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I brought in a fruit-topped angel food cake and for the third week in a row noticed the same theme: The baked good would go largely untouched until lunch and then be devoured in a frenzy. This is in stark contrast to my previous workplace where the item would be consumed at a more-or-less constant rate over the day with a slight bump around lunch. This curve was irrespective of the item brought. For instance, I once brought in meatballs which were entirely eaten before 10:30am.

I wonder what causes this difference. The “now” orientation of engineers? The future discounting abilities of actuaries? Differences in professional courtesy? Just the quirks of the constituent people?

I’m not sure.

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Me: So, I’ve worked for here for two weeks now and I feel like I have a handle on who you are.
Coworker: That’s good, right?
Me: It’s a false sense. I have no idea who any of you are. I barely know one guy here just because we went to school together.
Coworker: I’ve worked with him for a while and he hasn’t even Facebook friended me.
Me: I guess he doesn’t want you to see the keg stand pictures.
Coworker: Really? I knew he was hiding something. Are you being serious?
Me: No not in the least. The most interesting part of his Facebook profile is a picture of him with various fake beards.
Coworker: I can see why you wouldn’t want that to get out.

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We had a department get together today and there seem to be some slight indications as the hierarchy of people’s backgrounds based on an unlikely source.

Person vs. Writing Tablet
Me – Legal pad
Second Newest guy – steno pad
3rd Newest guy – small notepad
ACAS – personal stationary pad
FCAS – sticky notes
PhD – Nothing

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This morning I participated in my first department meeting which seemed harmless enough. Once done, and for the rest of the day except for a short trip out to get crepes, I scrubbed data. A submission from a third party included contracts for whom the important data were spread cross multiple documents and no one had a canonical list of contract names. The names and terms of those contracts would change such that in some places a client’s name were abbreviated and in others not. I came up with a function that pulled things together for analysis but this required repeated VLOOKUPs making it so that running it on the whole range would be something whose completion would be witnessed by my grandchildren.

I asked a coworker and he said this was somewhat standard. I now understand why some of my coworkers drink.

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The banana muffins were well received and I received three inquiries regarding whether it was me or my wife that had made them.

There is a large gap between the programming abilities of my coworkers between those who are Excel, VBA, or r ninjas and those that kind of plod their way through. I’m somewhere between the two and was very glad that, instead of defining a custom function in Excel, I was able to come up with a way of calculating weighted averages in cases where the weights weren’t always present. At my previous employer, I would have yelled “ACTION DINOSAUR WITH HAT” or “hot cha!” but I was new here and didn’t want to look odd.

The following happened over IM:
Me: Does anyone in the office every yell “woooh”?
Coworker: No, but do you want to be that person?
Me: Can I?
Coworker: Proceed.
*I yell “woooh”*
Coworker: Nicely done.

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My coworkers took me out to lunch today and it was nice to deal with them in a more social environment. The line between social time and work time is a bit more rigid at my new firm so I get less information at work about the wife and kids as it were. Everyone chatted about what was going on in their lives and I was invited to play racquetball with some of them near work. I’d never tried it, but it sounded like a fun addition to the list of things I can now probably do without killing myself.

After work, I took the subway to a friend’s apartment and she and I reminisced and had some artisanal cheeses. Later, I planned an overnighter at a friend’s house where I’d take the train to a station near their house, stay over with them, and be dropped off at the train station the next morning.

In a single week, the nature of my interactions with friends had changed from “who’s within a 30 minute drive on a weekday” to “who has a guest bedroom near a mass transit line”. I understand this fact but a part of me is uncomfortable with the degree to which social relationships emerge from convenience. Social engagement being a byproduct of my schedule makes me uncomfortable but I suppose that’s why I have parties.

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I got in a little late as yesterday ended around 4am and got to work around 10am. Normally, I’d have drifted through the day, but I was asked to error check an Excel spreadsheet. I love error checking! In the process of doing this I found two reference errors, one formatting inconsistency, and learned four new functions. Four!

What’s the terrifying part? My excitement about the above is in no way sarcastic. I think I’m going to like my job.

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*After long session getting acquainted with expected loss ratios*

Coworker: Any questions so far?
Me: Whenever I think of ground-up losses, I think of coffee grinding and I laugh at a storm of grinds destroying the East coast.
Coworker: Soon enough, whenever you see coffee grinds, you’ll think re-insurance.

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I had slept well, had a good breakfast and remembered to bring an umbrella. Why such synchrony? Today, registration for the Hyatt hotel at Dragon*con opened at 10am and I intended to get a room. I got to work around 7:30am, loaded my browser to the registration page and saw the “registration is not yet available, you will be processed in the order you visited.” screen. This wasn’t the “this registration page is unavailable” error that happens when a page is swamped so I had a good chance of actually getting a room when registration opened in a little over two hours.

My heart began to race as 10am approached when at 9:58am the fire alarm went off. I dutifully went to the assembly area and waited. At 10:15 the drill was over and I returned to my desk to see two things:

*A grayed out browser window saying “please make a room selection”
*A pop-up on top of it saying my session had timed out after 15 minutes.

I reloaded the page to see the display showing “no rooms available” and frowned a bit. Had I been more prescient, I would have tried this operation on my phone, but working in a skyscraper leads to dubious connections so I’m not sure how this would have worked.

My backup was to use Airbnb and I found a place located next to the Hyatt where the convention happens listed for $650 a week. This would prove to be about 1/2 the price of the Hyatt for an equivalent stay so I attempted to book it. Later I received a rejection email with a comment from the renter saying that a number of people had contacted him for the room. I indicated it was probably due to Dragon*con and he replied that he’d probably want more. I offered what the hotel charged after fees and he replied with “we’re not sure who we’re going to go with but we’ll consider you when we choose.” I replied with “if you accept my bid I will bring to you a bounty of baked goods the likes of which you’ve never seen”. Later that evening I received a contract offer from him. Not only do I now have a reserved space for Dragon*con but the car will probably smell wonderful on the drive down.

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I managed to wake up on time and make my train to work for my first day. I was 30 minutes early but not wanting to look like a try hard I walked around until my orientation started.

There were only two people in the orientation and the other person was a contractor much like I was at my old firm.

HR Person: So you’re back as a contractor?
Contractor: Yes. So, no health benefits for me.
HR Person: Yeah, and no flu shot, paid time off…
Contractor: Yep.
HR Person: I guess you don’t go to our company lunches either.
Contractor: Nope.
HR Person: Wow, it’s like you’re not even a person.

I think that summed up a part of my experience at my old firm.

The presentation was long and boring. Not falling asleep on it should make my accomplishment links on LinkedIn. Next I was picked up by my boss and introduced to my new cube. While I was making 50% more than before, my office space was about 1/2 the size. A trade I’ll gladly take.

My first whiff of what I’d be doing for my job came when I was asked to troubleshoot a VBA function that was spitting out the wrong file format. I lost myself in that for a few hours. I didn’t fall asleep during that either. Two victories.