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| As I'm no longer in Deutschland, I have decided that this blog will no longer be updated. I will be continuing in the blog Dave_The_Traveller. That is all. | | |
| Today was interesting. Had the final check out of applications training, which was not nearly as boring as I figured it would be. Turns out the guy who was training me was sort of in training himself; the head of applications training (a guy my wife interviewed with) is a much better teacher. Honestly, I learned more today than I did the rest of the week, except the day we learned programs. Anyway. Also learned exactly how a major component of our machines works from a theoretical level.
Even better was that today I finally got the road map for the rest of my time here, into my actual work back home (which will be Florida). This I learned during the course of a two hour talk with a guy who has his job split into three in America--it's complicated, but basically they don't have enough people back home and so his job is split up and appended to three people there.
The stroke of bad news is that I found out I am the only fully trained service guy in America, which means that I will be covering the whole country. From Florida. Apparently the decision to move there was made by someone who then promptly left the company; the guy I was talking to was clueless as to why, although between the two of us we came up with some (fairly cynical) guesses. About the only real advantage I can see to it is that it shares at least some office hours with Europe, while the west coast essentially doesn't.
In the good news column, I now know when I'm starting, and that they will let me have plenty of time to move and get settled, which is excellent.
Oh yeah. I will try to remember to update this weekend, but nothing usually happens on the weekends so I may not. And next week there will be no updates; I will be eurotripping across France with an experienced service guy by car. We will be back on Friday night. So if I'm in regular contact with you, I will not be around until then, although I will try to call on a day or two.
That's about it. I'm about out of food, but with a pending one week trip I really don't want to buy much. Damn this country's lack of places open on the weekends...this is one of the few times I would love to get food at a restaurant. | | |
| Good news today: I finally have an end date for training. Bad news today: it's in three weeks instead of one, like my current ticket says. Ah well. More time to find an apartment. I will apparently start work sometime within a week thereafter, depending on whether or not I'm officially moved in and everything.
Finally finish the boring training tomorrow and move on to what I'm actually doing. Apparently, I'm working with another guy in the field starting on Monday, and then I have one week with him. (Apparently Helge is a guy's name, although it's pronounced just like Helga. Didn't know that.) After that, I work here for two weeks with English speaking customers on my own.
Not much else is new. It doesn't look like I have that much to pack to go home, but then again it didn't look like it when I first got here. Hopefully I won't be carrying 90 lb bags this time. | | |
| So I'm finally learning new things. Problem is, it only takes me about five minutes to learn them and one of the guys I'm working with takes about and hour to learn the same amount. It's mostly that I'm dealing with software written, as it usually is, by people who think like me, and so I have no problems getting inside what they were doing and understanding it. Also, it's a standard setup for what it's doing and I am intimately familiar with two other programs that use it. In addition to the fact that I get bored once I've learned what I'm supposed to and am not being presented with new information, the instructor smokes. A lot. And while smoking is not allowed indoors, the smell doesn't wash out of clothes that easily. Combined with the European attitude towards washing (clothes can be worn several days in a row; deodorant is uneccesary and bathing can be done once every two days), I find that I cannot be within five feet for long periods of time. Giving me a tendancy to wander away.
I did get to play with parts from a Formula One car. I never realized just how small the things were; the suspension strut is a little over a foot long. Then again, I pay about as much attention to racing as I do any other sport.
Lastly, I am now officially further in Zelda than I have ever been in my life. I am in level eight, I have the magic book, and I was well on my way to the key before I died (stupid blue knighty things). Ah well. | | |
| My company's main office is located just outside a tiny town here in Germany, meaning it's located amidst farm fields and the like. Which, by the way, are really cool here and in England...they all have little stone walls running around them. Not that the walls do much good as they're all of two feet high, but they all have them.
Anyway, while the scenery is nice, and there's a cool little path behind the building where I can watch people walking their dogs and playing with them during the day, I have just discovered the curse of working in this idyllic an environment.
Cow manure.
Apparently it's not regulated like it is here; farmers spread it on all their fields. Liberally. And as Germans don't believe in vent fans, they leave the bathroom windows open. This means that the lovely scent wafts throughout the building.
On top of this, they have now started remodelling on two of the rooms vacated when they built the new building. Now there are competing smells: industrial glue and manure. It's so bad I almost want to get one of those silly japanese masks with cartoons on them.
Oh, it went back below freezing, meaning I was late to work as I had to deice my car and didn't plan on doing that. It was only like two minutes late, and I stayed 45 minutes longer today because my current mentor likes to play around with interesting images on the CT machine. Not that I blame him, but when it's 5:00 and you're supposed to leave, but just need to render an image that will take 5 minutes, it's frustrating to wait for 30 until he realizes that he's not being productive.
Anyway, time to be off. Have started reading an interesting new book series; if it's good I will write more about it. | | |
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