Well, they haven't fired me yet. Haha, just kidding; my first week at Nationwide actually went really well. I am rather proud of myself for surviving an entire week of driving in downtown Des Moines (even in bad weather!). I get to the office around 8 each morning, but it's nice not having to worry to much about being there right on time. If I'm a few minutes late because traffic was backed up, it's no big deal. That takes a lot of stress out of the drive.
Most of my week has been spent trying to learn ColdFusion. There were some really great tutorials, and I feel that I have a pretty good handle on it. I certainly don't know every little detail about the language, but I know enough to be able to understand someone else's code and write a little of my own. Our team is working on a web application where Nationwide customers can manage their policies and make payments. It was previously done by a team in Columbus (the main Nationwide branch), but my team members are definitely not impressed by the work. There are a lot of bugs, and the code is written poorly. One of my favorite examples of this are the ridiculously long function names, such as: getPolicyNumberForCustomerWithValidLoginAfterBillingArrayHasBeenInitialized(). (Now, I just made that one up, but seriously, some of these names take up my entire window screen so I have to use the horizontal scrollbar in order to read the darned things.)
I don't have my own computer yet, but I cannot wait until I do! The one I'm currently using is ridiculously slow. Hopefully, I will have my PC by the end of next week.
Today, we had a meeting to decide our team name and discuss some areas of the project where we would like to see improvements. We voted for "The Annexation of Puerto Rico." (I was told that it's a football play in the movie Little Giants.) This might be too long of a name, however, so If our supervisor doesn't approve it, our second choice is "Sinister Dominos." No, there's no story behind that one. Programmers are just weird like that.
Not gonna lie, I've really enjoyed getting to feel all important in my business clothes and going to meetings and whatnot. That will probably wear off pretty quickly, but hey, I'm gonna enjoy it while it lasts.
I hope you all had a great week as well! Until next time...
Friday, January 13, 2012
Monday, January 9, 2012
First day of being "On Your Side"
So...I've finally caved. During college, there was no way I'd have time to write a blog...but hey, no more college. Sorry Krystal, I don't mean to copy you, but this is a really good idea. :) Not sure how much I'll keep up with this, though, since not a whole lot goes on in the life of a computer scientist. If I were to post every day, you'd probably see a lot of posts like this: "Today, I wrote some code. It had a bug. After hours of scouring the internet for a solution and relentlessly cursing the computer, I fixed it. Then I wrote more code." Yeah...so I think I'll spare you guys and just post sporadically.
Anywho...back to what this post is supposed to be about...you know, that's another reason I shouldn't blog much: I tend to ramble. But again, I'm off topic. Ahem...
My first day at Nationwide went really well. I survived the morning Des Moines rush hour (it really isn't that bad for me since I can just take I-80 and 235). I also managed to use the parking ramp properly, which is a serious accomplishment for me. After entering the correct room for orientation, I was feeling pretty good! Then the orientation actually started... It began with a webinar, which, for those of you that don't know, a webinar is like a conference call over the internet, usually with one computer displaying a slideshow. We could hardly hear the man presenting and when it came time for questions at the end I found myself praying that people would just shut up so we could move on. After the mind-numbing webinar, we then proceeded to have a rather childish "get to meet your peers" activity, where we each had to mark off activities that we liked to do and share this with other people around the room. When our orientation director informed us of what we were going to have to do, I think all 30ish people in the room groaned on the inside. We just wanted out of there at that point. After that, it was finally time for a tour of the building.
Des Moines is the second biggest location for Nationwide in the entire U.S., so the building(s, really) is HUGE. I tried not to let my eyes bug out too much, but I'm not entirely sure how successful I was with that. It's hard for a country kid to get used to the city. :) Once my tour was finished and I was convinced I was completely lost, it was time for lunch. We had the option of getting lunch at one of the 2 cafeterias or the coffee shop, or, since the Nationwide building is connected to the Des Moines skyramp system, we could head out to the various food joints along the way. I opted for the former option, because I figured there was less chance for me to get lost. After that, I finally got to split off from the group and meet the team of developers I will be working with.
I will be working in an agile programming environment, which involves a lot of team interaction. All of our desks are located close together, in a cluster of sorts. I got the hand-me-down computer since I'm the team's newbie, but I really don't mind. Starting to miss that 27" iMac I had working at UNI, though... I was introduced to all the current team members (I was told that more would be joining soon) and given a rundown on what our project will be. And then...drumroll please...I got to start programming! Ok, so it wasn't that exciting...I got to follow some tutorials on the basics of programming in ColdFusion, which is what we will use most often in our applications. It's actually a lot like PHP, so learning it shouldn't be too bad. It'll mostly just be figuring out the syntax (the rules).
My team doesn't have a name yet, but we are working on that. It should be pretty interesting. Some of the current options are: Pickled Monkies, Shameless Dominoes, Go Hawks (because then the people in Ohio would have to say "Go Hawks!" whenever they referred to us, lol), the Mighty Ducks, and some more that involved Dominoes...not quite sure what that is all about. "The Annexation of Puerto Rico" was vetoed because it was just too long. Another team in on our floor is called "The Relentless Marshmallows," so I think we're just trying to outdo them. I'll let you know what the final decision comes down to.
