I’m coming up on the end of my fourth week at Amazon, and I’ve been in Seattle 30 days. So… how are things going?
On the work front, I’m enjoying myself immensely. The Amazon environment is dynamic and fast moving, which inevitably means confusing and surprising. One very useful thing is that everybody’s badge photo is displayed in their phone book entry.* (At Sun, this was a rarely-exercised option.) Things like coping with introduction overload, or figuring out who a particular email was from, or dealing with the frequent “Topic XYZ? Oh, you really need to talk to PQR!” all become much easier.
I got myself a Blackberry (8700c) on Tuesday, and planned to integrate it into the Amazon infrastructure yesterday. So far, no luck. I wonder if the fact that I chose to keep my old Massachusetts (617) phone number is complicating things. We’ll see. [UPDATE: New day, new server, new password: everything’s working OK now.] The device itself is neat, but the UI lacks the relentless focus on one-handed productivity that you see with PalmOS. If you’re going to give me a QWERTY keyboard, I want a dedicated key for “.”. “Alt+M” sucks, and the “Space+Space” hack only works for text.
I’m getting my office space sorted in a way that I never did at Sun. One touch: installing a small refrigerator. This allows me to enjoy (and offer to visitors) some of the dizzying range of American “energy drinks” and Japanese sodas and fruit drinks that are on sale in the Uwajimaya store. I tend to buy a random collection, without worrying about what I’m letting myself in for. It’s (usually) fun.** And when predictability is important, there’s a shelf full of iced tea.
The apartment progresses. I didn’t get much done over the long weekend, but last night I resumed my love affair with IKEA boxes and power tools. I’ve encountered three problems so far.
- First, there was the box spring with a slash in the side from a fork-lift. IKEA replaced this.
- Then it turns out that to attach the bedside tables to the bed frame*** I had to drill four pilot holes into the underside of the frame, and there isn’t room to fit my electric drill between the frame and the floor. It would have been easy to drill the holes before assembling the frame, but at this stage it’s quite hard. I’ve ordered myself a hand drill from Amazon.com (neither Lowes nor Home Depot were able to help), and this should do the trick.
- Then last night I decided to assemble the coffee table. It’s a complicated and heavy piece, with two drawers. I finished the main structure and started on the drawers, only to find that the back wall of each drawer was the wrong part. It was dimensionally correct, but it wasn’t pre-drilled in the right places and had a non-functional slot cut at one end. I think I can salvage things with a handful of 1-1/2 inch wood screws, but it’s a bit frustrating.
So back to the time line. I’ve been here just a few weeks, and I’m quite pleased with how things are going. Bouncing back and forth between the temporary apartment and the one I’m furnishing is complicated****, but I’m going to resist the temptation to rush the completion and move-in. I’ll take another week or two to get things right.
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* You can choose to substitute a different picture, but the original is just a click away.
** Right now I’m enjoying a Calpico Peach.
*** Necessary – they’re not free-standing.
**** Further complicated by the fact that half the time my RFID card won’t work for the Uwajimaya car park. They keep promising to fix it, copy down the numbers, type stuff into the computer… all to no avail.