With the July lease-term shipment ready to go, I’m able to focus all my attention on my other projects. I’ve been putting the finishing touches on my home computer security primer, authored in LaTeX, and I’ve also been using a software license tracking application to experiment further with Access database design. Two primary areas of interest: relational database design and interface design. I found my understanding of relational databases to be a little wanting, so I’ve done some reading. I like Access Database Design & Programming because it focuses on fundamental database design principles and then relates them to Access, rather than jumping straight into Access.
Billy treated me to lunch at the Broadway Cafe in Ashford. He knows that I plan to graduate after this semester and he’s been very proactive in helping me decide what I want to do after I graduate. We discussed what my goals are as I’m preparing to graduate, what I’m looking for in a company, and how Southern Company did or did not fit into that picture. After talking to various people and doing a lot of listening over the last few months, I’ve decided that I’m looking for a growing company with opportunities for me to continuously develop as an employee and as a professional. Southern’s conservative presence in the low-growth utility sector doesn’t exactly fit the bill, but I won’t rule them out when I’m starting off.
This morning we received another ticket to re-image a workstation down in one of the break rooms. It was one of our many PCs that have become afflicted with spyware in recent months. I’ve noticed that the workstations that are touched by the most hands—particularly security guard hands—tend to be most prone to collecting junk. I fielded some spyware questions while I was waiting for the “Home Run” image to load. Questions like these are exactly why I’ve been working on a basic system security primer to distribute with our next “IT Tips & Tricks.”
While waiting, I also learned perhaps more than I ever cared to know about hunting and fishing from a security guard on break. I was not previously aware of the “wanton waste” laws that apparently require hunters to retrieve and, presumably, use any game they kill. I had basically thought of hunting as killing for sport and little more. I do find it at least slightly reassuring that hunters have to actually use the game they kill.
Janet, our resident nuclear instructor and intern coordinator, gathered all the Farley interns together for an afternoon class. We discussed how the systems we worked with could affect the reliability of the plant (i.e. causing trips). Not surprisingly, IT systems were least probable to impact critical plant operations. IT’s criticality lies much more with plant communications (LAN, phones, pagers, plant data monitoring, etc.). After class, I inquired about how the plant is operated around planned maintenance procedures. Sometimes a unit must be taken offline and sometimes a unit is ramped down rather than taken offline for subsystem maintenance. I learned that some systems can be safely removed from service below specific power levels (e.g. Pump X could be removed from service at 60% power). Other systems cannot be removed from service without taking the unit offline. The goal in nuclear is for 100% output all the time—other forms of generation typically adjust output for load—so reliability is taken very seriously.
Kathleen King, the CFO of Southern Company Services, provided lunch for all the Corporate Services employees at Farley today. The food was disappointing, but the CFO made amends by sitting with me. I was told to expect a Jennifer Aniston look, but I was a little disappointed here as well. Kathleen shared some information about the forseeable impact of Sarbanes-Oxley on the business at Southern. I’ve heard the name popping up a lot recently, but I assumed it was an NRC initiative directed at the nuclear side. From what I gather now, SOX is ultimately a reaction to the question of corporate accounting in the wake of Enron. Every publicly-traded company should be affected.
