Auswanderer Quatsch

When the late bus is late well… take your camera out and start shooting!

In the process of changing jobs I also changed of work location. I now commute to Erlangen every day, a city 20km north or Nuremberg, which Beer fest you already saw here.

A new city means a new playground for the little photographer that I am. I had a little spare time a few days ago, so I walked the way to the center instead of taking the bus.

Erlangen is basically a student / Siemens city. Above a cafe rushed by students during daytime, below the exhibit room for Siemens Medical tools.

Expect more from Erlangen to come… remember, that’s my new playground

The last weeks/months were really interesting. I criticized two years of work. I analyzed two years of contacts with colleagues and chefs. I tried to make up the advantages and drawbacks of the methods and processes we used. I searched all the little things that made me mad, those daily tasks that I hated, why I hated them, why they were there, how we could have made it different and why we did not… I pretty much tried to sum up two years of work to prepare myself for the next round. And that was interesting… even if my best achievement was probably to convince my superior to start reading “A Game of Thrones”. Last time I checked he was done with the first book and eager to start with the second one.

The third week in my new job is only starting and I can say it already loud and clear: “oh what a fine feeling it is to be back working in the medical field”. I felt it before, also mentioned it once or twice to my relatives, but know I realize it fully: the work was great, some of my colleagues were simply fantastic and darn excellent… but the product itself did not interest me much… automatics was not that fun, definitely not “my thing”…

Two books helped me much with the transition: “Management for Dummies” which helped for the management/psychological side of it and “The Art of Agile Development” for a bit more technical management. I highly recommend the second one, that’s a great book (from O’Reilly of course), even if you’re not familiar with Agile Dev’ ; I found it way more interesting for its Agile Management side than its XP-Programming side actually.

Anyway, I stepped in my new role at a very interesting moment: my superior was away in Slovakia for one week and disappeared in Ireland for a few days right after. My mentor had work up to way above the head and my team had to produce a new design document for next Tuesday. So I had to understand a lot by myself, ask right and left for more explanation and prepare myself to be able to make the most of my mentor’s time whenever he had some for me.

The management did not start yet, it is the main goal for this week… and I’m looking forward to it! For the most curious of you, here is a picture of the machine I now work on.

My new way to work is not as nice as the previous one. It can take from almost 30 minutes in the morning to 1h15-20 in the evening. The bus is not as calm as the metro and really really dark on the way back. The major drawback of this is that it is a pain to continue reading in those conditions. It took me almost 2 weeks to finish the last 100 pages of my book.

I read a lot more on my iPhone (RSS reader powah) and simply listen to all my daily podcasts (I needed 2-3 hours of fitness a week to finish all my weekly podcasts before O_o). Podcasts are definitely a good solution, but I lack some material and often end up with no episodes left to listen to in the middle of my way back.

So here’s my question:

• what do you listen to?
• What are your secret podcasts?
• What do you listen to on the radio (I might find the associated podcast)?

It can be french, english or german I don’t care… what do you suggest?

Here is a list of what I already follow:

PS: Another post on my work will follow tomorrow… if you’re nice ;]

I just activated the plugin WPTouch that changes the display of WordPress for Mobile Phones to something way easier to read/navigate. I find it really useful on the iPhone but I’d be glad to know what you think of it. So step out of your RSS readers, have a look at it and express yourself