Salutations and Welcome!
Let me know how you found me, where you're from, why you're here, a little about yourself, recommend a book, recommend a movie, tell me a secret, tell me something, ask me a question, etc. =)
Ad Astra,
The Bride of the First House.
bride (at) livejournal (dot) com
| weather | : |  | sunny |
| outside | : |  | 12.4°C |
| mood | : |  | ... |
The drowsy hum of bumble-bees in the summer heat grows louder and lower in pitch, until you realize it's actually stock cars on about the hundred fiftieth lap around, smelling like hot dogs and Sunoco 260GTX at the same time.
One blue and white one stands out in the herd of cars all moving together. Or, at least, it would be blue and white if it weren't for the patchwork of logos in a cacophony of colours all over it.
The driver is not alone. In fact, the driver is undergoing mitral valve repair surgery.
Mid-race.
Heart stopped and chest open.
By a team of surgeons, anesthesiologists, nurses and assistants of all sorts. Half of which are performing their duties via web-cam and robotic arms manipulated remotely.
That's about the closest analogy to my work right now. And it's not much of an exaggeration.
| weather | : |  | cloudy |
| outside | : | | 7.0°C |
| mood | : |  | ... |
Our system sends funds globally and I am looking for worthwhile, reputable charitable organizations to randomly wire donations to.
I don't guarantee a donation. I'm gathering a list that I can randomly pick from. This is my own initiative; I'm spending my own money. Work is not funding any of this.
Please comment and recommend some.
Let me know what their mission is and where they are in the world. Preferably, they'd have a website with information and complete bank account information available for me to just copy whenever I need it.
I'm a black belt at googling so I could find them myself, but I thought I'd ask here to see if there are any near and dear to you, particularly any that are smaller, lesser known but worthwhile causes that don't get the attention that they maybe deserve.
It would also be interesting to me to donate to charitable organizations in different countries around the world. I can send any currency as long as they have a bank account that will take it. If it has an ISO-4217 Currency Code, I can send it. =)
Thanks! =)
| weather | : |  | flurries |
| outside | : | | -2°C |
| mood | : | | ... |
Business isn't exactly booming, but it's steady... well, it's not even really steady, it's just sputtering fairly regularly now. I'm averaging almost 10 sales a month. *shrug* Better than some, not as great as some and not nearly as well as I had hoped. But it's still something. =}
This has been such a delightful time as Chief Cook and Bottle Washer of my own little hobby business. Sales aren’t through the roof or anything, certainly not enough to quit the day job over. =) I’m doing much better than many, but not as great as others.
My cell phone charms are selling decently well. Everyone that has bought one has loved it so far. All 100% feedback! YEAH! =D
I average 10 sales a month, which is decent progress. I even made my Stretch Goal of 40 sales by the end of January 2008.
My next goal is to have as many sales as items listed (I currently have 63 items listed for sale). 60 sales by February 2008 is probably too aggressive. 60 by March 2008 might be more realistic.
The latest intrigue in my shop is apples!!
Those were the cutest apple beads. I had promised myself that I wouldn’t buy any more beads until some of my first bunch sold. Yeah, that didn’t last long.
But I’m really glad I did. The cute apples drew in buyers and, in turn, they bought all sorts of other stuff.
I have more ideas up my sleeve. Look for them later this Spring and into the Summer! =D =D
Everyone has loved what they've bought, so far. I actually had several items come right down to a race condition. Multiple people had had the exact same item of mine in their shopping carts and they were trying to check out at the exact same time.
It's such a bittersweet thing; I'm falling down thrilled that people were "fighting over my stuff" as it were, but it's sad that I only had one and they couldn't both have it. And I realize that I have lost the customer because most of the time, people only really have their eye on one thing.
Anyway, all I could do was apologize and thank them for their interest. Onwards. =)
* * *
I'm laughing my ass off at Work everyday. There's just so much that's so funny. The people are great. Everyone's just INTO it. Yes, there are still idiosyncracies. No, it's not perfect. But it's a part of us.
Most of it, I realize are situational and you just had to be there — and be too tired, as we all are — to really get it. So, as much as I would love to share the great fun that Work is, there's not much point in it.
I have been schooling some of the Developers on proper grammar though. Some of them kept saying "me and Bob fixed a bug." ... "Me and Moe figured out how to ..." ... "Me and Larry have to work on the database thing..."
It was driving me bat-shit and I actually started schooling them on it. =) It's "Bob and I...", "Moe and I...", "Larry and I..."
When you're listing a group of people, as a matter of courtesy, always list yourself last.
To determine whether you should use "me" or "I", remove the "and", split it into two sentences to see which one sounds right.
"Bob fixed a bug."
"Me fixed a bug?" No. "_I_ fixed a bug."
So, together, it's "Bob and I fixed a bug."
During the Stand-Up, I heard "me and Larry... and I... are going to move on to the next User Story." There was a sideways glance at me. XD
They're starting to get it. =)
| weather | : |  | showers |
| outside | : | | 6.0°C |
| mood | : | | ... |
Most of them don't read your entire message. This is just the reality of our world and I've long since given up on any feelings I have on the matter. What's left is to structure my messages accordingly.
I write e-mail in layers.
If they don't read past the Subject line, what do I want them to know?
If they only read the first sentence, what do I want them to know?
If they only read the first paragraph, what do I want them to know?
And after the first paragraph, I go into detail. But at that point, it's actually a reference for myself. I'm prepared to have to say it or write it again in smaller chunks. I crack all the jokes about it that I can. Because, see, it is for my own health. =)
I'm always elated when, on the off chance, they do read carefully to the end. I've taken to embedding little funny turn of phrases or something funny, just as a Thank You to those who do. =)
| weather | : |  | cloudy |
| outside | : | | 9.0°C |
| mood | : |  | *teehee* |
I was at the liquor store last night while we were getting pumpkins for a quickfire pumpkin carving contest (more below if you want to read about that). The liquor store didn't have anything I liked, but they did have Hobgoblin Ale and the Monty Python Holy Grail in a special display in the middle of the floor. They only had these two, so I took one of each to try.
I tried the Hobgoblin Ale last night. I thought it was... confusing. I dunno... try it and talk to me. =)
Reading through the descriptions, I think I might like to try the Black Wych or the BeeWyched Honey'd Ale, but I didn't see any at the liquor store near home this afternoon.
I haven't tried the Monty Python one yet. I'm not banking on liking this one. From the description "plenty of fruity hops" tends not to be my cuppa... and that's not on the label, so I wouldn't have known when I got it.
Quickfire Pumpkin Carving Contest
So, Work has split the Vancouver office into teams of 5, we will be given a giant round pumpkin and some tools. And we're going to be told "Go!" =\
Ooo... chicken smells really good... (more below).
Friday was spent loosely discussing what the hell we were going to carve in between bug fixing and regression test cases.
We only have 1 hour between choosing the pumpkin and putting the candle in.
We briefly talked about doing the Autobot and Decepticon logos. They look easy and cool. Never having actually carved a pumpkin before in my life, if anyone wants to weigh in on this extremely uninformed opinion, please do. And quickly. =)
It would be cool if we could do both of them side-by-side, but realistically, I think we'll be too worn out by the time we finish the first one and we'll just leave it at that.
I've taken the two logos and fixed them up so that they're more suitable for pumpkin carving.
I've also passed them through the Ultimate Transformers Fanboy's Approval Process for Acceptable Alterations of The Logos™ (a.k.a. 
Husband Guy said "yeah, that's fine") =)
Here they are, in case anyone else wants to give me a Yay or a Nay:
 Autobots: Original |
 Autobots: For Pumpkin Carving |
 Decepticons: Original |
 Decepticons: For Pumpkin Carving |
The stuff in black is being cut out. I should maybe post a poll to get opinions...
