And It Begins

Well, today was the first day of my new job at Avanade. I must say, it was pretty laid back. But, the rest of my day was anything but.

It all actually started yesterday, when I got my reminder call about bringing in my car to the VW dealer to get the sunroof fixed. Yes, I have driven it only 100 miles and it is already being serviced. But, it’s under warranty, so no cost to me. Still, hastle cannot be summed up as a dollar amount. The thing that stuck out was that I needed to have it up to them between 7 and 9am. I was thinking of dropping it off after work.

So, that leads to this morning. It all just started wrong. I turn off my alarm at 7:15am. I then set it forward 15 minutes, or so I think. Sometime later, I wake up and see that my clock says that it is 7:42am! At this point I am freaking out, I am running out of time and I am not even out of bed yet. But, for some reason I had the presence of mind to realize that this wasn’t possible since the alarm never went off. It was really 7:27am. Bullet #1 missed for the day.

When I got to the service department, things went well. I say that because the only thing that happened there was me arguing with the service rep about him needing a key when he already had one in his hand. Yea, the VW key is in the fob. I totally forgot about it. You think this would be hard to believe considering all I do is play with it!

But, while I was there, I was carefully watching my watch since it was important for me to catch a bus to downtown. The service department did offer me a ride, but seeing that it was my first day of work I didn’t want to be late. But, once I got there I did have some time to spare. So, off to the bus I go. I start by running down Rosevelt to 47th, then I start to walk towards the Ave. As I am about a half a block away I see my bus roar by. At this point, my heart about dies. I begin to run in my dress pants and shoes to catch this bus while at the same time trying to get my fare ready for the ride. Luckly, I made it. Bullet #2: Missed.

At this point, I am pretty out of it and it is only 8:25am. I haven’t even made it out of U-District yet. But, I soon will have tons of time to relax and just really do nothing too intensive.

I arrive to Avanade on time and when I go to sign the book for guests I was told to stop by the receptionist. She said, “Sir, the book is for guests. You are an employee here.” Hah, mind trip. *Me realizing I have a job now* So, I take a seat and look out at the water for 5 minutes, then 10, then 15. It just added up. But, there was no pressure, stress, or anything like that. I just sat there and looked at the water.

Once I was brought upstairs to HR the day had offically begun. I was introducted to the office, some people in HR and just other little things around the office. Other stuff like leftover paperwork and what not was also finished up. After the initial meeting with HR I was then to head out to get issued my laptop. But, there was a problem in the building with their wirless, so I waited for the IT guys to be freed up so I could be issued my laptop. Again, I waited. But, this time I just talked with two of the ladies from HR about Costco and how cold it really gets in Minnesota. I don’t know how long we really talked, but it was cool to just sit and relax. Pretty chill.

However, during this down time there was a car accident on Elliott Ave. A woman, who I might add looked totally trashed hit a parked car and pushed it up on the sidewalk. Yeah, it wasn’t even moving and she hit it up onto the sidewalk. But, from what I heard the police searched her car and found some drug paraphernalia in her car and maybe some drugs. Yea, that was exciting. Oh, life in Belltown.

After getting issued my brand spanking new laptop it was off to surfing the company intranet. There’s lots of cool stuff on there that I have to look into and a bunch that is just really interesting. So, this is what I’ll be doing for the rest of the week and later in the day I had an orientation on the intranet site.

Once my meetings were done for the day I was on my own and just filled out some paperwork online and did some more browsing. I was hoping to get some work done when I got home, but Comcast was down until about 9:30 and I just didn’t feel up to it at that point. Now, I am sitting here writing about my day and it is starting to sink in. I don’t really think it will sink in until later, but I know that it will. I still don’t know what I’ll be working on or where, but next week I have training Monday thru Thursday and it should be pretty cool from what I hear.

So, yeah, that’s about it. Oh, yah, I also got my Canon XT today, but there is something screwy with the flash and some wreched sound that comes from it. So, back to Dell it goes and hopefully a replacement will be on its way soon.

Phew, haven’t written this much in a while, but this day seemed to be the most eventful one that I have had in the past three weeks or so.