use Perl

Whooooo. I'm finally through the training process and moving to an unorthodox schedule. :) I don't want to gush fanboyishly or anything, but I love this new job! It's like the old job in terms of actual what-do-you-do-at-work, but the atmosphere is a few hundred times better, it's more involved, and it actually (forgive the cliche) makes a difference. I've actually seen results of things I do, and not just for someone I troubleshoot, but in terms of the big picture. This is a great feeling to have at work, and I'd never really realized I could have this feeling at work before. It's wonderful. :)

I'm one of those types who doesn't want regular hours, because working regular hours is, all apologies in advance, kinda boring. I'm getting 10-hour shifts on F, Sa, and M, and I'm happy about that.

I'll also be on call during the week, and I don't know what kind of volume that's going to entail as of yet, but we'll see.

Regardless, this is a short note to keep track of a couple things to myself. Foremost among those is that I need to sit down at home with this year's Perl Advent and work with a few of the things I've seen on there (most notably SpamAssassin for Outlook and Template::Extract).

I've also been learning bits and pieces here and there about Python. I have this problem with learning programming languages where if it's a boring language I've got to do something fun in it, whereas if it's an interesting, finagly language I don't have a problem learning the dull stuff. C is, well, kinda dull. I haven't been able to learn C properly. Perl is not dull. I've been learning Perl quite well, I hope.

Now that I have read the beginning of the Python tutorial a little more carefully, I'm starting to see that it's not boring, and I'm starting to want to know more. This is a vicious but pleasant cycle. Hopefully I'll be well-versed in Python at some point in the future.

Tomorrow's my first weekday at home, with only ramen and a keyboard to take up my time (and some laundry, but that's a sideline.) Tomorrow I will sit down and throw some mental processing time at all of this, and hopefully Tuesday night I'll have learned something, built something, and finally figured out what I'm doing wrong with the cyberspace game.