Free Range Chicken
Co-Worker Girl of mine owns a small farm in Victoria, BC. I buy chicken miscarriages from her all the time =)
She sold me a 5½lbs free range chicken. We have no refrigerator or freezer space, so we're cooking it in the slow cooker on the 10 hour cooking timer. It has about two more hours to go... =)
It's the same recipe that ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
fazia gave me all those (4) years ago. Basically throw it in the slow cooker with all sorts of your favorite chicken-friendly vegetables and herbs... shove some up the chicken butt, rub some all over, including the wing pits, etc. I was in too much of a hurry to even print the e-mail out and properly go shopping for all the stuff or follow instructions. I had to just go for it and grab whatever I could remember.
But the apartment is smelling wonderfuller and wonderfuller by the minute now. I'm slightly afraid of what it will smell like tomorrow, but hey, live in the moment... and open all the windows =D
At least we'll have tons of food.
| weather | : | | cloudy |
| outside | : | | 12.4°C |
| mood | : |  | *ROFLMAO* |
Do what?
That.
What?
Apparently, at Work, I subconsciously wash the faucet handle of the ladies' room when I'm washing my hands. I don't even think about it anymore, I guess I just do it in public washrooms.
I know I started it a long time ago. Probably years ago when I first realized what people touched first on the way out of the toilet... you know, BEFORE they wash their hands. So, I've taken to washing my hands with soap and while I'm at it, I quickly rub down and rinse off the faucet handles.
* * *
This week has been crazy. We're T minus 5 business days to release date, which means Code Freeze by end-of-day Monday and any other fix needs to be triaged. Various people have been needing to talk to me about various things... all... bloody... week... My desk has been a really happening place in the office. At least once a day, there has been a small line-up. O_O
XD
Usually, I'm talking to one. At most, there's just one waiting. But at one point, I was talking to one and two or three were waiting. They were wandering and lounging on the chairs around my desk like a waiting room. XD
I finished the first and went on to the second. I tried to be as efficient as possible because I knew there were people waiting.
When that issue was finished, I was feeling a little frazzled and impatient. I was impatient with myself because I felt terrible about keeping people waiting. So, I shouted "NEXT!" rather sharply and ended up sounding like a cranky-ass government agency employee.
The whole office busted up laughing at me. =D =D =D
And out came all the jokes about getting me a number ticket dispenser with a "NOW SERVING" LED panel, a "Please line up here" sign (the ones that also have the Estimated Wait Time printed) and some poles and ropes to mark the line-up lanes.
| weather | : |  | clear |
| outside | : | | 15.4°C |
| mood | : |  | ... |
We have to know exactly where the borders are, what the implications are for compliance and international trade regulations.
Far from frustrated, I've been having the time of my life, digging and reading about the different regions, histories, currencies, conflicts, resolutions, turmoils and triumphs of the people involved. I do have to stay focussed on finding what the current situation is, what country codes are in effect and what business rules must apply, bringing incompatibilities and issues to our stakeholders with possible workarounds or getting permission to not support certain things...
It makes my head spin, but in that amusement park ride kind of way. And I'm being paid to have this much fun =D
The difficulty is that the software is based off of ISO Country Codes, but the business rules don't necessarily apply that way. All territories "belonging" to a country might be considered "the same country". That means we have to map multiple country codes to the same rules.
The island of Saint Martin has been split into two halves. Saint Martin (North half) belongs to the French and Sint Maarten (South half) belongs to the Dutch.
Saint Martin (pronounced "SAN mar-TAN") is a part of the French South Territories (French West Indies) under the ISO Country Code TF. People who live here would select "French South Territories" in the Country drop-down list and enter "Saint Martin" in the penultimate line in their address.
Sint Maarten is a part of the Netherlands Antilles (territories of the Netherlands in the same area) under the ISO Country Code AN. People who live here would select "Netherlands Antilles" in the Country drop-down list and enter "Saint Martin" in the penultimate line in their address.
Bonaire and Curaçao are also a part of the Netherlands Antilles. Technically, Aruba is also a part of this group of islands, but Aruba is an autonomous state and has its own country code.
I haven't been following the news on Kosovo lately, but unless the United Nations has recognized them as a sovereign state and ISO has issued them a country code, they are still under Serbia. There's not a lot we can do about this.
United States Minor Outlying Islands are all those islands strewn all over in the Pacific Ocean, like Howland Island, Baker Island, Kingman Reef, etc. The country code is "UM".
Guam, American Samoa, Turks and Caicos Islands, Puerto Rico, U.S. Virgin Islands, are all considered a part of the United States in various arrangements. Each of them have their own country codes.
There are other regions that are territories of other countries too. Christmas Island (Australia), British Virgin Islands (UK), etc. Protectorates, territories, autonomous dependencies, free association states... I'm getting better at remembering all the different ones and what kind of government arrangement they have.
There are also cases where different business rules apply to portions or regions of the same country and there's no way for the software to support that without some significant re-design work.
Cyprus is split between Greece and Turkey. *sigh* Greece and Turkey seem to have been at each others' throats, forever and ever, since the dawn of time. There is still only one country code for the two parts of the island of Cyprus, but they really need to differentiate them because the two portions operate completely separately.
American military posts in foreign territories are considered "States" within the country "United States" in terms of the mailing address.
- Armed Forces America (except U.S. and Canada)
- Armed Forces Europe (Europe, Middle East, Africa)
- Armed Forces Pacific
But because it is on foreign soil, the business rules for the target country have to apply. This makes it interesting because how the hell can we tell where "AE" is supposed to be? Europe? Middle East? or Africa? There are vastly different business rules for different countries in those regions. We might not be able to support this at all.
The Federated States of Micronesia is a fun one. They are considered a sovereign state and their ISO Country Code is FM. But they were (are?) a United Nations Trust Territory under US administration and, thus, are listed in the United States list of states (along with Washington, Oregon, California, etc.). We just have to make the stakeholders aware that this is a potential hole in their business rules.
And then there are the nitpicky things.
"Viet Nam" is not a misspelling. No, it is NOT "Vietnam", one word. It is spelled as two words. Always. No exceptions. Says the International Standards Organization and the United Nations. *BLOW RASPBERRY*
Laos is actually called Lao People's Democratic Republic. "Laos is missing in your country list"... uh, it kinda boggles me that they couldn't find it because my list was alphabetized... they couldn't find "Laos", but didn't see "Lao" either? O_o
I was also asked in a conference call the other day, why we have a country called "Other". It's there in case you're an astronaut and live on the International Space Station.
*cue laugh track*
| weather | : |  | sunny |
| outside | : | | 24.3°C |
| mood | : | | *LMAO* |
He also informed me that one of the glass panes was broken. So, instead of fixing the broken window, they walled it up.
BWAHAHAHA!! XD That's completely in line with our philosophy on bug fixing at Work. =D =D
| weather | : | | 19.5 |
| outside | : | | mainly clear°C |
| mood | : |  | ... |
The label on the box was three giant sentences and written in the most confusing way with made-up technical buzzwords that made no sense to anyone. Users didn't understand it and people didn't use the option correctly... which was why we were receiving complaints about performance.
I'm asked what the label should say. I wasn't even supposed to get involved. I was asked so that my opinion could be officially ignored. =D =D It's okay, it happens all the time. And therein, I get sucked into a whole vortex of e-mail threads debating what the label on the box should be.
It was just so ridiculously much attention heaped onto one little goddamned box that made me think of the One Child policy in China. =) When there's a kid in the family, there are a whole pile of adults all fawning over the kid. Two parents and two sets of grandparents, makes at least six adults to one child.
Except, it involved development, QA, tech writers, managers and folks from the business side. It was all eyes on the Princess Tickybox.
This tickybox is going to grow up to be a spoiled rotten, brat-assed, selfish prick supreme of all tickyboxes. You mark my words. XD =D =D
Some random thoughts on labels and tickyboxes:
There is a difference between negating a verb and a word that has a negative connotation. I agree that it's generally good practice to avoiding verb negation, but it is absurd to refuse to say exactly what you mean just because the word has a negative connotation.
