Even though this sounds like I'm not thrilled with things, I'm actually doing okay. I mean, let's be serious - this is not where I wanted to go back to. I actually wanted an office again, with my own computer(s), run (or outright command) of the network, a decent internet connection that I could do with as I pleased. However, here I am right now. You pays your money and you takes your chances, and this is where I'm at.

For now it's okay. I am confident in what I'm doing. I wasn't, but that's because I didn't understand this program. Slowly, surely, it's sinking in. Most of the time I can just do whatever I think is best and it works out, anyway.

Crafty said that I am doing so better compared to when she met me, and she's proud of how I am doing. What's strange is that I don't have a "discontinuity of consciousness," where I realize that I have changed so much. That gives me a little pause, because I was a nervous wreck when I first met her. Strangeness abounds.

One of the salesmen even came into "the pit" today and wanted to talk to me because he said that he had gotten a compliment on how I managed to help one of his clients and get their problems resolved once and for all when no one else could help. The head techs said that was pretty wild for somebody on their first day. Very cool.

I hung out a little after work to help out this guy I started with with a problem so that the senior tech over him could leave, and then talked to a couple of the other people who'd been there a while; as I said before, it's a brotherhood of geeks, and I fit right in. I might like this after all. [smile]

So things are slowly settling back into normal fashion. I am getting everything taken care of; I got Xander's site done, finished, proofed, and uploaded, and tonight I submitted it to a bunch of search engines. I have been checking various job resources every day, and now that I'm in the swing I can quickly check the new items and leave it at that.

I may actually return to having some free time soon. I mean, here I am, entering this entry now, and I am really considering turning to working on my personal site soon.

The big thing that I'm looking at is what sort of skills I need to move further into the market. I mean, sure, I'm working a technical job now, so that's a foot in, at least, but I need to move up, soon, because I'm being paid a fairly sorry sum, I feel (about half of what I was making before, at my last job, but it beats the Hell out of nothing).

So I keep looking at the web developer ads, and what they want.

• First, I need to pick up some Javascript. From what I've seen, Javascript is largely esoterica. Lots and lots of memorization of this-'n'-that, but really nothing complicated. Anybody who's coded in something else should be able to pick up Javascript.

• I need DHTML knowledge. From what I can tell, that's basically HTML and using Javascript to figure out what browsers you have to do funky tricks and make it work on various browsers. (I believe. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.) That sounds like an obvious thing when you learn Javascript (to me, anyway).

• Perl. I need to brush my perl up, and I should be okay. I understand the skeleton of CGI programming, so I need to improve my perl and probably get current (last time I coded in perl extensively, it was in version 4.x).

• There's not a huge demand for php, but I like php. Also, if you can do php then supposedly ASP is cake. I don't have an NT server, and when I get a second machine it will be a Unix box of some sort, so I don't intend on having anything able to run ASP effectively any time soon. Thus, php it is. (Not to mention I have mysql installed which is a natural mesh with php, and I want to emphasize a move to Unix, I'm not a big Microsoft fan.)

• ASP. Nope. No hardware/software for it. Not really interested.

• Cold Fusion. I don't know, really. Some people say Cold Fusion is da shit, but I just don't really know. Does it even have support for php and mysql? I don't know, but I guess I can find out. If worst comes to worst, I'm sure I can test it with Access databases. Anyway, I bet it looks good on the r�sum�.

• I should dust off my C programming. I don't know if I want to learn C++ so much, because at some point I plan to pick up java, and I think I'd rather play with the complexities of something that has a real potential to be cross-platform instead of... well, what C++ is.

The trick is actually finding time to do all this, so I am trying to find a space to fit it in. This is my challenge, should I decide to accept it, and throw the tape recorder in a tub of water because it looks like the space around Gillian has had a bomb go off already.

restlessmind