Winter is clearly in full swing here in the mountains. Little EV has put her new purple, high performance, steerable sled through fairly extensive tests down the slope in the back. We determined that Daddy may be a little too heavy for this ride except when the snow exceeds at least 8 to 10 inches of accumulation. Little EV noted that we should put "rock clearing" of the sled run on our to-do list for this spring so that Daddy can ride without scraping the bottom of the sled when we encounter rocks.
Fortunately we spread the wildflower seeds in the front a couple of months ago and we are hoping for a nice, fairly low maintenance first round of landscaping. With a few exceptions, our native grass is covered with snow.
I received a few requests to hear a bit more about the new job. My new job is great.
The new job feels a bit like an assignment to understand the principles of an internal combustion engine and be able to answer all questions about it, how it can break, and define how we will make it better in the coming years--a gratifying yet overwhelming task. But, that's only because I just started and have a lot to learn. I am the reporting systems business analyst. That means that when anyone, customers or fellow employees, have a question about reports or accessing data, I'm up to bat. So far I have navigated through a couple of gratifying experiences where customers had detailed questions about how to get specific types of information, I researched the issue, and then provided working solutions.
My responsibilities also extend into the realm of product management. This means that by collaborating with others, I define the philosophy and future direction of the product as far as reporting is concerned. So, for example, the product managers of the core reservation system have outlined some of the requirements for future releases. One of the most substantive requirements is that the system will be capable of allowing customers to code-share. This is the practice of airlines selling multi-leg tickets, say from City A to City C, where the carrier from which you bought the ticket gets you from City A to City B, and then they reserve a seat for you on a different carrier to get you from City B to City C. So given that requirement, I get to define how the reporting aspects of the system will evolve to handle those requirements. It seems simple enough but will undoubtedly keep me occupied for a long time to come. I enjoy these types of mental puzzles, particularly when information systems are involved. Yes, I'm pretty comfortable with my nerdiness.
Happily, the drive is quicker than I expected--roughly 40 minutes each direction when the road conditions allow. Admittedly, the drive has been a little rough, though not unbearable, because the conditions have been icy. On Wednesday last week a fellow traveler that passed me in his VW Jetta suddenly lost all traction, spun until almost sideways, nearly hit the center concrete barrier and then slid to the emergency lane on the opposite side of the Interstate. Then, the next day I passed an overturned SUV and several other vehicles involved in a collision in the same area. Fortunately, emergency services had already responded and it looked like there were no fatalities. I think the main issue is that some drivers attempt to navigate our mountain Interstate a little, or in some cases a lot, too quicly. My front wheel drive car equipped with snow tires seems to do pretty well as long as I drive at reasonable speeds. Coming over the pass one day last week, reasonable was about 25 miles per hour. But again, this is limited to this season of the year.
Now regarding the Mac...where to start? I like our iMac a lot. It is elegant in terms of design and function and the operating system is pretty solid. But the hardware--not so much. We're having issues with random horizontal lines showing up in application windows, and in a few cases, complete system freezes. So, to determine whether this is a software or hardware issue, I reinstalled the OS. We still get the random horizontal lines, though I have not, as yet, experienced any freezing. While that's a little bit of an ambiguous answer, my working hypothesis is hardware. It's one of those funky issues that are hard to nail down and is probably hardware related but the Apple people may hesitate to jump in and replace the motherboard without a whole lot of testing.
I must say that the $169 Apple Care plan was a good investment. Maybe I'll show up at the store and the friendly Apple worker will smile and say, "No problem Dean, we'll just swap out your iMac and have a new one on your doorstep by Thursday. Will that work ok?" Visualization is powerful. ;-) Stay tuned for the rest of the story.
I really, really like that photo. Really.
I'm glad to hear that you are enjoying the new job.
The image of you riding on a purple sled is a little humorous. But I'm sure EV loves it.
Posted by: Sijbrich | January 15, 2007 at 07:19 AM