For that matter, if using a negated verb makes for a more clear and concise message, then DO IT. Style Guide be DAMNED.
NEVER say "click here to do X" unless user is actually supposed to click on the word "here". And even then, it's clumsy wording and usually not necessary. It's also inaccurate. The user doesn't have to click on a check box. They can press TAB in the dialogue until the focus is on the box and press then the spacebar. No clicking involved.
Instead, I'd use "select" and "clear" for check box actions.
| weather | : |  | partly cloudy |
| outside | : | | 16.8°C |
| mood | : |  | ... |
I asked about it years ago and was given the contact person's name, but I've only recently worked up the courage to ask to enroll. I don't know why I was so afraid of being rejected. The regular "worst they can do is say no" kind of pep thinking wasn't helping. But they were happy to have me on board and I could really use first hand experience for real life scenarios.
I didn't say anything about the bank machine incident, just in case. XD
And Holy Mo! I knew we had some usability issues, but now that I have to do things for real, the wonky spots are jumping out at me like never before. It's a bit of a shift in feeling to use it for real and not just for testing purposes. I definitely have ideas on how to help the UI and supporting documentation.
There's one data field that is particularly insane. What the answer is, depends on where you are, what you're doing and where your bank account was born. It really isn't our fault that it's so bananas. It's the banking industry and their bajillion and one codes to route payments in different ways.
The net result is, the label on this data field won't match any vocabulary that your bank's customer service folks would be familiar with. It's this if you're in Canada, it's that if you're in the US, and it's the other thing if you're in Europe. *bzuh* That's confusion that we should try to alleviate.
We could do a better job explaining what we want in this field, what the data we're expecting looks like, how many digits, what format, what magic words to use when asking the bank, etc. The folks at one bank of mine took a guess based on as much as I knew to tell them. I'm not sure if it's entirely right. It's probably close enough, but I won't know until I ask. My other bank told me to "just give them a void cheque and they'll figure it out for you" =D
There are also silly things like a secondary window that only appears if there has been a modification to the main window. I found myself wanting to see the secondary window without making changes, so I wound up having to make a tiny non-modifying change and saving the form to bring it up.
This is not really an acceptable workaround because the Audit Trail will be a sea of stupid little flips and farts which obscures the consequential changes I've made.
I could go on, but I think everyone's dead from boredom now. =) *sigh* One day at a time. One change at a time.
| weather | : | | sunny |
| outside | : | | 24.5°C |
| mood | : | | ... |
I won the Totally Weird & Convoluted Bug Award at Work. Well, I win that all the time, but today's thing was particularly whacky. I saw a bizarre symptom of the problem that seemed to only happen to me and no one else. It took a whole day and a half to hunt down the exact conditions (very specific species of butterfly, very special sneeze).
I also crashed an ATM.
It ate my card, rebooted itself and barfed BIOS settings all over. Did you know that they're still running OS/2 Warp? =D
I've seen/heard about the ATM card scam. I'm fairly sure it wasn't that. No one tried to help me, ask for my PIN or anything shady like that. I always use the same machine at the same branch and the card slot didn't look odd or different to me.
I think I'll go back later this evening to see if it finished rebooting or what it's doing.
Anyway, I will be going to a bank branch tomorrow morning, but I wrote to the online banking support folks about the incident. I wanted to have a written record of things (branch, bank machine, date time stamp) so that I wouldn't be held responsible for usage of the card after it was eaten.
[Update - 2032h]
I went back out to check on the machine. It had finished booting up and was cycling through the "Please insert your card" screens. That worried me at first. I thought someone might have fished my card out. But I tried my credit card and it wouldn't accept it, so I think my card is still stuck inside.
I would have cancelled before I went through with that transaction because cash advances are loan sharking. I'd rather not have money than use my credit card for cash.
So, now the bank has security surveillance of me jabbing and then peering into the card slot. *sigh*
[Update - 2053h]
The Husband told me to change the PIN. Yeah, you need the card to change the PIN, Smart Guy™ XD
[Update - Friday, August 03, 2007 - 1328h]
I have a temporary card now... and cash for the weekend... and laughed at uproariously by cow-orkers for crashing a bank machine. S'all good. =)
| weather | : | | mainly sunny |
| outside | : | | 10.3°C |
| mood | : |  | contemplative |
I want to know that I'm hiring someone who enjoys their work and wants to do it well. There is really no point in hiring someone who doesn't like what they're doing, doesn't want to be at work and isn't going to be self-motivated to contribute.
I want someone who can see what needs to be done and takes initiative to fill in the gaps and holes where they exist in our process and organization. I want someone who can pitch in.
I want someone who demonstrates the understanding that they're not going to have everything handed to them on a silver platter. Yes, you're going to have to roll up your sleeves and dig for the answers yourself.
I need people who can do the leg work, isolate particular circumstances and occurrences, gather as much information as possible before asking questions. There ARE such things as stupid questions. I don't care what ANYONE says.
I want someone who knows how to measure quality and has in their head, timeless, proven strategies that can be adjusted to each project. The specifics of working in our environment should just be fine tuning. We're looking to incorporate fresh new ideas too.
I want someone who has a "Customer Service" philosophy about their work; someone who does what's right for the Customer. Not just do what's easy. Not just do what's convenient for us. But do and advocate doing what's right for the Customer. And by "Customer" I don't just mean the company's customers, I mean everyone you have to work with. Even if you're doing something for a co-worker, for that moment, for that task, they are "Your Customer".
I want someone who not only has learning spirit but teaching spirit, at any level of position. Not writing anything down and being the only person in the company who knows how to do something DOES NOTHING for your job security. You can still be tossed any time regardless of how much you know or do. And far from being revered, the people who have to pick up the pieces after you will hate you all that much more for not making it easier for them.
Know when to give the man a fish; know when to teach the man to fish.
I want someone who is actually interested in our company and our IT group. I've always felt that the candidate is interviewing the employer just as much as the employer is interviewing the candidate. And that's regardless of the job you're interviewing for. I want the interview to feel like it's going to be a successful business deal with between equal partners in a win-win situation.
Because I would expect any good employer to want that from me as well.
| weather | : | | partially sunny |
| outside | : | | 9.1°C |
| mood | : |  | ... |
Software user interface buttons should not contain more than one single word (two in extenuating circumstances) and, as a rule of thumb, it should be a verb unless it's an OK button. Make an exception if the situation warrants it, but be sure it actually is an exception.
Aside from being tidier, we have to translate the button text into French and Italian. French always takes up 1.5 to double the amount of space that English does... sometimes more. French words are longer and French grammar takes more words to cover the same thing. Italian is not quite as verbose, but it does tend to run a little longer than English in general.
An example of this is a button that says Save Bank Information which is technically inaccurate because it's actually the Bank Account Information which includes the Bank's Information. This ends up being Sauvegarder l'Information de Compte Bancaire in French and Salva l'Informazione di Conto Bancario in Italian.
There's just no way. XD
And for the nerdy linguaphiles (okay, just me):
The verb for button text should be in the present imperative second person singular form in English; infinitive form in French; and the present imperative, formal second person singular form in Italian. If you want to be ultra-formal, use the infinitive in Italian... but that tends to be very very impersonal as well.
Warning or error messages that ask the user to "please [do something]" should be in the present imperative, formal second person singular form in French ("veuillez [faire quelque chose]"), and the present imperative, formal second person singular form in Italian ("[faccia qualcosa]"). And the word please (s'il vous plait; per favore) is generally omitted because the sentiment is included in the formal form of the verb conjugation.
Status names in English, French and Italian should to be the past participle of a verb and should grammatically fit into the phrase "it has been ____".
| weather | : |  | mostly cloudy |
| outside | : |  | 1.8°C |
| mood | : |  | exhausted |
I fought with IIS6 today... I think I won. But I feel very wounded nonetheless.
