Status Report

I hate submitting monthly status reports at work. I’ve always had a problem with them and probably always will until I come up with some way to completely automate them with a program. 😉 I have a hard time reiterating all the crap I have already reported on a weekly basis. I know my boss just needs help compiling every for his boss, but I know he takes notes at our weekly meeting, so I would assume he could use that.

However, providing a different kind of status report here is much more appropriate because I don’t write here often and, when I do, there’s no guarantee one entry will flow to the next.

I have not changed jobs. I didn’t apply at the Help Desk for a few reasons. My friend was getting laid off, so I figured it’d be better to give him first shot at it. But the position I thought was opening up didn’t. Then, I figured out that it’s going to be two more years before I need to make any potentially risky announcements about my change in majors.

I contacted UCONN to see what I need to do to transfer into the Philosophy department. They told me to take all the general education courses where I am now (but nothing specific to the major) and then transfer. So, I found the transfer guide and compared it to my current major. I found that by switching my major from Computer Programming Technology to Computer Science, I would be taking more of the general education classes that I need for transferring to UCONN and it still looks like I’m pursuing a job-related degree. So, I’ll have the company to continue paying for my degree until I’m ready to transfer.

Also, in the mean time, my relationship with my boss has improved. I think we’ve both pretty much figured how we need to communicate from now on. It’s not perfect yet, but it’s getting better. I’m still strengthening my relationship with the Help Desk, and starting to network again with other areas of the department.

Since I am taking a [computer] networking course this semester, I get myself a tour of the network by one of the administrators last Monday. It was a good look at our company’s network, and a good opportunity to appear ambitious/interested to both the network group at work and my instructor at school. Now that the network group knows I’m learning more about it (and I’ve pledged not to try hacking it), I can start chatting with them more. If a position opens up there someday when I’m looking to change jobs again, that could get my foot in the door. Yeah, life is just one big strategy game to me sometimes, and I love strategy games. 🙂

Speaking of strategy, I think I played my boss pretty well at my performance review this year. I was more confident and more at ease in speaking to him when discussing the items on the report than I have ever been. He thinks I’m ready for more of a senior developer role now and wants to help me work into it. That would solve a lot of my issues with the job. My biggest problem is that although I am capable of a lot, I don’t have any authority to do anything. He wants me to take on ownership of the application that I primarily work on that he has been “owning” (i.e., I can’t make any decisions for it without his approval.) I’m hoping that means a bigger raise this year too – I could really use that! 🙂

That’s all for now. I did well on my last Pre-Calc exam. I’m keeping up with the material, and I have another exam on Tuesday. I’ll post an entry regrading that soon.