Jun 6th 1999
It’s been nearly two years since I moved to Atlanta ‘for good’. When I came up here back in late June of 1997, I had been put on academic suspension from the University of Texas at Austin. I moved all of my things that I once had in the dorm with the help of Craig. My original plan was to get some kind of temporary job doing helpdesk work while taking correspondence courses at UT. This then changed to maybe going to school here for a semester before going back. That never happened, and I ended up working fulltime as a contractor for Delta earning between $8 and $12 as time went on. Things have certainly changed a lot from two years ago. I had no idea that I would be working fulltime for Delta Airlines as a programmer earning over (removed)/year, going to school part time, and living completely on my own. There are a lot of details missing that I’ve made notes of and am still planning on putting in here to fill in the blanks.
(edited, 08-13-2002)
Jun 12th 1999
The past week has been very busy. This was my first full week of classes for the summer 1999 semester at Kennesaw State University. I’m taking World Literature and Database Management. It’s been busy at work this week. We’re migrating our system to work on Solaris from SunOS. This involves a lot of unit testing of programs to make sure they run correctly. We have a deadline of June 16th. It seems like a lot of things, I find myself doing most of the work. I don’t mind too much as I’m honing my skills and getting recognition. I also like the type of work.
Brad Anderson, another manager in the PRA (Passenger Revenue Project), asked me if I would be willing to matrix myself over to his group for a temporary period of six to nine months. He told me that his group (WSA - Workstation Architecture) is on the verge of losing someone and they need someone badly. Brad told me that I’m the only person he trusts to be productive in his group. This made me feel good as increases my worth to him and others in the company. I don’t think I want to switch permanently to a Unix system administration type job because I already know a lot about that, even though there is room to learn more. I do want to stay with software development as I have a lot of room to improve in that area. I did accept Brad’s offer, as it seemed like the only choice. If I accept, then I look good to Brad and other managers. If others see how “important” I am, that can only improve my situation. Also, to accept Brad’s offer would most likely give me praise during the “calibration” phase of our performance reviews. It turns out that Brad didn’t need me because he was able to prevent Darren Davis from leaving (against Darren’s will) the group. Brad does want me to come on to WSA for a 6-9 month period sometime in September.
