Bah Bah Bah, Bah Bah Dot Com

So week 1 of my new job at Booz Allen Hamilton is complete. I'm a part of the Modeling, Simulation, Wargaming, and Analysis group. My team specifically seems to focus on web-based application creation (which I'll get into a little later) as a manifestation of their consulting. My office is in McLean, VA, which is Booz headquarters.

Instead of using desktops everyone is given laptops. Historically Booz employees have spent a lot of time at client sites and it's nice to have a mobile workstation. Mine was ordered, but unfortunately the ordering process has been getting a little bit held up, so I'm using this old clunker (shell looks like the same era as Frodo for my SSC peeps, yeah, that old). On the plus side, the external keyboard and mouse I had ordered on Tuesday afternoon arrived Thursday, just before I headed out, so on Friday I got to use a full-sized mouse and keyboard with the monitor they had for me. I still get to keep my dual screens :D

The badges have RFID (I assume) to grant access to some of the doors as well as to the BAH parking garages. What I'd really like to see is the cafeteria have a sensor for it so that I could use my badge to pay for lunch. If they were worried about getting paid they could work it with a debit system where I put $50 on it with a credit card online, and then the transaction at the cafeteria debits the account for the price of my lunch. It would be faster than cash or credit. Speaking of things that use RFID, my EZ-Pass came on Thursday night so I got to test that on Friday. It works, and just in time before my change pile ran out.

The people who I'm actually working with seem pretty cool thus far. They are all fairly young (I can't imagine any of them are over 35). They've been friendly and helpful, and I think I'm going to be able to fit in okay with them. I even made a sweet GUI in my first week! They seem to work with web applications fairly often, which is sort of a new area for me, but it's really easy to pick-up. They had this Flex application that had a line chart on it. I made it so that when you wheeled in and out the chart zoomed towards where your mouse cursor was. Totally sweet! That was my first accomplishment in Flex. Flex is an Adobe made language for Rich Internet Applications, which is what they sort of refer to as Web 2.0 since the web sites are more like applications than collections of separate web pages. There is this other task I'm helping with that makes me want to punch babies in the face though. They want me to work with this open source virtual world software, but it's so early in development that it's really frustrating to get it to do what I want. There is quite little documentation to help me, and it's just a pain.

Everything at work has a website, and they are all < insert word/phrase here >.bah.com and when you are told these addresses, it's "bah" (like a sheep), not "b-a-h". So that's the joke behind my post title, it's a play on bah.com and Barbra Anne by the Beach Boys.

The drive is tolerable since I can listen to Elliot in the Morning, but Route 7 is the bane of my existence. There is always (at minimal) congestion on it, even at like 9pm or so when I was heading back from MD one night in my transition week. The Dulles Toll Road isn't quite as bad. The drive is about an hour door to door, for the most part. I'm gonna experiment with paying this huge toll to avoid 7 on Monday and maybe Tuesday to see if that's a good idea in the mornings.

Leesburg is a pretty nice place to live in. Lot's of stores near-by to get things, a pretty good choice of restaurants it seems (not that it matters much with a picky eater like Robin as your dining mate). We did approve this Indian buffet near-by this afternoon. Really good, reminded us a little of Thali of India near RIT, but significantly more expensive (partially because Thali was a hell of a deal at $8 for a buffet).

For my SSC peeps: I never thought I'd say this, but by the end of the week I actually sort of missed being called AJ.