Seguing back from that tangent...the best part of my day was when I was informed that I could work the hours I wanted, as long as I was there during the 9-3 block (since we need to have the entire team around for at least that chunk of the day) and I get 8ish hours in. So, I can work 7-3, 8-4, 9-5, etc. I was also told that I can take whatever time I need for a lunch break. At this, I thought I might have fallen asleep during that horrid webinar and was now dreaming. :) I'm sure they'd frown upon taking a 2hr lunch, but it sounds like the hours will be pretty flexible as long as I am getting my work done. Total. Awesomesauce.
After work, I got to hit up the gym. The one that's right there in the Nationwide building. Like the rest of the place, it's huge. I thought I was gonna miss the gym facilities at UNI, but I seriously doubt that now. Oh, and guess what? We get extra benefits if we do healthy stuff like sign up for a class for go to the gym a certain number of times...easiest benefits I could ever ask for. :D
OIY...so I think that was the longest post I could have possibly come up with. I apologize for all the sentence fragments and run-on sentences, but I didn't feel like using proper English. But hey, college is over; my brain can now become mush.
Hope your day was as epic as mine!
Anywho...back to what this post is supposed to be about...you know, that's another reason I shouldn't blog much: I tend to ramble. But again, I'm off topic. Ahem...
My first day at Nationwide went really well. I survived the morning Des Moines rush hour (it really isn't that bad for me since I can just take I-80 and 235). I also managed to use the parking ramp properly, which is a serious accomplishment for me. After entering the correct room for orientation, I was feeling pretty good! Then the orientation actually started... It began with a webinar, which, for those of you that don't know, a webinar is like a conference call over the internet, usually with one computer displaying a slideshow. We could hardly hear the man presenting and when it came time for questions at the end I found myself praying that people would just shut up so we could move on. After the mind-numbing webinar, we then proceeded to have a rather childish "get to meet your peers" activity, where we each had to mark off activities that we liked to do and share this with other people around the room. When our orientation director informed us of what we were going to have to do, I think all 30ish people in the room groaned on the inside. We just wanted out of there at that point. After that, it was finally time for a tour of the building.
Des Moines is the second biggest location for Nationwide in the entire U.S., so the building(s, really) is HUGE. I tried not to let my eyes bug out too much, but I'm not entirely sure how successful I was with that. It's hard for a country kid to get used to the city. :) Once my tour was finished and I was convinced I was completely lost, it was time for lunch. We had the option of getting lunch at one of the 2 cafeterias or the coffee shop, or, since the Nationwide building is connected to the Des Moines skyramp system, we could head out to the various food joints along the way. I opted for the former option, because I figured there was less chance for me to get lost. After that, I finally got to split off from the group and meet the team of developers I will be working with.
I will be working in an agile programming environment, which involves a lot of team interaction. All of our desks are located close together, in a cluster of sorts. I got the hand-me-down computer since I'm the team's newbie, but I really don't mind. Starting to miss that 27" iMac I had working at UNI, though... I was introduced to all the current team members (I was told that more would be joining soon) and given a rundown on what our project will be. And then...drumroll please...I got to start programming! Ok, so it wasn't that exciting...I got to follow some tutorials on the basics of programming in ColdFusion, which is what we will use most often in our applications. It's actually a lot like PHP, so learning it shouldn't be too bad. It'll mostly just be figuring out the syntax (the rules).
My team doesn't have a name yet, but we are working on that. It should be pretty interesting. Some of the current options are: Pickled Monkies, Shameless Dominoes, Go Hawks (because then the people in Ohio would have to say "Go Hawks!" whenever they referred to us, lol), the Mighty Ducks, and some more that involved Dominoes...not quite sure what that is all about. "The Annexation of Puerto Rico" was vetoed because it was just too long. Another team in on our floor is called "The Relentless Marshmallows," so I think we're just trying to outdo them. I'll let you know what the final decision comes down to.
Seguing back from that tangent...the best part of my day was when I was informed that I could work the hours I wanted, as long as I was there during the 9-3 block (since we need to have the entire team around for at least that chunk of the day) and I get 8ish hours in. So, I can work 7-3, 8-4, 9-5, etc. I was also told that I can take whatever time I need for a lunch break. At this, I thought I might have fallen asleep during that horrid webinar and was now dreaming. :) I'm sure they'd frown upon taking a 2hr lunch, but it sounds like the hours will be pretty flexible as long as I am getting my work done. Total. Awesomesauce.
After work, I got to hit up the gym. The one that's right there in the Nationwide building. Like the rest of the place, it's huge. I thought I was gonna miss the gym facilities at UNI, but I seriously doubt that now. Oh, and guess what? We get extra benefits if we do healthy stuff like sign up for a class for go to the gym a certain number of times...easiest benefits I could ever ask for. :D
OIY...so I think that was the longest post I could have possibly come up with. I apologize for all the sentence fragments and run-on sentences, but I didn't feel like using proper English. But hey, college is over; my brain can now become mush.
Hope your day was as epic as mine!
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