We install our system with Windows shell scripts. I know we could have picked a real scripting language, but we were limited in choice to A) things that don't require installing anything extra and B) easily understood and modifiable by SysAdmin who, at Work, are all black belts in Windows shell scripting.
They're the ones actually using it, so that's what we're doing.
We need this because as the system scales out, there will be more and more different components to install.
An installation involves uninstalling and installing 5 services, backing up and upgrading 3 SQL Server 2003 databases, uninstalling and installing 4 web applications, one of which is a Web Service and one web app has three locales.
And, ... there ... will ... be ... more. One service and one web app is already waiting in the wings. And I'm quite positive there will be more services, more web apps, possibly more databases just because of the projected work coming up.
So, anyway, we need something to automate the installation.
We're also moving the entire suite from .NET 1.1 to .NET 2.0, so we're in that painful in-between time right now.
The web applications have to have their ASP.NET version set to 2.0 in IIS otherwise, nothing works. No big deal. %windir%\system32\aspnet_regiis.exe will do this for us.
My installation suddenly fails. That's REALLY not a good thing. I have an entire team of QA who are waiting for the morning build. I have to balance it between figuring out exactly what's wrong versus tweak it however I need to to get it going.
aspnet_regiis.exe takes "the path" of the application. Microsoft uses the backslash as the separator for paths. The VERY MOMENT I had gotten used to this, I'm hit with an "path not found" error and the thing barfed electrons all over my new pants.
- For example: Aspnet_regiis.exe -s W3SVC/1/ROOT/MyApp
FRAAAAAAAA!!! So, this is the ONE situation that Microsoft decides to use THE FORWARD SLASH for paths.
So, that's dandy. UNTIL. Until I have to try to hammer in the web site name passed into the script as an environment variable. That example only shows you how to register your app under the Default Web Site. QA does install to the Default and some environments install to Default, but not all. And SysAdmin names them different things; we won't really know what they can be or will be.
aspnet_regiis.exe takes, as a parameter, "the path". But this is the Metabase path where one of components is the ugly-ass nine-digit Instance ID of the web site name. It's not displayed anywhere in inetmgr... at least, I couldn't find it. I only knew because I ran iisweb /query and it listed all the local IIS web sites with their Instance IDs. Microsoft couldn't be sane or anything and let you just use the web site name. No, that would be no fun. *eye roll*
ASP.NET Support had released ASPNETMapping_norestart.vbs to scry the Instance ID from the name and do it all for you.
That's wonderful. EXCEPT. Except it hooped itself up badly enough that it took me a while to unhoop it. It works fine, but it can't exit. When it hangs like that, it keeps a handle on the folder. Which meant I couldn't delete the folder.
It took me a while to find that both wscript and cscript were still holding on to it. As soon as I killed the the wscript process, it was fine. If I killed the cscript first, nothing happens. I changed the default script host to CScript and it worked like a charm. Even though we're always running it as %windir%\system32\cscript ASPNETMapping_norestart.vbs ..., ASPNETMapping_norestart.vbs makes a call to aspnet_regiis.exe, which then uses the default script host. And in WScript mode, I'm betting it popped up a confirmation and was waiting for me to press "OK". Only I'd never see it because I'm running a remote script. Even if I logged in with Remote Desktop, the popup is not in my session so it wouldn't have appeared.
Now I'm torn.
I could just making the ASP.NET version set to 2.0 as a prerequisite for installation. This makes it SysAdmin's responsibility to do it. They're okay with that as long as we tell them ahead of time and document it... which I think I do a decent job at.
But, I feel like I'm so close to getting this done. I'd just have to set it in the script — %windir%\system32\cscript //H:CScript //Nologo //B. The danger in doing this though, is that it's a global setting for the machine and I don't want to blast it, in case they had other scripts that needed to be run with WScript.
I could even set it to CScript, then set it back to WScript afterwards. But there's no way to see what it was before changing it, so I can't be guaranteed that I would be putting it back to what they had. Ah well. I e-mailed the SysAdmin crew explaining it and leaving the decision up to them. I haven't heard back. I'm guessing I'll talk to someone about it on Monday.
Oh wait, I think I just found a way to do this. I'll have to try that on Monday.
Hmm... I don't think that will work either. Scrying for WScript needs human intervention =\
Oh, duh. I wonder if I could just explicitly make the aspnet_regiis.exe call a CScript call in the ASPNETMapping_norestart.vbs... Yeah, I'll try that on Monday.
| weather | : | | light snow |
| outside | : | | -0.4°C |
| mood | : | | tired |
I'm not sure if this will make a lot of sense to anyone else, but I wanted some sort of post mortem to look back on later.
I approach every new thing with a lot of caution. The easier you think something is, the more afraid you should be, especially if you've never done it before. It means that you don't even have enough knowledge, competence or cognitive ability to realize how badly you could flub it.
Caution doesn't mean I don't do it at all. Caution means I approach things with safety gear, training wheels or whatever I need that gives me as safe an environment as possible to screw up as much as I need to, to learn the skills. In this case, it meant getting early, regular and frequent feedback. If I'm messing something up, I want to know about it early so I can fix it or at the very very worst, give up and find someone to take over.
I have an awesome mentor with infinite patience, which really helps. I gave her my timeline with milestones built by counting backwards from the deadline. I've done this and more than once on previous projects, discovered that OMG I needed to START RIGHT NOW CHOP-CHOP GET-A-MOVE-ON NOT-A-MOMENT-TO-LOSE. This time though, it looked like I had ample time. I went full steam ahead right away anyway. An ample head start can evaporate like *snap* THAT.
I sent her stuff within a few days of starting and sent her regular drafts along the way.
It was like planning a wedding. I want to do everything early and get it out of the way, but things change along the way and I end up having to keep up with the changes. Like a plot twist involving a surprise feature change.
Several of them, in fact. They were good changes, we needed them done. One was scheduled for the next release. Somehow, in the branching and merging of the source tree, one feature wound up in the current project. You just don't have the heart to tell the guys to back out the changes. The others were done without going through proper process. They thought it would be a small, low risk change... that was before I went at it.
You would think that if something is fixed or work is done, that it's a good thing. But that's not always true. Because we didn't expect this change in there, QA now has to do full regression through that area because the risk of bugs is now much higher.
But in the end, we'll bust out everything to try to verify because it really needs to be there.
So, there's A LOT of pressure to put off writing until later, both in terms of being busy and not wanting to re-write the same thing multiple times... which drives me BANANAS. That's not the way I want to do things. Being late is, obviously, completely out of the question, but there's the realization that you can't finish early either. You'll be making updates as long as there are changes.
I came in right on time and then coasted on minor tweaks, which is the ideal scenario. =)
I'm still working as QA as well, so I also wonder if I'm not quite the best person to do the writing. There were a lot of things I missed in the document because I was that close to the project. I took features for granted in certain places. I knew I needed to get it out early and send it around for feedback, so at least there's a bit of time to add the stuff I missed.
Content-wise, I'm learning a lot about writing for a non-technical audience. I knew I would be, so it's just down to doing it. This document will be going to the Marketing department as a formal publication.
I have to follow a Manual of Style. It's a very very useful thing. But it's like a dictionary. You don't always know that you need it. The only way to use it effectively is to just keep at it. Proofread someone else's work. Have your work proofread by others. Ask for feedback.
It's more for terminology, not really for formatting. I'm following the exact same format of a previous document and I'm doing things exactly the way my mentor would. A lot of things I know how to do, but I don't use all the printing/publishing lingo.
I tend to be very verbose in writing, so I was worried that I would blabber on and on. Apparently, that wasn't a problem. So... *phew* =)
I'll probably take on a few more of these assignments over the next 6 months to work on weaknesses. My goal is that by June or July, possibly August of this year, my mentor will be letting me fly solo with these assignments, so she'll be able to concentrate fulltime on the other publications in our humongous backlog.
