Today was my first day working at the University of Washington Information School. It has been a pretty awesome day. Marie drove me down so I wouldn’t have to pay for parking ($15/day without having assign/prepaid parking). My office is in Mary Gates Hall (previously the physics building for those who were wondering what building this is). The office is a good size for the group of people that I’ll be working with (four full time IT people and a handful of student assistants). It’s an open office with a bunch of desks and 2 nice big windows that open. I’m on a 27″ iMac with an extra 24″ monitor (even more desktop space than before or at home).

My new work home (Mary Gates Hall)

The building itself is pretty confusing, but it looks awesome and has a ton of artwork to view while trying to find your way around. I’m on the third floor but the Information School has folks on multiple floors (from garden level up to the 3rd, maybe 4th?). The weather today was pretty much perfect (70s and only slightly cloudy) except for a slight drizzle on the way home from work.

My day was pretty busy with meeting everyone, learning my way around and filling out some HR paperwork. Everyone I met seems to be really awesome and I’m very excited to get to know them all better, especially the IT team. Martin, one of my new coworkers, was an awesome tour guide who showed me around the building and gave me a quick bit of campus highlights while we walked to lunch. We ate at Schultzy’s Sausage on the Ave. I had “The Schultzy” for lunch. It’s a sausage burger with onions and bell peppers on it, and it was quite tasty.

All in all, I’m very excited to dive into work and get to know everyone in the Information School. It’s going to be quite a bit different from Wayne, but I think it’s a good different and I’m pretty geeked about getting to work in this environment.