Oh The Places You’ll Go…

Today has been my favorite day in Omaha so far!! :) I think it’s the first day where (almost) all aspects of my life actually went really well! :)

I had my mid-year review at work today, and it went really well! I am either meeting or exceeding expectations for everything. Also, I learned that hard work does pay off quite a bit. Luckily, I was able to make some serious progress on all of my projects this week. It is like something just clicked (especially on the development one). So, needless to say, I’m a very happy woman today! ;)

So, after work today, I went to Kohl’s to see if I could get a better deal on my shoes (I paid $32 for them last weekend, but I got a $10 coupon in the mail literally 2 minutes after I got home from that store). The lady was really nice, and she returned the shoes, and I was able to re-buy them for ~$19. Originally, they are priced at $60, and even if I wasn’t going to get the deal, I was going to keep the shoes, but hey, the cheaper the better! Here’s a picture of one of my gorgeous new darlings – I can’t wait to wear them to work tomorrow!

Outside of work, I am loving the weather! It is just perfect this week – not too hot, not too cool. Plus, on Thursdays, a group of my friends & I all get together and just chill out. For the first time in a very, VERY long time, I had a margarita- and it didn’t taste so bad after I remembered the *umph* (for lack of a better word) twinge of alcohol.

To top it all off, the women’s final is Williams vs. Williams, and I know we’ll be seeing Andy in the finals, and hopefully he’ll be joined by Federer. It’s nice to see the resurgence of Hewitt, Haas, and Ferrero though.

So, considering all this, I’m quite the happy girl! :)

Today I started working on the UserAdmin application at work. Basically, this is an application that all of the app-teams can use to check on the status of servers, JDBC connections, and other statistics. This is really going to help our team (the JAS team), because it will reduce the amount of tickets that come through for our main support person. Being able to view the statistics will pinpoint any issues to either WebLogic compatability issues, deployments, JDBC, or some application-specific issues. Moreover, this is a Spring application (specifically, Spring MVC).

So, the goals for this week are:

• revise the current version of the application so that it will build and deploy
• renew all SSL certificates
• review the UI and propose the changes

More to come on this soon, but I am really excited about this application- I think it will turn out to be a great tool for us, along with the LogAdmin tool that my mentor is working on (basically, a way for app-developers to view the server logs- to see what we see). Also, this is going to be the application that will be showcased at SysCon- the conference in April. So, watch out for it soon!

Wow- it has been quite a while since I’ve released a post here. I have a lot of posts as drafts, so I will publish them as soon as I have a chance- they are all waiting on some pictures.

In the meantime, work has kept me really busy. I am starting my 4th week at UP, and I still have tons of TLAs (three-letter acronyms) to learn. That’s just a minor details- let’s not talk about the 330+ applications that our 4-person team manages. Oh, and one of the coolest things: my supervisor’s boss is an AVP (who is a woman!!)- I am 2 promotions away from that. WOW! ^_^ Since I am still not sure how much I am allowed to disclose about the actual work I do, I can’t say too much more about that, except that I totally love every second of it, and I cannot wait to see what else UP has in store for me!

Let me tell you… finding a job in this economy is not easy! However, it’s important to remember to not lose hope or give up… and also that it’s very difficult to land your dream job right away. But, because of that optimism that I have so often written about, I have successfully landed an offer (and accepted it) at Union Pacific. Yes, I know it’s a railroad company. But, I will be working in their very-large IT department, and I am looking forward to applying my knowledge of Computer Science from a completely different aspect. I will be working as a Project Engineer, which means that I won’t be coding most of my day. I like having a dynamic day, and I’m looking forward to working with all sorts of new technology, specifically dealing with Java Application Servers. Anyway, I am not sure how much more I can disclose, except that my start date is January 12th. Once I know more, I will post. Stay tuned!