Lessons Learned

I'm finishing up my first assignment as an SAP consultant. The assignment was up in the Pacific Northwest. It was definitely a learning experience, which I knew it would be and is big reason of why I signed up to begin with. Only, sometimes the things you learn weren't the things you were expecting to learn. I thought I would learn a lot about SAP and payroll and accounting. Instead I learned a lot about consulting in general, travel and loyalty programs, life, family, and relationships. But mostly, I learned about myself and what I need to be happy with myself.

Made it to Chicago

In the movie Pumping Iron, Franco Columbu describes the phrase "go to California" as an equivalent to "go to Hell", because where he came from California was a place you never make it to. For the last couple of years, Chicago has been our California. It has been a place that seemed like we would never make it to -- there were too many obstacles -- selling the house, landing a job, downsizing from a 4 bedroom house to a much smaller apartment, finding an apartment.

Scared, again

The last time I wrote a blog post, I was scared.  But, I didn't know how much more scared I would be, again, in just 16 months.  But re-reading that post now, I have some of the same feelings still and I guess this is just the next step.

I've submitted my resignation to Kiewit and in just 10 days we will be packing up in a U-Haul and migrating to Chicagoland.  My wife, our daughters, and I will finally be on a journey that we've talked about and thought about for several years.

Scared

Tomorrow is my last day at Union Pacific Railroad.  When I started working there I was 22 and just starting my last year of college, no kids, no mortgage, and I had just met a great girl. Life changes fast.

I've spent the last 7 years working at Union Pacific.  I like to break my time at UP into these general sections....

• 1 year as an intern in various accounting groups
• 3 years developing and supporting apps built in VB.NET, SQL Server, ColdFusion, and other software to support accounting processes
• 3 years working on SAP - supporting production payroll, being the payroll lead on a project, supporting AP and Treasury and working on a project to revamp the Travel & Expense application

Blogging on Blogger

Why do I blog on Blogger?  Doesn't Blogger suck?

I have tried a variety of different blogging platforms - Wordpress, Tumblr, Scriptogram, Calepinand the now defunct Posterous and and there's probably some others in there also.

I decided it doesn't matter. I decided what does matters is the content. I decided the more there was to mess with (Wordpress, Tumblr) the more I messed with, and the less I wrote. I realized that the harder it was to post and format posts the way I wanted (Posterous, Calepin) the less I would wrote.