Joel's First Day

Well, after eating lots of delicious ribs last night, I set out for my first day of work this morning. I have to say that starting a job the second time is a lot easier than the first time, because you know a little bit more of what to expect. There's still a lot of, "Wow, I really don't want to have to do that, but oh well..." that happens, but that's why it's called work I suppose. Most of today was learning about how to bill hours, meeting some folks, and making travel arrangements to Portland. I leave tomorrow directly from work, have a 10 hr training session on Wednesday, about 5 hrs on Thursday, and land back in Oakland at 10:15pm on Thursday night. I have a feeling the trip may not afford me much time to have fun, but again, that's why it's called work. I already feel behind, because the big drive is for me to be in the field, but I can't go into the field until I go through copious amounts of safety training, so now it's mostly having to wait for all of the scheduling to work out with training. Anyway. One thing that will be new for me is billing hours. I have to always bill my hours to some sort of project, one way or the other. It's a little different from just showing up and working. The upside is that if I am reading relevant material on an airplane, bill it. I also have a somewhat flexible schedule, where I can work remotely if need be. That's about it for now I suppose. Mostly I just want to eat and go pack for my trip to Portland tomorrow.

Oh yeah. And my supervisor (A) orders 200 lbs of New Mexico Green Chile every year and (B) is a cyclist. I'm actually convinced that 60% of the reason I got this job is because I went to New Mexico Tech, and I've already met a handful of people that went there.