WhistlinDixie

The Disappearing Department

When I arrived for my first day of work, I was surprised to learn that my manager, Jamal, had left our the department the previous Friday to move on to greener pastures within UPS. Not only that, but two guys that we stole from TSG, Dan and Mike, had gone back because they were no longer needed. Also, one of the co-ops, Nick, was not coming back because he had gone to GM to do his thesis. To top things off, our lead programmer, Ray will be leaving us on Wednesday to go to region where he will continue to be a web developer.

Instead of filling Jamal’s position, the higher ups have split our office between two managers, Bill and Mike (different from the previously mentioned Mike), who are in a different office on the other side of the building. I later found out that we had been considered a "rogue" group. Technically, the facility should not have had its own team of software developers. To remedy this, it was decided that our group would slowly be phased out and our responsibilities be transferred to region, which is on the west side of town. As part of being phased out, we will no longer start new projects and instead only do minor fixes and changes to existing sites. We are going to slowly migrate all of our applications to the servers at region, where we will no longer have to maintain them.

This all has me a little worried. After all, I am a developer at heart and do not want to be stuck in a job that could end up making me do something like tech support or label auditing. Not only is that stuff not exactly my favorite thing to do, but it also has nothing to do with my majors: computer engineering and computer science. How will I be able to complete a thesis in a year and a half if my job no longer gives me the opportunity to solve a problem relating to one of my majors?

All of this might lead me to find a new co-op, possibly in a new location. Who knows? Only time will tell. All I can hope for is that it all turns out well.

In The Presence Of A Big Wig

Yesterday, I got to take part in a UPS/Kettering University open house-type event. Kettering decided that they wanted to try to attract more Chicago-area high schoolers to go to Kettering by showing them that they could go to Kettering and still co-op in the Chicago area. In addition to having co-ops from CACH (Chicago Area Consolidated Hub), the facility that I work at, there were also co-ops from Bosch and Argonne National Laboratory in attendance. In addition to that, we also had Dr. Stan Liberty, the president of Kettering University, and probably half of the VPs from Kettering, plus the Corporate VP of Engineering from UPS! Talk about star-studded.

I got a chance to talk to him a little at the end. I was surprised to find out that when he started at UPS, he was a truck driver. In twenty years, he has managed to climb all of the way to a VP. I was amazed. Over that time, he held some very important positions, including being the head of Industrial Engineering for half of the US.

I also got to meet Mike Ciavilla (probably spelled his last name wrong), who is head of Operational Excellence at CACH. His job, from what I understand, is to refine the processes that we go through. So, he is responsible for everything and nothing, all at the same time. He tried to explain a project that he hoped that the Technical Support Group (TSG) Systems Group would tackle in the future. Currently, sort supervisors have to show up to work about two hours before their shifts starts so that they can pull reports from different systems and prepare the information for pre-sort meetings. He wants us to come up with a web app that will automate the whole process for them so all they have to do is log on to the web page and it will have already pulled all of the reports for them before they arrived so that they can work shorter days. All I can say is that I’m glad that he specified that I would not be asked to work on the project. Sounds like something that will end up being assigned to Ray, our most experienced and only full time developer. (The rest of us are all co-ops, interns, and temps.)

Settling In

Well, I am finishing my move into my apartment here in ChiTown. I am about a twenty minute drive from work, which is a huge improvement from the fifty plus minutes that it took to travel between work and Stephanie’s during rush hour. We actually got a great deal on this room. It normally costs two grand a month, but we got it for 900. The only trade off is that I don’t get room service (boo hoo). If you were wondering, room service does not cost $1,100. A lot of that discount is because of the apartment hunting agency that we booked through.

Westmont, the ‘burb that my apartment is in, seemed pretty nice when I first got here. When I went out for groceries last night, I about peed myself. Just up the road are dealers for BMW, Lexus, Mitsubishi, and Porsche, to name a few! The real accomplishment last night was just getting groceries and getting all of my stuff off of my bed (and onto the floor) so I could sleep. One way that I have found to help with getting up at 6:15 is to just convert it to EDT, so I think of it as 7:15. So, I am actually getting to sleep in. (I awoke at 7:00 every weekday while I was at school). The trade off has been going to sleep when the clock reads 9:00. Make me feel like a kid again, just not the way that I had always hoped to experience it.

Work has been interesting. First day I must have walked three miles in brand new dress shoes. My feet are still recovering. I finally got my ID number today, so I can request permissions tomorrow. Without permissions, I cannot log on to any of the computers. I should get them Friday or so. Until then, I have been having some of the other guys log me in with their accounts. The past two days, I have been working on a redesign of the internal website for CACH. I finished it up before I left today, so it should be posted soon. What I get to do tomorrow, who knows. I just hope I remember my lunch this time.

If you want to hear more, talk, whatever, IM me or call me. (OK, so maybe calling will be a little difficult, since I have received no requests for my number. Maybe all have you have been calling my parents. Just call, I get lonely.)