This week - Staging

In my last job I was introduced to terms that before that time were unfamiliar to me: staging server and production server. Colleagues talked about them with ease while I wondered which was which and what their purpose was. I knew they were where our new Web site project was stored electronically, but I couldn't remember the difference until one day when I was thinking about a musical and it clicked. Maybe everyone else knows this, but "staging" for the server where you put everything to check it out and make sure it works how you want it to, sort of like practice and dress rehearsals, and "production" for the server where the actual thing is running--it's the show, the real thing.

On every successful journey or hike or project there is some part of it that is staging and then some part is production. I have been in staging for my new career for a while and am about a week away from production. Because my new career also includes a lifestyle change for our whole family, this week has meant a lot of getting things ready for everyone--staging.

We registered the children on-line, visited the schools, talked to administrators and teachers, filled out more "paper-work", figured out how to drive there, found out which buses go and from where at what time, shopped for school supplies after finding where to get them. We found the grocery store and bought food, found the church building, figured out the shuttle, figured out the metro and how to purchase fares, and all kinds of other things.

We also did some fun things like visit Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial one day, visit Smithsonian Air and Space Museum another day and went swimming a couple of other days. I kind of put these in the same category since we are figuring out where to learn about what we can do and how to get there.

We're learning a lot about the area and ourselves in the process. Hopefully we'll work out any "bugs" before we launch (in stages) this week and next so things can run as smoothly as possible and we can take care of new issues as they arise after that. I'm sure I'll have more "staging" to come, but it's always a learning process and can be just as difficult as the actual "production."