I'm really excited about my new position as a Database Analyst / Programmer with the Shimberg Center for Housing Studies . This was a lateral move within the University of Florida.

I have been wanting to shift into a web and database development role for a while now. I was lucky to find an organization that supports this kind of career transition (my previous positions included system administration and help desk components).

My first big project is to build a Data Warehouse, so I'm reading books and learning all kinds of new terminology. My mentor at the Shimberg Center is a believer in Agile programming and test-driven development, so I'm getting some superb on-the-job training.

Our web stack is FreeBSD, Apache, Perl, and PostgreSQL (FAPP anyone?). I will definitely have new challenges in this position.

Here is a picture of my new office, my new work computer (a Dell Optiplex 780 running Ubuntu Linux), and my nice windows that are pleasant even on a rainy day:

In a previous story, I showed What NOT to do in your server room. Over the past year I have been able to improve that server room a little bit. In addition to a general rack cleanup effort, I installed a whole new rack with square holes and plenty of cable management. The following pictures show the results.



Here are the racks from the front:

Leave unused cables in-place.  Do not use cable management.  Label no cables.

 

Use cables of inappropriate length (this is a SCSI cable!):

I apparently never blogged about taking a new position in 2008. I am no longer with the Florida Museum of Natural History at the University of Florida. I have been an IT Senior with the Children's Oncology Group at UF for about a year. COG is under the College of Medicine and affiliated with CureSearch / National Childhood Cancer Foundation.

We have declared the new server space project "Done!" and have started to move in the servers.





There are some complexities with our situation of sharing physical space with one of the world's largest collections of Lepidoptera: