Dry Ice Factory

I mentioned recently that my job duties were about to change. This change has now been effected, and upon my return from Corflu I moved into a new cubicle that's a much smaller space than my previous one. However, I'm not in a fishbowl anymore where people could stare in through a window at me, and I've set it up to feel pretty cozy. I've had my first couple of jobs assigned -- extracting enrollment figures for the Art department courses for the past two years, quarter by quarter, and extracting parent addresses for a certain group of students to prepare mailing labels for some kind of mass mailing. This job will require me to learn the ins and outs of various tables in our student database, and it will also require me to learn how to translate requests for information into database queries. I've done a fair amount of work with queries in the past, and I enjoy the puzzle and problem-solving aspect. One of the tricky parts is making sure that you are asking the right question of the database, so to speak. It's also possible to approach the questions from a number of different angles -- i.e., enrollment figures can be looked at from the registration side or the transcript side, which are two different sets of tables.

Anyway, this also means a new boss and new colleagues, although they are people I already know, so that shouldn't be such a big deal. My position is professional, so a certain amount of independence is expected. Still, my old boss from before even my last boss, seemed sorry to see me move out of her side of the building at last and seemed upset that I had been given such a small cubicle. I was a little dubious myself at first, but I'm already adjusting. Now I'm on the warm side of the building, too, so I won't freeze in the winter. However, I'll boil in the summer, so it all evens out. I don't have quite as much privacy here either, so we'll see if my LiveJournaling diminishes. So far, it doesn't seem as if it will!