Work on Work

Work is going great! I'm a software architect for LexisNexis now, and it's a really cool company and I've gotten a really cool position there. And, what's even more surprising, they seem to really like me. In fact:

My award came with a stuffed animal

Along with about 4 other members of my team, I got an award called "Leader of the Pack". The office is on campus at NC State so a lot of our office stuff is wolfpack themed. I'm the tech lead for the Migration Tools team, so I tell around 20 people how to move a bunch of data around. It's a big team. They are all java developers too, so after 20 years of writing Microsoft code I'm totally in a foreign land here.

They also give us 2 days each year for volunteer activities. My favorite is volunteering for Habitat for Humanity building houses. If I'm lucky, I get on a framing crew. This time, we were sheeting a roof. I'm very much into construction (if you couldn't tell by my woodworking blog) so getting to do this with a crew of my engineers is really fun for me.

so much fun with this crew

The only downside was that it was 102* outside (closer to 120* on top of that roof) and there was no shade in sight. I sweat through my clothes so fast and could not stay hydrated. Mostly I was just grateful that work lets out of of the office to go do such valuable work. It's a real company value at LN.

They also have tuition reimbursement, and I'm taking advantage of that to start taking some MBA classes at UNC-Wilmington. My first class is called Management, but it's really about organizational behavior. I'm doing ok in there too, and it's pretty interesting. Grades are good, but I've only had quizzes so far. It's 11 classes at 7 weeks each, and so far I'm counting 3 weeks done, 74 to go. Not going to finish until 2020, and as long as I stay with the company for a year after they they will end up paying for most of it. My first day of school picture:

It's all online. Laptops are the new backpacks

Again, normally I'm all like

But this company is seriously cool.

Other pictures of the family just so we all know they really exist:

Ella and my niece on a recent visit with my parents

The kids standing in a masonry project I built in the backyard

Evil Genius took a picture of a picture of herself

Kelley hanging out on the finished masonry project

So we're all good. Work and school are ok, hurricane Florence is barreling down but mostly went south of us so we're all good in Raleigh with this thing. Just a little rain and some wind, nothing strong. Kids are tracked out, football season is back in swing, and summer is almost over.