Odds

You've seen the media representation of technology. Data travels flawlessly on spinning arcs of light, every surface is either chrome or neon, the full-time hackers who work on the systems have bad hair and completely coordinated "techno-goth" outfits and $900 Kenneth Cole laptop bags.

These places exist. Seriously they do.

But one must temper this knowledge with the awareness that for every high-tech awesome place, there are 5,000 little firms chugging along just keeping their code compliant and up-to-date with the latest operating system.

And so, I'm officially a "Code Monkey". My previous experience is all in working around the limitations coded into the programs by others, but now I get the chance to input limitations of my very own!

When I interviewed, I was asked if I had scripting knowledge. I replied that my experience was limited to cases where someone approaches me and says,"Hey! My code is busted! Fix it!"

And I generally can figure it out given a few minutes and access to Google. As for writing my own, I said I frequently find scripts on the interwebz and steal borrow and modify them.

Apparently, there are a lot of people who do just that and make whole careers out of it!

So there are no servers to work on here. Those are all on the East Coast somewhere I'm not concerned about.

User support is a hemisphere away from me, physically now as well as emotionally as it always has been.

Diet Coke is $.25 by the can on the honor system.

And most importantly, this morning I found a handy Starbucks where they made me a venti breve latte with sugar-free gingerbread syrup!

Of course, there are adjustments to be made.

As a people, developers are not a "Morning Folk". We do not expect them to arrive before 10am and we do not look directly at them until they return from lunch. I learned that yesterday while I dodged a stapler.

I'm faster than I look.