Sunday, August 12, 2012

Update on Cray - August 2012

Depending when we last spoke, you may have heard that I was stressed at my new job, overwhelmed, or possibly enjoying myself. The latest is that I feel like I've finally got my feet on the ground. I can get through a morning software update without [many] questions, only when weird things come up. And for the workload manager software that I've been testing/learning, I once got through an install in a record [record for me] 45 minutes! One of my mentor/coworkers was mightily impressed at that.

I've also grown to really appreciate a Canadian coworker of mine, one of the resident experts on the aforementioned software I test. He reminds me very much of myself, except he has a much cooler accent. At first when I would talk with him over the phone, I thought he was annoyed that I was bothering him, and he would say things in a "this should be obvious" sort of way. Which for me as a newbie with no experience, well, no, they weren't obvious. Over the last two months, we've built a rapport, and though hard to explain, it's good. I feel somewhat validated by the experience - for all the teachers at Minnehaha who complained that I was rude or short or lacked tact, I never really felt sorry, because I always felt they were not giving me a fair shake; my experience with this coworker at Cray validates this feeling because of the similarities: he's not rude at all, he's not mean, he's just direct, and highly highly intelligent. Much smarter than I.

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