I spent Monday to Wednesday at the new hire orientation at IBM. It was
a terrific orientation that not only showed me some of the resources
available, but also the deep values that run through the company and
the big picture of our unit’s strategy. IBM’s an amazing company and
I’m glad to be part of it. =)

Thanks to that new hire orientation and another self-paced leadership
course I took on Saturday, I’ve learned a little more about my career
passion: helping companies help people connect. More on this
later. =)

I also continued working on the shopping site project I started on
last week. I worked on user stories. I didn’t have a client advocate
around as recommended by the Extreme Programming methodology, so I
based the stories on what I’d learned at the meeting and identified
some areas for which we’d need further clarification. I was pleasantly
surprised to find that I had no problems taking that task and figuring
out what to do. Maybe I have managed to pick up some experience
and confidence along the way.

I’m starting on another project next week. For this, the project lead
specifically requested me. Not only that, she had to talk to my
manager and my team members in order to get me into the project. Wow!
I’m really flattered. I’m a fan of hers, and I’m looking forward to
working with her on this project.

It’s not all work work work, mind you. ;) Today I changed my first
tire! In fact, I changed two tires, and then W- did the other
two. PROPER. =) I had an “I rock!” moment there. And it was fun going
from grungy clothes and grime on my hands to being all dressed up for
an opera fundraiser. W- and I enjoyed some beautiful opera
excerpts from La Boheme, Un ballo in maschera, and
Madama Butterfly at the
Toronto Opera Repertoire community
opera fundraiser this afternoon. I’m looking forward to the opening of
the opera season.

I sent off the first chapter of my book, too. Yay!

Goals for next week:

• Work on the second project
• Contribute to the wiki for the practice at IBM
• Outline the second chapter of my book
• Make my first RRSP contribution! =) (Hadn’t realized I could’ve started much earlier… Better now than later!)
• Figure out what to do about my personal blog / mail – it’s still much easier for me to blog in Emacs, even with WordPress and ScribeFire… <laugh>

Random Emacs symbol: eshell-directory-files-and-attributes – Function: Make sure to use the handler for `directory-file-and-attributes’.