I also have a technical document to manage along with the other one. This one, I'm not quite as worried about. It's not as formal as the other one. How ever I'm comfortable explaining things in this doc, will be fine. And these guys can call me if I've garbled anything =)
This would also mark the very first time that SysAdmin got pre-release builds. They came back with a showstopper; a missing requirement. So, we had some re-work to do. But even considering that, they got a second pre-release build with their missing requirement fixed.
There are still bugs. It's not ready to be shown outside of IT, but it was installable. They can try installing it to get experience with the new components.
| weather | : |  | raining |
| outside | : | | 8.4°C |
| mood | : |  | amused |
Co-Worker-Girl-A was almost run over by an asshole who ran a stop sign. She was pushing her son in a stroller across a pedestrian controlled crosswalk at the time. They're both okay. She was just really freaked out. Her son doesn't seem to actually understand what just transpired... he was apparently giggling just after the incident =\
Not to make light of a serious situation, but what's happened has happened and this might help her feel better. There's an empowerment that you feel from "doing something about it" after the trauma of almost being killed.
I went out for lunch and stopped by a Canadian Tire. They have a few different types of air horns. One was a rechargeable one with the Red Cross emblem on it. You can pump it up again with a bicycle tire pump to reuse it.
I picked the SeaSense one because the 1.4oz can was teeny-tiny and way too adorable to pass up would easily fit into her pocket. =) We tried it carefully, just a little in the office... yeah, that was a bad idea... very very loud... >_<
I'd like to see it in action on a butthead driver. I'd like to see if it actually causes loss of bladder control. =)
Ah well.
We have a handbell in the office that we use for announcements or generally getting everyone's attention. It sounds like either a fire truck or a milk cart, depending on the time period and/or region we're in. Our IT Director Lady says she hates ringing it. So, we'll just give her the air horn as an alternative and maybe that will make the handbell sound like a better idea to her =D
I hate the handbell too, it makes me feel really self-conscious. But oddly enough, I'm actually okay with the idea of blasting the air horn. I might try to find an air horn that's not quite so loud. I know there are ones that are safe to use indoors...
We'll see... XD
| weather | : |  | partly cloudy |
| outside | : | | 6.0°C |
| mood | : |  | contemplative |
Why? Why a Tech Writer? What made you decide to take this step?
I've been getting this a lot lately. =) Some people say that it makes total sense that I would go and do something like that. A lot of people want to know why.
Mostly because I see the need.
We have an awesome off-site Tech Writer, but that's really not enough. We're trying to hire an on-site, full-time one right now. But we somehow keep getting the candidates that act like they're too good for us.
Maybe it's an employee's market right now for Tech Writers. Maybe we were just unlucky enough to get the assholes. Maybe it's something about the way the job postings are worded. I wasn't a part of that hiring process, so I really don't know. But I do know that there's an increasing pile of documentation, manuals and such that need to be done.
I see it as valuable experience.
I'd like to be able to empathize with the Technical Writing Group of the IT Team and gain insight as to what Tech Writers need from the rest of the team. Documentation is a very important part of the process, but it doesn't seem to have a lot of presence here.
It's a corner that I haven't poked in. I've had a job in almost every role on the IT/software development team. Technical Writing was just something that I've never tried.
I also enjoy writing.
I never thought I would actually like writing because highschool English was such a miserable experience for me. It's definitely not my passion and I know I'm not the least bit creative. I feel like saying that I enjoy writing on my own terms, but that's really not it either. I am able to write to specific requirements which is what I have always done at Work.
I'm not sure I can explain this.
I obviously do love to write English prose, on some level, evidenced by the last six years of keeping this journal and randomly gabbing. If I didn't love to write and didn't think I could do it, I wouldn't have asked to help Work out as a Tech Writer.
| weather | : |  | cloudy |
| outside | : | | 7.4°C |
| mood | : |  | eeevil |
Today, I went to work wearing a business outfit. A burgundy shirt under a suit jacket, A SKIRT... THAT MATCHES THE JACKET (OMGOMG!!!), pantyhose, heels (but sensible shoes). I haven't worn a skirt in at least a year and NEVER to Work. I did minimal makeup, but it's still a fairly big contrast to my regular days looking like a dead broom.
Now, about the only time IT folks dress like this is for job interviews.
*ominous chord*
My IT Director questioned me about it and I replied, "I have an interview."
You could just _hear_ the *schlyoop* sound of her face falling. =}
- "The company is in downtown as well... you might have heard of them... Work? They're looking for a Tech Writer in the Vancouver office."
Oh, I got her good. XD XD Well, I did offer her a hug afterwards. =)
I also got a few cow-orkers too =D I've always believed in working to the Hit-By-A-Bus Rule™. I try to leave as much documentation and instructions as possible for others in my group. I try to satisfy the question: If I suddenly disappear off the face of the planet tomorrow, what does my team need to continue without me?
I also believe in letting everyone gain breadth of knowledge. I like rotating people around to different tasks. It's a little more time consuming but it really pays off when we don't lose a lot of time when someone goes on vacation or suddenly has to take bereavement leave or whatever. I don't like companies that have people "specialize" in certain components only. I'm never very vocal about that, I've never had to be because Work is very sane and usually on the same page with me about it. This week, though, I've been saying a few things out loud.
In meetings, I've been saying things like "so, who can I give this thing to?" and "I'm going to pass this task off to So&so."
I had people going too =D
So, yes, until we hire a real Tech Writer, we can pretend and hobble along with yours truly. It's just something that I haven't tried before. I've done Tech Support, I've done Development, I've done QA. This is a new corner that I haven't poked in yet.
I don't even know if I qualify, I still might not get the job. I'm so far from an English Major, it's not even funny. I found qualifications and job postings online and some of them looked kinda scary. The Project Manager is humouring me with an interview (hence the attire), but that's all I know right now.
I'm also enrolling myself in Beginning Italian come January. Our manuals are translated into French and Italian by professional translators, but I'd like to learn some very basics so that I have some familiarity and small bits can go much faster.
I say, if we're going to hobble, let's hobble with class and panache.
| weather | : |  | rainshowers |
| outside | : | | 1.5°C |
| mood | : |  | ... |
People may think that a manager's job is telling people what to do, but a lot of people don't realize that it doesn't actually work that way. No. It's really the other way around. You lead by servicing your staff.
A good leader is one who knows that, in reality, YOU work for THEM.And whether you realize it or not, you get that. You clear roadblocks for people, you remove obstacles, you're there for them... AND you make it fun.
You really get it.
Loosely paraphrasing my IT Director at my recent performance evaluation.
O_O I didn't realize it. So... whoa.
| weather | : | | raining |
| outside | : | | 10.6°C |
| mood | : | | ... |
So, somehow, word got out at Work that I have nice handwriting... printing, or whatever. But, a co-worker asked me to write her son's name for the Take Your Child To Work Day participation certificate.
Oh, the PRESSURE they put on me. =)
No. She just wanted me to print the name, but personally, I'm of the old-fashioned mindset that names on certificates ought be done in English calligraphy script. So, how am I to do decent, passable — dare I think "nice"? — calligraphy without my pens and proper equipment? No, that's just the cover-up excuse. The REAL question is how the hell am I supposed to pull off decent calligraphy without having practiced in over 5 years?!?!
I cheat. That's how. =D
I typed the name up in MS Word. Changed the font to Zapf Chancery or regular Chancery. I don't remember if I bolded or italicized it... I wouldn't have had to. If there were a nicer font available, I would have used that (Old English or some other nice Chancery-like one would have looked fantastic). Even Times New Roman, bolded and italicized, would work in a pinch.
I printed it out and placed the certificate over it. I took a regular ballpoint pen and coloured in the lettering using small scrubby strokes done consistently at a 45° angle. This gave it a kind of artistic "washed-over", Impressionist look.
