Direct impacts to the merger to my work

Well, given it has been a year, here are some highlights:

• I always wanted to work on a large bank merger. The last two large ones I missed out completely. For Wachovia – First Union the area I was in had very little merger impact. I assumed that I would be on the winning side, so being on the losing side has been different
• The work I am doing will literally be used by the entire bank – the call centers, the branches, the IVR will leverage the work.
• The work has been intense
• I have met a lot of new team mates who I really like
• Got to see Minneapolis – cool city
• Working from home more – the work is almost exclusively almost all the time

Some lowlights:

• Much of the work of the last 5 years will be blown away – not sure ho much but the guess is in 5 years almost none will be around – some will influence the future, while some will just cease to exist
• People i like have left, either voluntarily or involuntarily – with more to come -

It’s been a year officially

Since Wachovia sold itself at a rock bottom price, undone by a absolutely crazy set of bad decisions and uncertainty.  Hard to believe that it has been a year. It feels like a shorter time but so much has changed. Feels like yesterday I was waking up each day wondering what was next. I do remember so vividly coming home that one day and simply going to bed.

I have a new boss, new teammates, a new work style (at home 3 plus days a week while working on the phone almost exclusively), and the changes keep coming.  It is the only constant so far is the change.

I have worked harder in the last year than I care to remember while making less money than any year since 2003.  I am still unsure of the long term viability of my job at Wells and wonder often if jumping ship is not the sanest thing to do. And I consider myself, as compared to most of my peers, one of the lucky ones.

It is the first time in my entire career where I know that despite how hard I work that my job is not safe, and it is only a numbers game. Twice before I jumped ship literally as the hangman was coming but this is very different.  

Upgrading to Windows 7

I have a MSDN account which means I have early access to Windows 7.  And I had plenty of space on my hard drive.

I followed this process http://lifehacker.com/5126781/how-to-dual-boot-windows-7-with-xp-or-vista. Couple of thoughts:

1. I gave the Windows 7 significant amount of the hard drive. I anticipated that I would need some space for XP so I that partition 2x time as large as the current XP install. The rest of the space went to Windows 7.

2. Gparted live was a god send.

3. Windows 7 Pro was an incredibly robust and easy install. Tons of drivers.

Challenges:

1. Video card – I had a 64M card that worked ok, but I went and upgraded to a 512M card for $80 at Best Buy. My old one was maybe ok.

2. Need to re-install all software – basically it was a ground up install; I had to re-install Office etc.

3. Move data – I had to move data over from the XP side to Win 7 for say my documents – saw a great suggestion to create a data partition on the future

My Windows 7 experience:

It is great – it what Vista wanted to be. My drivers are all there- it found my shared printer no problem. It supports two screens very well. I really really like the OS to the point that it became my every day OS day. I know that XP days are numbered.  I am seriously considering upgrading the downstairs machine next