I don't know if its' just me, but in my experience interviews have been full of grandiose, over-the top promises of all the exciting things I'd be doing in this position.  Typically, once I'm in the job my experience in no way resembles what was described.  When I started at my current employer, it was practically a foregone conclusion that we'd be moving to a new database (a code freeze had been in place on production for quite some time, so there was not really any choice but to finish).  But as of this past week, the new job is 2 for 2.  That seemed worth writing about (at least as much as anything else I write about).

The next step in the grand plan, once we'd moved the existing app to SQL Server, was to start rewriting it in .net.  Over the past week we've actually started doing this.  Admittedly, we are starting with admin-type pages that are not all that complex (and more importantly not that heavily used) but it is a start.  Tomorrow, I might even get to spend a whole day doing ASP.net work (knock on wood).  Typically I'm called off whatever I'm working on for various emergencies, but I am hopeful about tomorrow.

This isn't going to be all that pretty.  We are stuck with .net 2 because the application runs on Windows Server 2000, and I GREATLY underestimated how painful it would be to go back after being spoiled by 3.5.  And we can't move to 2003 too soon, because of all the COM+ dependencies we need to test.  Finally its' not particularly fun to pick through the hodgepodge of (bad) VB6 code and XSLT to find the tiny bits of logic that actually make up the page.  Its not uncommon for the code in a page to go from over 1000 lines to a couple hundred (including markup) in the process, so needless to say there is a lot of fluff that's not too easy on the eyes.

All the pain involved aside, it feels really good to see the things my boss and colleague told me in the interview actually come true.  Since I spend enough time complaining about the various nuisances at work, I figure I should use this space to give them some props.  Now I just hope I don't get spoiled by having too many of these promises actually fulfilled