( Whole (+1) )
That's the Ukrainian spelling of "Vladymir". She was happy with it and, in the end, that's all that really matters. If I had enough practice, I could probably do the letters from memory without having the printout underneath. =)
( Detail (+3) - these are humongous and will very likely kill your layout. )
Oy, if I didn't have Parkinson's before, I'm well on my way now. =D
| weather | : |  | mainly sunny |
| outside | : | | 13.9°C |
| mood | : | | *LMAO* |
I was sick for three days starting Sunday with a bad cold and sinus fooferah of some sort.
I tried to get some stuff done for the wedding in between naps. I have all the names now. I have to go over in my head approximately how to explain the big items in the reception outline. I have yet to figure out a nice way to phrase the "regrets". There are family members that were not able to attend the wedding, so we wanted to mention who they are and that they send along their best wishes.
We ordered Chinese take-out for lunch in the office yesterday. We had visitors from the Accounting Dept. The food was a big hit. We used to always get Bread Garden sandwiches/wraps or pizza. Everyone loved the change.
The place we ordered the food from is just across the street from us. The 老闆娘 ("owner"; fem.) took our order. She speaks almost no English at all. It was almost faster for US to learn the Chinese on the fly. =) In a hurry, we just gave her my Chinese name for a contact =D It was fun to try to tell everyone in the office that 嘉嘉 (Jia-Jia) was me XD
We're looking at getting Thai, Indian, Lebanese and just more variety for future order-in office lunches.
Oh! Oh! I told a JOKE today and people actually laughed. Because that never happens =D I have to write it down: I missed my first team stand-up meeting today because I had other more pressing things to accomplish. I had to walk by the area that the group had congregated in, though. They kinda weakly hollered "stand-up meeting!" at me as I walked by.
And I hollered back: "Yeah, I'm standing you guys up." ... well, THEY laughed. XD
I had to sneak out to get RMB for my trip to China. I love that I get awesome rates through work. =)
I had to get a surprise bunch of balloons for the Birthday Lady and hold on to them until she left for the day to stick them in her office. Do you know how hard it is to be stealthy in the bushes with a bunch of happy-ass balloons waiting for someone to LEAVE ALREADY?!!? XD =D =D
I got cake and desserts for the office around mid-day today. Yeah, somewhere along the way, I became The Birthday Clown™. I don't exactly know how XD
I also had to go get the wedding gift for the Cousins-In-Law. We're chipping in for a big one, so it was huge and heavy. We got it at a serious discount from the price that was on their registry. SCORE!!
I didn't get a chance to get together with PH, the other MC, to go over the details for the reception. =P I'm starting to get nervous about this... no, I take that back. I'm finished starting. I'm full-on Nervous now. =O
| weather | : |  | raining |
| outside | : | | 11.5°C |
| mood | : |  | contemplative |
I'd always thought that was wrong. That's completely the wrong reason to keep a person. It's hugely unfair to the rest of the team. You lose good staff by keeping mediocre ones.
What kind of message are you sending to your staff? How much do you really appreciate them if you're testing the limits of their patience every day by forcing them work with someone who can only be trusted to carry out very simple tasks with very explicit step-by-step instructions and have everything handed to them on a silver platter? If you give the team someone who can't help lessen the workload, has to be babysat and handheld or, worse, cleaned up after, no amount of pats on the back or bonuses will ever make up for that.
And yet, when it comes time to let go of someone like that, I still have that momentary sick feeling. Mostly because the workload won't change and we're now down a person. But also because it was a human that was affected. It's a tough decision, it's stressful to the people who have to do it. I respect and admire the people who have to face it and do it.
| weather | : |  | mostly clear |
| outside | : | | 16.7°C |
| mood | : | | ... |
I was asked to provide some software training to one of our branches over at the Head Office. Someone gave me an envelope with some papers to take with me to deliver to someone else while I was there. She's been so busy that she forgot to leave me any instructions about it though, so I went to her office before I left and play-snarked at her "I gather you want me to tie this on my leg and fly it over?" =D =D
Another hilarious thing: when you get off the seaplane, you walk up to the street level, turn right and go down a little ways. On the corner of Government and Humboldt, there's a giant blue sign on the side of a building. It says:
And when you see that sign, that says "Work-Dot-Com Incorporated, THAT-A-WAY", you make absolutely certain that you go the OTHER way. XD XD XD
That's how we do security at Head Office. We can't hire security guards like any other normal company. No. Instead, we commission an expensive, official-looking company plaque, in the striking and distinctive company colours. We have it put up on the side of a large building in the middle of downtown Victoria. That's how we fool the baddies into going the wrong way and thus, be unable to find us.
=D I'm kidding. I know the sign is pointing people towards one of our retail branches, not Corporate Head Office. But I like my story better. =)
Anyway, training went really well. I found SUCH kindred spirits while I was over there. They're giving exactly the same feedback that we were logging as bugs. Their frustrations with the software were exactly the frustrations that we pointed out when it went through QA. We had a single point of contact from The Business™, but when we showed him one of the screens and he seemed fine with it, I instantly knew that he was the wrong person to be talking to. He was a bit too removed from the process; he wasn't the one that did the day-to-day stuff; he wasn't going to be the one to use the software we were building. What we needed was someone a little closer to the ground.
I went through an end-to-end scenario with them today, talking through variances along the way. They told me how they would do things as the scenarios came up and how things could be changed to help them. When I was looking at it, there were a lot of things that I thought weren't as efficient as they could have been, but couldn't really log them as usability issues, even, just because I didn't know how they operate and what their processes were. They liked some of the suggestions I had made on how to make the screens more usable and friendly.
They're also trying to separate the emotional aspect from the objective aspect of "change". They said that they weren't sure if some of it was just because it was a new system and they're still bumping around, trying to find their way. But from my time with them today, the culture and collective personality of this bunch doesn't strike me as one that is resistant to change. They were very appreciative and loved that I was there; they kept asking me questions; they were giving me their opinion about how they thought things ought to be; they were throwing different scenarios at me and what-if'ing me; they were telling me about their work and the roles involved...
Those are not the behaviours you would expect from people who don't want anything to do with the product. Those are behaviours of a group that are very enthusiastic about the new product. They want to use it, they want to work with it, they're jumping at the chance to work with IT to make it better.
At one point, they were saying that if we were to roll out with the software as it were now, there would be a 4 spreadsheet workaround for one particular thing. We laughed that that was a GREAT way to prioritize their issues. XD
We have a ways to go with this, but there's so much going for this product already. Granted, there are some larger features that would need to be done before they could really roll out, but some of the easy, trivial changes would really make a difference.
| weather | : |  | mostly cloudy |
| outside | : | | 17.0°C |
| mood | : | | exhausted |
I broke the build once by fixing someone else's fix. My stuff was right, but I had set my UltraEdit default to creating all my files as Unicode. I thought it was odd that TortoiseCVS detected my file as binary, but I changed it to Text/ASCII and checked it in. D'oh.
I didn't actually break the build the second time, but CruiseControl blamed me anyway(!!) XD For some bizarre reason, my changes got documented in the "changes since the last build" section, but the Developers' stuff that really broke the build wasn't there, so my name was attached to the broken build. Except there was really no way that an external utility script could break anything. Yes, CruiseControl has it's quirks. We had a good laugh at that one. =D
* * *
I'm eyeball deep in Bid, Ask, Spread, Points, Pips, Forwards, Value Dates, Markups, Margins, etc., etc. The Math™ is not hard. It's the Deciding What To Math Together™ that knocks me out most of the time. I got away with not actually learning it, but being able to accurately verify last time because the changes did not involve new results in the numbers. I could just compare with the previous release as a reference and any difference in the numbers was a bug. Dude, I was hired for my ability to hit the ground running, uh-kay? =)
But I can't do the legal cheating thing this time. I have to learn it FER RLS!! now because there's new stuff and a difference in calculations which will result in new numbers. But I'm starting to get it, I really am. It's amazing that I'm beginning to be ABLE to explain it to other people. I told the guys that they could ask me any stupid question, any number of times. If I can explain it then that means I understand it. And that's a really great great feeling.
