On Monday I started my new job as a developer for KSU's OME, in particular working on Identity Management. It's been a week now, long enough to fill out the paperwork, set up my workspace and start reading documentation, but not long enough to really start coding.

The technical details: The IDM group has two major systems, KEAS and PDB. I haven't gotten through all the documentation, and I'll probably end up having to write some of it, but the purpose seems to be to augment LDAP with authorization, and to unify several systems with different identifiers (unique names). There's also a lot of web frontends to these systems, primarily based on the Spring framework, and some webservices like CAS. Also, the place is a big JavaEE shop, and familiarizing myself with all the damn acronyms and technologies and APIs is going to be a pain. The Director of OME sounded a bit like he wanted to diversify; especially since the KSU CS dept moved from Java to Python, there may be a strategic moves. Overall there seems to be a lot of inertia to overcome for any change, even ones as simple as moving from CVS to SVN requires rewriting the integration tools with a custom defect tracker.

I did have the opportunity to attend a meeting on the second day that was unusually tense. Seems a late project is going to be later, and none of the options are available. The writing on the wall says a lot of NIH era software is going to be replaced with open source stuff, which is nice. There's also not much automated testing, but I probably need to observe the QA team a bit before I could make an informed recommendation.

Finally, I found a place to live close to campus, in Founder's Hill. There was a bit of a ladybug problem but it seems to have cleared up now with the frost and a maintenance request to properly weather seal the patio door. The living room window overlooks a small pond, with frogs and fish and a flock of birds. They birds are quite noisy long past sunset, thanks to some artificial lighting.