First Day.

Well, I have the first day in the new job over with anyway. It was strange finishing up in Sun on friday, clearing out my desk and all. Shows how good morale is on our place, as I only got about 7-8 people out to my going-away do on thurs - and 4 of those weren't even from Sun! We went out to the bar on the business park on fri evening tho for a few, which made my actual wrapping-up in the office a bit anti-climactic, as it was a case of coming back from the pub at about 7, picking up my bag, taking a last look around the empty desk and leaving my work badge on my bosses desk.

This morning was a bit strange, as I was up at the usual time, but was getting on the "wrong" platform on the DART station and going in the "wrong" direction! Got into the office anyway, and I had a momentary panic that I'd be told "Oh, we didn't actually get your contract back in the post, so we thought you turned down the job. Sorry!", but they were actually expecting me, which was good. Got a bit of an intro session with the HR girl, then got led to my new desk (actually my boss's desk as my desk still hasn't been set up yet) where my shiny new laptop was waiting for me!

After that tho, I was pretty much left to my own devices It seems there's no formal training course or intro session, so I was left to take a wander around the network and intranet and figure things out for myself. This wasn't really helped by the fact that I didn't actually get a login on the intranet or get read access to the shared network drives until the afternoon! Also, my new boss had some urgent business to take care of at home so had to take a last-minute flight back to Italy, and as a result I was left with a document which vaguely describes what I'll be doing, but not how. This should be fun next week when I'm dropped right in the deep end and left to fend for myself!

Lunch was a bit odd too - we don't have any canteen, so its a case of heading off to the local shop. Luckily there are a good few places to go in Blackrock, but it seems that the group doesn't go for lunch as a group, everyone just heads off and fends for themselves. This posed a bit of a problem for me, as I don't have a swipe card yet so if I left I couldn't get back in! Headed out with one of the lads eventually, about 2pm, and got a panini in some local deli.

All in all, it feels weird not to be in my desk in Sun, and I'm not 100% sure it has dawned on me yet that I'm not going back, that this is my future career. I'm sure it will eventually, but at the mo it's sort of a strange limbo feeling, sitting at "my" desk, reading docs that I'm not 100% sure are relevant or not - and using windows! I'm not 100% sure of the logic of working on a product that runs on Solaris and Linux from Windows boxes using stuff like putty and VNC. If we're working on Solaris, why aren't we running Solaris? Maybe I just still have the whole "run Sun on Sun" thing in my head, but it still feels strange to me.

So, first day, mixed opinions. Should get better anyway - I hope!