To What Do I Owe This Blog
By Andrew Price, 2005-08-08 01:43:13 in General. Leave a comment
I'm afraid my blogging enthusiasm has waned since I left Swansea for the Summer and came back to Cardiff where, much to my surprise, a great many distractions lay waiting. Working 8:30 - 17:00 - like I used to before Swansea University snapped me up - has brought a lot of memories and feelings back to me. Not just the Another Brick In The Wall feeling caused by the legally enforced servitude that accompanies the signing of a peice of paper stating that my term of employment ends on August 31st but also a surprising feeling of creative appreciation that I get at work that University didn't seem to offer me in my first year.
So now I'm back in the blogging seat, where do I start? Do I write about current events or personal thoughts or just post a link to another site or an interesting image and make a brief comment on it? It's quite a hard decision really. As it goes, I've just finished reading Paul Graham's latest essay, entitled What Businesses Can Learn From Open Source. It was a good read, as Paul Graham's essays often are. Unfortunately, reading inspirational and wisely crafted texts such as that makes me want to be able to write articles which are just as insightful and intellectually entertaining. I don't think I am anywhere near capable of writing like that but since I enjoy reading long and insightful essays I'm more inclined to write blog entries which try to fulfill my own expectations so that when I come to read back over them in future months, or years, I can objectively say that I enjoyed reading them. That is the plan anyway.
So back to my Summer job. Just like the first time around I'm getting used to interacting on equal and friendly terms with people I might call grown-ups or professionals and feeling that I'm one of them. Of course, it isn't all that wonderful to be back at work and the same old things that convinced me to dive back into academia are still very much apparent. The office environment in general is still the same old, oppressive, grey torture chamber and the illogically ordered heirarchy still smells of unquestioning complaisance and managerial make-do. I'm glad that the job I have for the Summer is more IT based and not the same daily deja vu administration job that I used to have there.
One upshot of my job is that I get to work quite closely, on a new grants management system implementation project, with some really inspirational people who have all been employed or seconded especially to make this project work (square peg, round hole, big hammer). The project manager is enthusiastic and is an all round good bloke, the trainer is friendly and really knows his stuff and the project consultant is professional and shrewd to the point of being impressive yet still a great laugh. Unfortunately the new management system leaves quite a lot to be desired. We're currently at the data migration stage and although the system isn't officially released to us (read: buggy), we have to manually grab the data from the old system and plonk it into the new system with some extra data from files. As you can imagine, it isn't the most wonderful part of my Summer job. Added to that, one of my colleagues spends more time moaning and whining about how bad the system is than actually learning how to use it properly and entering data like the rest of us (myself and the grants officers) have to.
My Summer hasn't been all about work though. Besides being unusually social compared to my pre-university Cardiff life, I've been using my spare time to replenish my interest in learning to play guitar, ride my new bike, acquaint myself with Python, catch up with all the news that passed me by while I was cooped up at uni and generally kick back and relax.
This week I'll be taking on the role of tutor for a couple of my fellow students who need some help with their Java programming before doing resits. I've done a bit of preparation for that, mostly by relearning all I've forgotten about Java since I last used it back at uni. Thankfully it appears that coding is just like riding a bike and I haven't lost the knack. I'm not sure how I'll approach the Java tutorials that I've agreed to give though. I think the best way to do it would be to ask them what they're getting stuck on and then fill in all the gaps. I'll play it by ear. I hope they pass their resits after that because I know I'll feel a bit disappointed in myself if they don't. I wonder if this is how lecturers feel.