Much to my surprise, my life is taking off again. Some of this I expected, but not as quickly as it has come to be; some of it I didn't expect at all.

The best thing to happen so far is that I am leaving the Windows NT world!!!!! (see previous post) And there was much rejoicing (yaaaaaay.) Yes, I have "crossed the great water" (as the I Ching so often puts it) and have become a DBA on Unix (AIX). That I was able to turn a "hobby" (i.e. hacking on Linux at home) into a career move is not surprising, or even that unusual. I suspect many of my compatriots have done the same thing (with or without the intermediate step of Windows). What's surprising to me is how quickly it's happened. I only just installed my first Linux box slightly over two years ago.

Now for the really fun and strange part. As I'm sure many readers of this (both of them!) will know, a DBA's wrk is not centered on coding. Sure, we can whip up a SQL stored procedure or even Perl script when necessary (as I have), but the job really isn't about coding. Production DBA work is more about keeping the system alive and nimble-- just like any other sysadmin. However, in my new role I will be less of a day-to-day production guy and be more involved with getting the thing running and playing nicely with the other machines. One of my first duties will be to help port Java stored procedures, so I'm teaching myself Java.

Prior to this, I had no knowledge of Java, nor an other OO language. BASIC, Perl, and a smattering of C were about all. what's particularly flattering is that my new boss knew this and still took me on because of my reputation of being able to hack things that I in no way understand and make them work. So now, the question I ask is:

Can I be an apprentice now? :-)