New Job

Although I'm not officially in my new position, I recently started to work on the new job, so I've been spending half my time at my old job and half my time at my new job. The new job is going to be pretty neat I think. I'm going to be working on clusters. Central management of high performance computing (HPC) is the latest craze to hit campuses across the country. I am joining a group at the campus level to help in managing and sysadmin'ing the machines (which means installing hardware and software, and then keeping them running). I will be working in cubicle land which is a real switch for me. I've always had my own office for all my jobs, most of them with windows even, so you could say I've been very spoiled. Most would call moving to a cube a downgrade, but for me it is a novelty and I am looking forward to the experience. Everyone in my new area has been very nice and welcoming. One downside is that I am not working on the central campus - I am out at a research park about 20 minutes from home. This means that for the first time I can think of, Andrew and I are not going to be car pooling. Both of us think this sucks, but it does have its advantages, such as Andrew can ride the harley to work. The first cluster I am in charge of is called 'axiom'. It is 3 racks wide, each rack basically looks like the photos here, front and back (the back is with all the wires). And yes, I understand what all these wires are doing! There are many more cluster systems to come. The job switch is interesting to me since for 20 years I've basically been doing the same thing (general sysadmin stuff) and it's getting pretty routine and boring. Now I get to learn something new for me and this challenges my brain since I don't know all the answers. And I will be working with some top notch nationally respected people and this is pretty cool.