I’ve now completed two weeks at my new job and I’m happy to report that the transition back to full-time work has gone much more smoothly than anticipated. My hours are 9 – 6 with an hour for lunch and a 5pm finish on Fridays. I’ve been starting a bit earlier and finishing slightly later but only my boss seems to put in more hours than that. It’s 20 minutes door to door which qualifies as the shortest commute to a full time job that I’ve ever had. I have one more full week in the office and then I will be allowed to work from home three days a week if I so desire.
I’ve been working on the creation of a new site to do with “horsepooling”, which is carpooling for horses if you didn’t guess. It mainly will be used by people attending horse-related events such as competitions, shows etc. around France. My company, BCMD is essentially the IT branch of CWD Selliers, makers of custom saddles. Most of BCMD’s customers are also in the horse industry with the exception of some websites they’ve built for local businesses. So not only am I surrounded by horses at home, but I also make a living from a horse-related industry.
We’re creating the new site from scratch using a CMS called Drupal, an open-source framework for building and maintaining web sites. It’s one of the more popular of the new breed of tools and I’ve picked it up fairly quickly. Because I wasn’t doing much actual development at my last job, it’s been about five years since I’ve done any hard-core development. I’m sure I sound like an old-timer when I say that things have changed a lot since my early days as a newbie back in 1998. Almost without exception, the changes are for the better including automation of routine tasks, better tools and the greater availability of information on problem solving. In fact, the biggest challenge has been adapting to a French keyboard where certain letters are transposed and the punctuation marks, integral to programming, are scattered all over in odd places.
Life in the office isn’t that much different to any other place I’ve worked. The most notable exception is that upon seeing someone for the first time that day, you formally greet them with a handshake for the men and a peck on each cheek for the women. There are about 20 people who work in the office, and roughly the same again in the attached workshop. The average age is late-20’s making me one of the older employees. Everyone has been very friendly and welcoming, at least as far as I can tell. I started out trying to speak French to my boss but in order not too waste his time, we’ve switched to English for now. There are a few other foreigners too including an English woman who’s been here about eight years, a German and a Portuguese lady as well.
Will has also been busy on the work front as he reported in his last post. He’s nearly completed the fois gras shop and will be heading there this afternoon to take care of the outstanding issues including taking some more photos and getting the owners set up to administer the content themselves. He’s also been working hard on the Indian curry take-away site and just when he thought he was done, they’ve come back and requested more changes. So he should have that one finished soon if he can persuade the client to stop changing her mind. Also, he’s got at least three Sites for Homes customers who have expressed interest and most are on hold for another month until they can take outdoor pictures of their homes when everything is in full bloom.
Speaking of which, the garden at Port 80 is coming to life with gusto. I pruned the wisteria a few weeks ago and it’s starting to sprout. Same for the hydrangeas and a few of the rose bushes and trees too. I mowed the front lawn two weeks ago and it already needs another trim. I may do that later today if I’m feeling adventurous. It’s going to be sunny with temps in the low 20’s (70’s) for the next few days so I really need to take advantage on the weekends. Lucien came by with his tiller on Friday so the veggie plot is now ready for planting. We probably won’t get to it this weekend but next, I plan to sow a few varieties of onion, lettuce and herbs.
There’s not much to report on the social front except for this evening when we’re having Richard and Brigit (aka Rigit) and Lee over for dinner. Rigit are the English couple who own a place in Champangac, just down the road. They tried it out here for a year or so and then decided it wasn’t for them so have returned to the UK. They come out every so often on holiday so it will be nice to spend some time with them. Lee is still on his own since his Richard is still back in the UK so we’re taking him under our wings again.
That’s all I have for now. Time for lunch and an afternoon outdoors.