More Work Stuff
I just finished another big project at work, this time importing data into one of our databases. The process involved writing queries, matching data (by writing additional queries and then matching a few stragglers by hand), writing more queries and a hell of a lot of switching back and forth and dragging files across various servers. Everyone in my department is more than comfortable with the linux command line. It’s their natural interface of choice and it’s so basic to them that it’s almost foreign to them that somebody might actually not be familiar with navigating in that environment. But of course, I am not. So I watch surreptitiously, scribble mad notes, google like crazy and guess, guess, guess as I try to figure out how to move files and copy files and look at files, etc. As always, I am learning a lot.
I remember when I first started my last job, the one I started after I had just moved, the one I started during the busiest month of the year for that job, the one for which I had to learn, do the work, and also correct a year of incorrect data. It was overwhelming and exhausting but the exhaustion was good. I felt like I could barely drag myself onto the bus at the end of the day and that loud, guitar-driven music from my iPod was the only thing keeping my cellular structure intact and preventing me from melting into a puddle on the floor, but it was also intensely satisfying in that my brain was being worked so hard. That’s how I feel right now.
I feel like I’m doing a pretty good job. I pay very careful attention to what people teach me so that I don’t have to make them repeat themselves and I think hard about how to find my own answers or how to apply what I already know to my situation. And by my own standards (which, I can admit, are probably too high, I am probably excessively hard on myself) I am doing a decent job. But still, sometimes I make a stupid mistake and it about kills me, like yesterday I was running a query that kept throwing errors (which is not at all unusual for my queries) and no matter what I tried, I couldn’t seem to fix it (usually, with enough attempts, I can fix my own messes). I finally had to ask for help and the guy who helped me look at my code for about two seconds, said, “your slashes are backward,” and walked away. I felt so stupid. That’s a mistake that I know better than to make. I used to (mentally) belittle folks I was helping when they couldn’t keep straight their forward and back slashes. I pride myself on having at least some basic computer knowledge but at that moment I felt like someone who had maybe just hit the power button on a computer for the first time and was holding her arms in front of her face, waiting for the inevitable explosion.
At least you can be damned sure that I will not get my slashes wrong again.
Linux command line things I now know: grep, scp, cd, mv, more, opening files in various text editors, logging in to various servers as root, . , .. , assorted attributes, | , pg_dump, and a bunch of other stuff I can’t recall at this moment.