Ty’s Weblog

Mira got her chance today. Kate had an event at school with Xander this afternoon, so rather than taking the afternoon off, I took Mira into work with me. She was very excited about it all week. We had a great time. I took her around and introduced her and showed her the computer lab. Then we sat at my desk and she drew me some pictures while I got my work done. She seems to have had a great time, and I loved having her there. I’m glad it worked out that she could get a chance to do this too.

Xander and I had a great day today.  He got to go to work with me today for Take Your Child to Work Day.  AOL does a big deal for it every year.  This is the first year I’ve taken him though.  Mira isn’t quite old enough yet, so I just took Xander.  We had a wonderful time.  It was mostly a day of him sitting and playing games on one on my computers while I worked.  He did get to see the things I work on though and got to see me working with other people on them.  He also got a take a look at the computer lab and got to meat a lot of my coworkers.  Oh, and he also enjoyed my white board quite a bit also. He really had a good time and didn’t really want to leave when I decided it was time to head home.  I got to enjoy a wonderful day with my son at the office, which was a real treat for me.

I found out today that I’ve been promoted (or as I explained it to Xander, I leveled up).  I’m now a Principle Software Engineer.  It’s something I’ve been working for for a long time and it feels great to finally have all the hard work validated.

I’ve still got a job. We had big layoffs today at work, but I made it through ok. It was a rough day though, lots of good people were let go. It’ll be rough for a while, getting used to things without them. I’m trying to be happy for myself, but it’s hard to see friends lose their jobs.

My cube really hasn’t been so bad so far.  The biggest thing I was worried about was the noise and, so far at least, it hasn’t been a big problem.  There is a little more noise than when I was in my office, but I’m wearing headphones to listen to my music, so I really don’t notice it that much.  I’ve been able to get my work done just fine so far.  It’s still not my ideal situation, but I think I might be able to adjust to it over time.

Friday was my last day in my office in Reston. After 9 years of being in an office, I’ve been moved out of that building and into a cube in Dulles. I have a variety of feelings about it, not many of them positive. I’m going to give it a shot though and see how I adjust to cube life. With any luck I’ll be able to settle in and make the best of it.

There are some positive things about the move. It’s closer to where I live, and I won’t be taking the Greenway to get to work anyway. The way I’m going to go in also goes right by the kids school, so I’ll be able to take them in to school most days, which I enjoy.

It’s a big adjustment though.

I received a title change at work this week. I’m now officially a Senior Software Engineer, which I’m quite happy about. It has been a more accurate description of my job for awhile now, and it’s nice to have my title reflect it.

I’ve been converted. For a long time, I really didn’t get into Object Oriented Programming. I was a procedural guy, and I was fine with that. I understood the basics of how to do OOAP, but it was never really my thing. Now I think differently. I took a class this week on Design Patterns and it has completely changed how I look at coding. I’m convinced that for large projects, OOAP is the way to go. It’s not to say that I’ll never do procedural programming again. It still has its place and like all the tools I’ve learned, I’ll use it when it is the right one. But now, I’ve got a great new tool that I think is very powerful and that I’ll be giving a lot more consideration from now on.

They sent us home early from work today. So that means my vacation has officially started. It’s been a long hard month at work. My boss has been out of the country for the last 4 weeks, so I’ve been doing a lot of his job while he has been out. On top of that, I became the head of a major new project this month as well. That’s all in addition to my normal work. So I’m very glad to finally be on my end of year break. I’m taking off till the kids go back to school on January 2nd. It’ll be nice to be able to take some time for myself without having to worry about what is going on at work for a little while.

Today I attended a course taught by Edward Tufte on data and information presentation. It was excellent. Copies of all three of his books and his recent essay on PowerPoint came with the class, which I can’t wait to finish reading. I highly recommend the books for anyone who has a job that involves the presentation of information. If he’s going to be in your area teaching the class, by all means take it!

I offer the following without comment.