pogson's Journal: Time to go back to work.

I go back to work on Monday, but I have a week to ease myself into the new job.

I find it stressful making changes but I love it, too. It can make me feel young which is getting harder each year. Meeting new people, places and systems is always overwhelming but it eventually gets done and I do my thing which is making the world a better place wherever I go.

I will be head computergeek/instructor in a remote location. If things go smoothly, I may be loved or ignored. If things go poorly, I am never ignored. Fortunately, I use Linux as much as possible and things usually go well. In six years of using Linux I have only had one installation go poorly and that was a minor problem compared to the nightmare of that other OS. Last fall, I had a system refuse logins occasionally and shed users when they logged out. No one lost any data, and the problem was fixed with an upgrade.

I think the learning curve of Linux has taken about five years from being a complete newbie to having several solutions to any problem. At this stage, I enjoy passing on the knowledge and showing the magic to new crops of newbies. My only regret is that few of my students catch the fire of Linux as I have. Maybe they are just smouldering and will burst into flame later...

In the first staff meeting I intend to demonstrate how an old doorstop can seem to come to life when used as a thin client of a powerful Linux application server. If that does not knock their socks off, nothing will. Students have always liked it. Staff are sometimes cool. This is a bigger school. I could have hundreds of potential converts. :-)