March 16

Spent the afternoon on training with a whiz-looking girl named Ana for my first deliverable--an application called M3 Adaptation Kit (MAK).

I know this is not interesting, but allow me to give just a teeny weeny corporate background about the company I work for. Otherwise I wouldn't know how to go on.

Basically, US-based Lawson Software started out in the 1970s as an ERP vendor specializing in S3 (staff, source, and serve) services. Eventually branching out to deliver enterprise software solutions to over 40 countries, it made a strategic move to expand last year by acquiring a Swedish-based company called Intentia, which specializes in M3 (make, move, and maintain) services. So Lawson is now sort of made up of two companies, and I'm the first member in the Information Development team to handle the Sweden-based projects. My long-term objective is to solidfy the M3 and S3 InfoDev standards and processes.

See, that wasn't so bad. Anyway, so Ana showed me how this MAK tool can customize other M3 applications through Eclipse. By "show" I meant she spent an hour explaining configuration stuff in Java--which, of course, was so technical that all the details just flew over my head. While my eyes were glazing over her computer screen I couldn't help wondering how bummed I'd be if I spent time in a place as lovely as Sweden (as she did) slaving away at the office instead of sniffing away at all the cheese.