11 Years, 9 Months, 1 Day

My cube for 9 of the 11+ years I spent at D2L

On May 19, 2003, I started my first day with Data2Logistics, a web-based freight billing management company.

And on February 20, 2015, I ended my employment with Data2Logistics, 3 months shy of 12 years.

When you spend that long with a company, you tend to have a variance of mixed feelings. Some good, some bad, some neutral. There were friendships developed over the years. There were co-workers that I was happy to see move on. There were misguided emails thanks to my name being very similar to a short tempered CTO that pissed people off on a regular basis.

From a positive note, there were many accomplishments that were completed, including two that stand out: the migration from Exchange 2000 to Exchange 2003 to Exchange 2007 and the introduction of VMware to the infrastructure, cobbling together parts, drives, servers and RAM at the beginning to running it all on a Flexpod [Cisco UCS servers, NetApp storage and vCenter 5.1], which is an enterprise level platform that builds into it many redundant features and functions.

Having crossed the 10 year mark in 2013, I earned extra vacation days, which allowed me to travel more, leaving the office more often when I became burnt out on daily tasks that reduced the amount of time I got to spend doing my job as a Network Admin.

For a company with 3 sites, I only traveled once, which was last September to the Ft. Myers office. The trip was very productive on many levels, getting to finally meet in person several people I had worked with over the more than 11 years via phone and email.

I remained in the same cube and office for 9 of those 11 years, which in of itself is a milestone. Most people move around like musical chairs. I shared with the office with a co-worker who has spent 16 years of her time at this company. I will miss our daily chats and working together to troubleshoot various issues that would come up.

Getting a new job was one of my top TINTFA items this year, and I quickly found a good fit. Give me some time to adjust to my new digs before I blog about it. For now, after spending my first week on the new job, I feel it’s a good fit for me and one that will give me new challenges as I celebrate my 30th year in IT this fall.

Moving forward. Starting out the year on a great note. It’s been a long time coming and one that I am glad to have done.