so i started my new position today, and it feels really strange — it’s the same company, and some of the same employees i know, and even in the same department with the same associate director i had before, but it feels like a totally different company now. some of my coworkers in my previous position once said how moving from a consumer-based call center to our current one that’s mostly government and business-to-business account based is like moving from elementary/middle school to high school. if that’s the case, then now it feels like moving from high school to college, all because now i’m working in an area that’s a bit more secured than my previous position/location in the office, and because now i’m no longer in a position that is directly customer-facing.

ever since coming up from the store to the local headquarters, my shift has been regulated by the clock on my desk phone — we’d have to log in to our phones at the start of our shift, log out for breaks and lunch, and log back in when it was time to work again. if you reported time on your timesheet other than what your phone said, then the hammer came down on you (well, not really, but it wasn’t a good thing). everything was scheduled: lunch, breaks, meetings… everything.

now in this new position, i don’t even HAVE the same sort of desk phone i had before… now i have an ACTUAL PHONE. with a DIRECT LINE to my desk (FUCK YEAH DIRECT LINE). and the team that i’m on will actually come in the office in the morning, check their emails, then pretty much all head down to the cafeteria and get breakfast together (yes, even our supervisor)… in my previous position, this was something that they wanted us to do before arriving for our shift, or during one of our breaks. no scheduled lunches now, we look at our schedule for the day and pick the best time for each of us to go eat (WOW, NOVEL CONCEPT). so, yes, it really feels like a totally different company now.

also, since this is my first time in my six years with the company that i’m not in a customer-facing position, it’s weird trying to get a handle on the new lingo for our system development.

all that aside, today was actually pretty boring. one of the other analysts showed me some of the basic maintenance transactions they do (like for when people lock themselves out of our email workflow system, or if we need to change an email routing rule, or things like that), then i had lunch for an hour, a conference call for two hours (user-acceptance testing for a sales lead system that’s being redesigned… i used to think that the only things that you never wanted to know how they were made were laws and sausages, but it turns out that sales systems fall under this category too. two hours of me trying not to fall asleep while listening to the organizer talk about each and every report available for us to test in this system.), another hour of twiddling my thumbs, and then another conference call for that same sales lead system. tomorrow it’s going to be more of the same… i can already see why the other analysts came to me and told me i’m going to be bored out of my mind in this position, and if it’s true that the exciting parts are the user-acceptance testing, then WOW is this going to be boring.

it’s weird, it’s been over 4 months since i applied for this position, and today was my first day but i’m already asking myself if it’s too soon to try to apply for jobs elsewhere – i know i can’t apply for other jobs within the company until at least 6 months or more likely a year from now. but man, if every day is as boring as today was then i need to find something else. on the bright side, if it is this boring, at least it won’t stress me out while i take classes for my master’s degree, and thank god i’ve got an audible.com subscription – audiobooks, here i come!

after work i went for a 3-mile run around the trail next to my house, even though it was almost 90° F outside. took me just over 30 minutes, but that’s not bad considering i hadn’t been running in about 2 months or so and the heat too. wearing my headband to keep the sweat out of my eyes really helped me keep going. there was one girl who was on rollerblades (i can hear the eyes rolling already) going around the trail as well. i thought i recognized her as being the newspaper photographer who gave me her card when i asked her some questions at an orioles game a few years ago when i was taking my photojournalism class, but after looking at the facebook fan site for her photography business i’m not sure.

i’m ready for snow leopard to be released. there’s a lot of cruft on here and i’d like to start with a fresh system install.

and speaking of cats and animals: even though we caught “A” mouse the other day, apparently dad discovered that something ate the peanut butter off the other traps but didn’t spring the traps themselves. hrm.