My New Job - A Career Pinnacle

Today, I officially started what I hope is my last job until I retire. The MANY hours, days, weeks and months of self-study, continuing education night classes, personal sacrifice, and 8 years of dysfunctional IT hell have finally bore fruit.

My official title is "Oracle Applications Analyst". I'll be doing alot of Java and Oracle web application development with a little DHTML thrown in. For the IT geeks out there, it's a Struts based J2EE application running on a multi-clustered and load-balanced Apache/Tomcat server configuration with an Oracle back end. This is EXACTLY what I've been wanting to do for quite awhile now. In addition, I'll have an excellent opportunity to learn various Oracle tools that they implement which will satiate my hunger to learn and grow. I'll also be tasked with mentoring several other programmers in Java and J2EE which I will enjoy too.

The first day turned out exactly as I had envisioned from the interview process and due diligence. It's a relaxed and very positive atmosphere in a stunningly beautiful and modern work environment. Everybody made me feel right at home and, get this, everybody is happy. And, no, they aren't pumping atomized Prozac into the air ducts either. LOL!! For the first time, there are NO red flags being raised or alarm bells after completing my first day.... another first for me to experience. This company actually gets it about managing its employees. Part of that testiment are people I've met who have been here for many years....even 20-25. I can speak from experience about companies that DON'T get it and fall way short in this area. They're on my resume. ;-)

With this outstanding opportunity, I've also reached a comfortable level of financial independence including the ability to aggressively build a retirement portfolio. I'm significantly deficient in this currently and I can finally makeup some ground. All of that and I can still have my chase toys too. LOL!!

If that sounds pompous, well, I certainly won't apologize for it. I've earned every bit of it with no help from anybody except those pessimists and critics out there who motivated me more than they'll ever know. I've successfully achieved a professional level that I was always told impossible because of not having a 4-year college degree under my belt. :-)

For now, it's time to jump in and hit the ground running to validate their belief in me and prove their decision to bring me on board was a good one. 2006 will finally be MY year.

A fitting song: "Marathon" by Neil Pert.