90 Days

I have been in this wonderful new career position for just a bit over 90 days.  Upon reflection, I still love the job and the move.  As with anything that seems too perfect, somethings are not as I would like, but over all, this was the best move I have EVER made for a job.  The only minus is working with marketing.  The marketing folks are great, however, they don’t know who the SME’s are for certain modules of the software.  They tend to just go with the first “yes that looks great” and issue the document, then guess who gets to fix it…that’s right…ME!  Technical documents and marketing sometimes just don’t mix and the document needs to be more technically accurate than fluffy.  That is really my only issue and it is not a huge one as we are all committed to putting out the best information we can.

The internal training development is moving along.  The first hurdle was providing reassurance to the current trainer that he would still be teaching the class and we would work together to develop the new materials.  He has been a delight to work with and is very excited about new materials and a proper learning environment.

I am actively looking for a Knowledge/Content Management system.  I would like to have a development area, a place I can create drafts, the SME’s can comment, then another permanent place to store the final versions.  We have used SharePoint in the past, but it is no longer supported internally.  We have also used Knowledgebase, but again, no longer supported. 

Life in general is improving.  Terry is here permanently.  We are adjusting to being together again.  Over the past year, we have developed our own schedule and are now attempting to mesh those back together.  Big news is we found a house, my dream house and accepted the owners counter offer today.  Remodeling will gear up in about 4 weeks.  Look for pictures of those developments in the coming weeks!

Househunting

We are currently living in a lovely apartment.  It’s 2 story, 2 bedrooms, 2.5 bathrooms, cool acid-washed floors down and short shag carpet up, ceramic tile in the baths…all in all, not bad for an apartment, however, I want something more permanent.  We are looking around, trying to get the lay of the land, figure out what we can expect to get in a house for the amount of money we want to spend.  All kinds of questions have arisen, do we want to be in the country, in town, how long to I want to commute, how long do I want Terry to have to commute….the list goes on!  So today we did the Open House tour.  We found a couple things we like, actually a pretty neat already lived in house.  The price is right to allow for the things I would want to do to it and it comes with an acre of land.  The house is placed on one side of the lot, so we could build a small apartment/guesthouse for the parents.  Then we went to the “golf course” community.  The houses were pretty, but I am not sure that is the kind of place I want to live..it just reeked of Celebration and I just can’t do that kind of a place.  I also think the only home accessory place I could shop if I bought one of those houses would be Kirkland.  If I lived on a golf course, my dad would never leave!  Chris would be a frequent guest as well!  I guess there could be worse things.

We have also considered building and I like that idea the most, so if we go that route, we have to look for land and of course, more questions, trees or not, sloped or flat.  So much to consider, I am getting a headache!

Short work week coming up…will be researching tools for content management and authoring tools.