From "get the numbers off the market feed" to "this is the price we give the Customer", the calculations can take 3-4 pages of writing... and I don't write very big. It's painful, but it's a good pain, like a good workout. As dorky as it sounds, I actually like doing it all by hand. But that's probably because I'm just learning it and the practice is making me feel more confident right now.
* * *
The latest release went out to Production last night. There was a bit of... an issue... It's not a huge deal. The release did happen successfully. The issue didn't escalate to anyone more senior than me. But it was kind of a big headdesk.
One of the system sub-components apparently contained changes that were supposed to have been backed out in the last release. We didn't see anything suspicious in the testing cycle of the last two releases. The new code just sat there doing nothing during the testing cycle, went out to Demo, then Production. It caused a problem because the release installation procedure was based on the assumption that nothing had changed. And obviously, it didn't work because things had changed.
I squarely take the blame for this one. When we were rejiggering the QA environment, I should have installed the same version of this sub-component that Production had. Instead, I must have taken the latest version at the time, assuming Development had backed out their changes. Hmm... the date and time stamp on the binaries shows it was done before I started doing any of the installs regularly, which explains why I have no recollection of doing that...
But I still take the blame for not seeing it. I just didn't. I'm usually more observant than that. *sigh*
At least, the risk of it doing something horrible was pretty low, afterall, the whole QA team had actually been testing with those changes for this long. But I couldn't be sure because sometimes, you don't see something if you're not specifically looking for it. I was worried sick about it, enough that I went in to Work this afternoon to run as many scenarios as I could think of, in the Feature List to make sure the code really didn't do anything weird.
Monday is a holiday in Canada and the United States. But it's NOT a holiday for most other countries... WHERE A LOT OF OUR OTHER BRANCHES ARE. So, if there were a problem on Monday, they'd be calling the 24 Hour Support folks. I was planning on calling the on-call person and leaving them an FYI about this so that they could at least have an answer ready.
I called the Boss to let her know and not to worry, I was on it. It turns out that she had a nagging feeling about it because of something she picked up from the e-mail about the successful Production release, so she was glad I called her. She ended up coming in to Work to help me. So, between the two of us, we pretty much did a full scrub of that sub-component and then some.
So, it was okay. She was satisfied that we didn't have to bother anyone else about it until Tuesday.
This sub-component is getting deprecated soon. And EVERYONE will be rejoicing at that. It's been the bane of our existence =P
| weather | : |  | mainly sunny |
| outside | : | | 18.9°C |
| mood | : | | gleeful |
As QA, I don't do a lot of what's called Pair Programming every day. Sometimes, I'll do some ad hoc pairing with either a Developer or another QA to share knowledge, troubleshoot or just to show them something or have them show me something. But there isn't the same expectation as Dev does to always pair with someone.
I'm telling you, it's like being lost on a roadtrip with My Husband.
My end of it goes like this:
Why don't you right-click instead?
Okay, go that way.
No, you missed it.
The other one... No, one more over... Scroll up... No, up... UP!! ... Yeah, that one.
It's not going to work, just go back and right-click.
Go back.
Go back.
Yes, it will.
DON'T ARGUE WITH ME, JUST GET ON THAT KEYBOARD AND MAKE IT HAPPEN!!!!
Do you get the feeling we're doing this paired development thing all wrong? And by "we", I mean "you"...
XD
| weather | : |  | sunny |
| outside | : | | 18.5°C |
| mood | : | | ... |
Acting Boss has become Actual Boss now, YAY! It's only the HR Itemology™ that's left to do and that's waiting for Acting Big Boss to come back from vacation next week. The down side of this, of course, is that The Boss is now constantly in meetings, which means there's only one other co-worker available for more in-depth questions and he's pretty swamped, himself. So, we have to deal with the circus that is outside the boardrooms. =}
We may have a new Actual Big Boss soon, but that takes more time and is a more involved process, I guess. I really hope Acting Big Boss takes it; I like him, I think he's cool.
We were pushing for an Pre-release Release for the Huge Partner so they could start training. You KNOW it's not a good sign when you have to use messed up terms like "Pre-release Release". They want to use our platform as a point of sale system. Our platform was never meant to be a POS system. That's been an assload of fun hacks. Amazingly, there haven't been many issues logged... which worries me.
But on Thursday night (which is their Friday morning because they're on the other side of the planet), they decided that next week was not an auspicious date to start. Our mad scramble was lifted due to the alignment of random cosmic occurrences as dictated by A Master™... um, w00t? They've put it off until the next auspicious date which is sometime in September. *snorf*
I've entitled the next release "The Triple Lutz, Triple Toe". =D There are three major features and three different focal areas within those three major features.
I'm a big fat nerd. I really am.
I felt really bad that I've gotten very little of my actual work done. Every day for the last few weeks, I feel like I've been buzzing around in a mad panic all day. But then at the end of the day, I've made very little progress on the test pass in the feature area I was supposed to do. I still logged bugs and did test cases, but not to the extent that I would expect of myself.
Then one day, I was determined to write down every last thing I did and clock it all. I took my scrap paper pad with me everywhere and made sure to write everything down. This actually took a few days and a few tries because it's just too easy to just DO THINGS and forget to write anything down.
At the end of the day, I had one 8.5x11 piece of paper jam packed with items and little notes sticking out of those items, going in every which direction. I didn't even have the time to turn the freaking page to write on the other side, I could only scribble up and down on any free real estate on the same side of the same page. And I could almost tell the exact time of the day I wrote something by how small my writing was XD
My mornings consist of building the source, installing the new build, sending out notification to the team. Then I'll have to individually tell people about some of the details because they didn't read. Worse yet is when they tell me the build is broken. Then I have to spend time helping them chase down crashers and why bizarre things are happening. And it turns out, they haven't installed their updates.
The winner was the one where the client application wasn't working at all. It turns out that the tester had blocked the outgoing traffic from his machine to the server.
Seriously. You have a client-server type of application. You launch the client and log in. A Windows Security pop-up window comes up to say that Such&Such Application is trying to send an outgoing packet. You're asked if you would like to block or unblock this client. WHAT WOULD YOU DO? I couldn't believe he clicked "Block" and then couldn't figure out why shit wasn't working. =D
I'm also helping the Developers chase down troubleshooting information regarding the bugs they've taken on. And at this stage, there's a lot of this going on. On the whole, I love working with these people though. Our Dev and QA are a wonderful crew, there's a lot of laughing and joking every day.
I am also my Boss' Backup Meeting Person™ for certain projects or project topics. I attend meetings that Boss can't go to because of scheduling conflicts. Then I have to send a summary of what happened, what they decided, what we're doing and anything else that's noteworthy.
And then there were a whole bunch of one-time things that I've done in the last few weeks.
For example: our bug tracking system is a home-made XAMPP-like style application. It's a web-Perl-MySQL-Apache thing on a Linux box. It's stable and we've been using it consistently for years with very little modification. It's far from perfect, we navigate around certain things, but it's there. There was one field that was implemented but never used. This week, we decided that that would be a good way to add another dimension to tracking issues of a certain nature.
I wound up slogging through Perl code for the first time in a loooong time. =) It was exhilarating to be in the vi editor again and following through the execution path to the database and back, and to and fro... I found the code that did what we wanted, went to the database, inserted the new record.
