Working a new gig, and I'm having some trouble getting started.

I'm wondering what I'm doing at work. Not that I doubt my ability to do the work, but I doubt that they need me there. I was hastily added to the assignment, one of eight fellow consultants in the group, as another consultant dropped out at the last moment for some reason. The client accepted me as a replacement and all seemed good.

Upon arriving that first Monday (last week), I found that I, as the last man added, was to share a workspace with Dan, the second-to-last man added. No problem; I've shared before. The cubes, though, are six-by-ten foot; very small. No worries, still; we're both friendly and professional.

On day one, there was no computer in our shared space. That's a gross oversight for software development. We took advantage of the time to talk with the project manager, and to get to know the layout of the building and some of the other fellows. Our cube was assigned the task of cleaning some old ASP websites, and to convert the data access from a Microsoft Access database to use Microsoft SQL Server.

On day two, a PC was delivered. Just the one. Dan and I traded duties at the keyboards, paring for the day, watching over each other's work. Dan was the primary driver, but I got in periodically. We focused on one of the two sites, and practically finished it. The SQL Server schemas were not yet available, but we reviewed the SQL in the scripts and didn't find much to worry about.

On day three (last Wednesday) we traded the keys, and I drove on the other site. Dan had arrived earlier than I had, so he left before I did. Before I left for the long weekend, this site was likewise nearly finished.

Thanksgiving intervened, and the short week was a blessing.

This week, yesterday, still no PC for me, so we paired again. Again, Dan got there first, so he started on his site first. The SQL Server schemas were available, so we changed the ADO connection strings and tested the site, finding the one or two quirks with data types. Half way through the day, we worked on the other site, this time I drove. By the end of the day, both websites had been cleaned up and converted to use SQL Server.

The deadline for delivery is 1 January.

Today I arrived and found that a PC had been delivered for me. Well, technically, the PC arrived as I was departing yesterday, but it wasn't configured, so it was a little bit of a surprise.

That's the good news. The bad news, though, is that the cubicle only has one active network port. Additionally, I was not provided any connection information.

Tomorrow I plan to bring a little Ethernet switch, so we can both be live at once. The rest will fall into place after that...