Rough Day

January 12, 2007 01:25 AM

It's been a long time since I posted. Hmm.

Well, today was a particular rough day, as I had to give a presentation to the MIS manager at the new company detailing what I've been doing the past 6 weeks. Now, that's not in and of itself a bad thing, because I've actually been working quite hard.

What is a bad thing is that I don't feel like I've done much. Part of the problem is I've been very nervous about adjusting to the new company, new people, and new programming language. Part of the problem is I just don't have the efficiencies of experience with .Net yet that I did with Python/Snakeskin. Yet another part is that I did the presentation as an overview of what I had done, where I was supposed to be doing it as practice for the higher-ups in the company. And another huge part of it is that, for many of the above reasons, my work has been so loosely structured (and, to some extent, lacking a definitive direction) that I haven't produced much work that we've used directly yet.

So, I'm already walking into this feeling like I'm failing, though Wes and Nathan have both assured me that I'm doing fine. The potential is there, and moreover, it's evident from my work, but the presentation was a bit weak. Of course, the way my mind works, I've already screwed it up, so I'm desperately wanting someone to confirm it--I want someone to tell me I screwed up, and that it's causing problems. Now, I know there's no reason they'd hide this fact from me, but I want to believe that since I've convinced myself that this is the case, anything else I'm told is just an attempt to keep me productive without making me nervous or depressed. Ironically, it's this uncertainty and the desire to hear this that's made me nervous and depressed today. I'm more nervous that it's being smoothed over for my feeling than I am that people aren't telling me the truth.

So, I'm going to work to get a demo done sometime mid-next week, and hopefully it'll be good. I know there's work there, and it's impressive work that we can really show off, but at the same time, I can't help but look at it and say, "is that all?" Part of it's because I wasn't really involved in the initial pitch to marketing, part of it's because a lot of it is very similar to the day-in-day-out stuff I did at MP, and part of it's because it's half-done and I feel like I've wasted time learning some of the oddities and advanced ins-and-outs of .Net. I also have this horrible feeling I'm going to end up like something off of The Daily WTF. That, and I have seen a lot of new employees and contractors come in for a specific job, and then leave having not completed it to any level of satisfaction.

Oh, a side note: just checked my stats and noticed I got a hit from someone who searched Google for "dylan wolf." That's one of those things that makes me panic a bit, since it means someone's looking for me directly. Anyway, I check the log file, and the IP address is owned by Apple Computer. The referrer is a Safari Google search for "dylan wolf," and to top it all off, the only request from that IP or user agent is for / (my home page)! WTF?