Today was the first day on the new job. It was mostly spent setting up my workstation-- converting the Windows 2000 box to a dual-boot that defaults to Red Hat 7.3. Red Hat may have let me go on the flimsiest of excuses, then turned around and put up an ad for my job barely more than a month later, but I was satisfied user of their distro before I worked there. And I won't let their pettiness affect how I configure my workstation.
Interestingly enough, the biggest shock to my system wasn't getting up and around for "normal" business hours, as I had expected. No, the big cognitive disconnect that I found myself dealing with was being surrounded by so many people. People who talk. Or laugh. Or have phone conversations. And to an introvert like myself, the most nerve-wracking were the people who went out of their way to stop by my desk and personally welcome me to "the family". It bordered on overwhelming; I was actually thankful for the 45 minutes or so spent in a meeting with the HR director, filling out the usual array of paperwork.
Tomorrow, of course, I'll have to start looking like I can earn my keep. The "setting up the workstation" line only works until they notice you surfing the web... though I do still have to get the laptop working with their wireless LAN, since they use encryption and I've only been able to just barely get this thing to work at all, let alone encrypted.
--rjray
