I’m completing week two of being an IT manager. Last week, I went home every day falling-down exhausted, from trying to understand a sizeable codebase (861157 lines of code – yeah, I know, that’s small beans to some of you, but we have a small team), trying to understand the business process, and trying to understand the dynamics of team interaction.

This week has been better, although I’ve had a horrible head congestion thing that has rendered me almost deaf all week, which is extremely frustrating, and tends to cause me to retreat to email rather than just going to see people and resolving confusion in person.

I think I’ve finally gotten an understanding of how the code fits together, and how the database fits together, and while I certainly would have done it differently, it appears to be largely a matter of style, rather than one of substance. It’s good code, and it works – it’s not how I would have done it.

Anyways, last night I went home and was able to have coherent conversations and not fall into a coma right away. I consider this to be progress. Any day now, I’ll be able to contribute actual functional code, rather than just stylistic tinkering.

And, Paul, if I’ve learned anything from you (I hope I’ve learned a lot, but, you know, I had to choose just one thing) it’s the Positive Power of Donuts.