|
|
|
maybe I'm not an impostor
Wednesday, October 21 2020
At some point during my workday I had a conference with the guy who is supposed to be our infrastructure expert. He's been working for the company about a year, and the main thing I've known about him for this time is that he's a talker and that if you stuck in a conversation with him, it will be hard to get out of it. This was one of the reasons I didn't want Alex to move upstairs (back before the pandemic) because it would mean I would have to walk past this guy's desk more often, potentially getting stuck in that many more chit-chat vortices. Today, though, we actually got to work fairly quickly, with him doing a screen share, and me suggesting things for us to do. The task, in this case, was to replace a SSL certificate on a Windows web server running Node.js. It's important here to note that I'm considered the company's Linux expert, and I frequently denigrate my Windows knowledge (as well as Windows as a platform), acting as if I only deign to use it because we're a Microsoft shop. What struck me in today's interaction was how much more familiar I am with the Windows operating system than this guy, a supposed expert, is. For example, he didn't know that one can type "cmd" into an Explorer address bar to open up a command window in that directory. And he had apparently never added a path to a computer's environment variables. In all fairness, there are plenty of holes in my computer knowledge, and I might've just happened to stumble into a couple of his. But he also seemed alarmingly dense, with me having to tell him multiple times that we shouldn't alter the Node.js script in any way but should instead replace the old certificate with a new one with an identical name in the same location. I often suffer from impostor syndrome, feeling like perhaps I've been promoted beyond my talents. But this experience reassured me that I'm pretty damn good at what I do.
After my workday, I went down to the greenhouse to unwind. I found Diane the Cat already down there, hanging out on the couch. Evidently that's a place she goes all by herself, and that made me feel happy. Later when I was lonely, I called for her by name, and she came in through the greenhouse pet door. She and Oscar had been hanging out together on the greenhouse deck.
This evening Powerful made some potatoes and beans, the latter with a smoky flavor that made the whole house smell like hotdogs. It wasn't very good, but at least he'd finished another assignment for his online vegan cooking school.
[REDACTED]
For linking purposes this article's URL is:
http://asecular.com/blog.php?201021 feedback
previous | next |
