First day of week 4. I finally feel comfortable. While things are constantly changing, there is a quiet rhythm to the chaos.

My engineering group is moving to temporary office space on a different floor to relieve some overcrowding as we wait out our time before the big move to our new schmaltzy office digs in Rosslyn at year’s end. (Have I mentioned yet that the move to Rosslyn will allow me to walk to work?) In the meantime, the move to the 5th floor in our current building has some positives and negatives. Few standing desks. The furniture is brown (not the gray and white that I love.) We will be separated from the other VA Yexters. We will have to take the elevator or stairs to play ping pong (oh the horror!) The positives: we have a better view, we face away from the construction noise, we will not have to close the blinds to avoid the afternoon sun, I have drawers at my desk, and there is more space between teams so we don’t hear other other chewing when we eat. I’m super excited, but nervous about the actual move. It’s taking place tomorrow when I’ll be out of the office. Some of you may remember that three of my moves at TJ did not go well in my absence.

One of my teammates returned today from a short leave. I hadn’t met him yet, so I went over to his desk to introduce myself. Turns out we met over a year and a half ago, before either of us joined Yext, at a DC area meetup of students in Georgia Tech’s online computer science master’s program. Small world! (Note: I’m currently taking a break from the program as I decide if I want to continue with it.)

I am starting to understand the vocabulary my team uses and don’t feel totally lost. I still have to ask a ton of questions, and I think that will probably be true for a year. But now I understand the words my teammates use in their answers which is mighty comforting.

I’m remembering my IntelliJ shortcuts (shift-shift, command-n, control-shift-f), but for the life of me, I have to look down everytime I need to cut and paste on my Mac. Serenity now!

Today’s sprint planning meeting went well. I’m starting to get the hang of estimating item points. Was assigned some real tasks for this next sprint. I can’t wait to see how much progress I make these next two weeks.

Today’s computer science topics: I am learning about Immutables, annotation processors, and practicing some functional programming. I faked my way through understanding last week and then a colleague posted this great piece about them on the Yext Engineering blog.

And for today’s funny (other than the fact that I came within inches of running into the glass wall of the conference room in my new office). Everything we submit (code, commit messages, and comments) has to follow a standard. I was told today to stop putting two spaces after colons and periods. And when I say told, I mean my code review was bounced back to me becuase of it. My age was showing. Before today, I thought you would have to pry both the Oxford comma and the second space after punctuation out of my cold, dead, and lifeless hands (see what I did there?) While I’m still going to hold onto the Oxford comma to help some hourly workers get their day in court, if I want to keep my new software engineering job, I’m going to have to let the extra space go.

hours of sleep < 4 ;  steps = 9,500;  lines of code written = 16;