that I downloaded may have been corrupt, and was most likely causing all of my problems in the first place. Either way, I still have XFce installed as a backup, so if this thing does decide to crap out, I can always go to XFce and try to install Gnome 2.6. :)

Work this week was interesting, to say the least. I found it to be extremely challenging the entire week, and I'm not ashamed to say that I'm glad to have the day off tomorrow (yay). I really feel that I deserved to take a breather, as I've stayed so busy that I really felt that I didn't know if I was coming or going at certain times. Between getting the wiring for C-Gontrol and the audio booth finished and having to make someone do their job instead of making me do it (and trying to get my bosses to get me to do their job, I might add), I definately had enough of work this week and was ready to take a day for myself. Although I busted my chops this week with the G-Control, there's something about a job well done that makes me very proud of what it is that I do on a day-in and day-out kind of basis. When it was completed, the networking and phone wiring for G-Control and audio booth was neat, clean, and looked really good.

I learned something this week while at work that made me feel really good as well. While I always suspected that my bosses would stick their necks out for me if I needed them to do so, I've never had any issues that required them to do so. This week was different, and Bill took charge of the situation and told me that he would handle everything. He asked good questions that I was able to explain thoroughly and offer specific details with examples, which he took and charged head on into the problem with. As a result, I felt like a true part of the Engineering department more this week than I think I have since I started, and it was a nice feeling.

The problem that I've had since day one is that I've been seen by most people as the outsider, and alot of people didn't want to accept me. This was mostly due to my predicessors and their behavior towards others in the Engineering department. Because of their actions, I've had to prove to others in Engineering that I wasn't like the rest, and was commited to teamwork and making the place better as a whole. Some people understood this from the get-go, while others took a wait-and-see kind of approach. It's taken a year and a half to get there, but I've finally started to find a groove with others in Engineering, joking around with them and having some great conversations about the past, present and future. Little do these individuals realize how much I appreciate their work and their professionalism. I'm almost always in awe by the vast knowledge and years of experience that each of them brings to the table. Now that they're starting to open up to me, I'm learning more than I ever hoped to. It's definately a nice feeling to be finally accepted as part of the team.

Oh, one last thing to note ... I got my paycheck stub today (it's direct deposited, so it'll actually hit sometime tonight), but I saw that my backpay was included, in addition to my raise. Now that is a really good feeling to get a decent check like that just when you need it.

And boy, did we need it.

Posted by ed at 09:17 PM | Comments (0)