And watched it NOT WORK. XD
Slogslogslog some more... slogslogslogslog. I think I actually had a good idea of what the problem was for a while, but I kept at it because I so miss running around in UNIX/Linux and didn't want to finish just yet. =}
But I got that done. I also made some minor tweaks for usability, seeing as how I was in there already. I didn't want to change too much because even though the source code is backed up, but not checked in to any source repository. I wasn't allowed to touch this before, so it's not my setup. Making major changes would be like driving wrecklessly backwards in a Pinto with no seatbelt on. =\
ANYWAY. Now that I have a better idea of what's happening to my days and why I'm not actually getting testing done, I don't feel as guilty for having so much fun at Work. I'll probably be talking to the Boss soon about what I'm supposed to do and how I should prioritize things.
| weather | : |  | cloudy |
| outside | : | | 15.6°C |
| mood | : | | amused |
One aspect of this software development philosophy is that you have Early Customer Involvement™, namely a Product Champion™, who is someone from the company, who knows the workflows, business processes, business rules and in this person, you have An Authority And Contact Point™ on how your software needs to behave to meet the (small 'r') requirements of the (big 'B') Business.
This person is supposed to be very involved in the process. They're on hand to answer the questions of the IT Team. They're the communication bridge between Business and IT. They'll bring IT's questions to their team(s) if they aren't sure of the finer details.
Whether Agile Software Development really does make better software or not, I'm not entirely sure. But it does make for great hilarity to benchwarmers and people watching from the sidelines. By which, I mean me. XD
Product Champion: Here's the workflow for a Thingamabobber. Duis orci ante, eleifend vel, ultrices a, ornare a, pede. Fusce volutpat vulputate enim. Donec commodo ullamcorper enim. Curabitur vel sem vel eros bibendum rutrum. Curabitur ut magna. Etiam quis nisl. Suspendisse lectus arcu, cursus at, placerat Thingamabobber sit amet, faucibus varius, magna. Aliquam dapibus volutpat ante. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Thingamabobber duis imperdiet nonummy enim. Sed scelerisque. Integer at lectus.
...And if you have any questions, please let me know.
IT Team: Okay, so what if we run into this scenario: proin a leo at erat ornare congue. Vestibulum nibh. Aliquam eu nisi at libero egestas tincidunt. Curabitur facilisis augue in sem. Praesent justo. Vestibulum quis metus ac augue dapibus interdum. Vestibulum cursus. Praesent quis enim at velit fermentum fermentum. Duis iaculis eros et felis dictum porttitor. Curabitur imperdiet hendrerit est. Mauris bibendum venenatis elit?
Also, we need to think about fusce at diam sed luctus nonummy elit. In non turpis et lectus rutrum dictum. Quisque bibendum arcu ac velit? Nullam commodo leo ut pede aliquet feugiat. Quisque adipiscing. Proin vel dolor. Suspendisse potenti? Integra ligula felis, luctus sed, hendrerit quis, varius ac, sem. Sed bibendum. Donec lobortis, est id porttitor blandit, est mauris aliquam leo, vitae porttitor velit erat quis tellus. Phasellus tincidunt leo sed orci. Etiam est erat, bibendum sed, malystie et, faucibus in, lectus.
Then, would this also mean nunc faucibus augue vel neque? Fusce quis dui rhoncus tortor euismod molestie? Suspendisse nonummy sollicitudin lorem? Donec volutpat lobortis elit. Sed non leo sed mauris malesuada malesuada. Praesent sagittis, libero eget auctor congue, mi pede scelerisque nisl, nec lobortis quam lacus a nisl. Donec at lectus. Aenean id sapien? Suspendisse justo quam, condimentum ut, rutrum sit amet, faucibus vel, risus.
And what happens if nulla eget augue et donec lorem? Suspendisse potenti. Pellentesque eget neque sed sapien facilisis condimentum. Etiam tempus, turpis vitae adipiscing placerat, risus ante mollis dolor, non sollicitudin quam odio et est. Etiam purus. Nullam at ligula ut purus vestibulum pulvinar. Sed consequat ligula et mauris. Suspendisse fringilla convallis quam. Phasellus aliquet magna quis nisl. Phasellus faucibus ligula.
Product Champion: Yes. --- Sent from my Blackberry ---
IT Team: Can we please meet with you when you're in town?
*** Cut to Meeting/Conference Call *** *great leaps and bounds in understanding take place at the cost of many a brain cell, accompanied by the title theme of something stupidly cheesy, like Mission Impossible, looping continuously for 7 hours non-stop*
Business Analyst: What are you calling a "Thingamabobber"? You're not talking about an ACTUAL Thingamabobber, are you?
Product Champion: Uuuuhhh... no... [to IT Team] Can we change the name from "Thingamabobber" to something else?
IT Team: Moo.
| weather | : | | cloudy |
| outside | : | | 19°C |
| mood | : | | ... |
They just looked way too nifty to pass up. I picked one each of the Strawberry, Peach and Wild Berry for Jessica and Heather (two ladies at Work), both of whom smoke.
There was Vanilla, Rum, Cinnamon, Chocolate Mint and some other ones. I wanted to get the Chocolate one, but chocolate flavoured things can go both ways; they can be good, but they can also be really gross. I also imagine tobacco having a herbal-ish kind of taste... kinda like tea, so I thought fruits and berries would go well with it as a flavouring.
I KNOW I'M SUPPOSED TO BE ENCOURAGING THEM TO QUIT as opposed to making them smoke more, but these things sounded really cool.
See, this is the way I shop. I see cool/cute/nifty little things and I'll just buy one or two whether I need it or not. Then if I can't use it, I figure out who I can give it to. I don't do this as much anymore and it's smaller, less expensive stuff now. Ask the Husband, I used to be much worse. XD
Anyway, I don't smoke, myself, so I have no idea if these things are good or not. It's not like I could try it first. And I figured they've been smoking for so long that three extra sticks won't kill them.
Er... or would it?
I was curious as to the difference between a cigarette and a cigarillo, so I decided to look it up.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cigarillo:
"A cigarillo is a short, narrow cigar. Unlike cigarettes, however, cigarillos are wrapped not in paper but in whole-leaf tobacco. ... ... ... A cigarillo usually contains about 3 grams of tobacco (a cigarette contains less than 1 gram of tobacco [1]). Consequently, a cigarillo contains more nicotine than a cigarette."
Aaaagh... X{ *sigh* Yeah, here's me: I see "Strawberry Flavoured Such&Such" and I'm all over it. =\ I wrote to them giving them the heads-up and basically said, "um, so like, don't die, mkthxbye."
Heather's husband is into cigars, so she said she'll give them to him if she didn't like them =D
| weather | : |  | mainly sunny |
| outside | : | | 18.9°C |
| mood | : | | ... |
This trip didn't take me far, just to Victoria, BC. I went over by West Coast Air sea plane. It's about 35 minutes from Downtown Vancouver to Victoria Harbour and costs slightly less than the Helijet. Helijet is about $200 one way; sea plane is $150 one way. And West Coast Air does tour packages as well.
Their fleet is made up of deHavilland Twin Otter, Series 200 float planes. They're not built for comfort, they're built to get you from point A to point B. It's like sitting in a tiny, old public bus. But I prefer this over the ferry, any day.
Victoria is as beautiful in the summer as I remember it. All the lampposts have hanging baskets with flowers spilling out the sides in full bloom. Street corners have street names engraved in the pavement. It has all the details and trappings of a province's capitol. It almost feels wasteful. <bittersweet>Yes, this is where my tax dollars go.</bittersweet>
Promotion went quite smoothly. I was there at 1630h for a 1700h start and I was out of the office at 2245h. The hiccups were network issues. And unexpected hiccups are just par for the course.
Work put me in a Marriott hotel, but I still didn't sleep well Friday night. The hotel was very very nice and very comfy, but it just wasn't home. I think it's just that I'm getting older and more sensitive to things not feeling like home.
Anyway, one of their guys was in the office Saturday morning to do some post-promotion verification stuff. I called him to see how he was doing and to see if I needed to go in to help. He was doing just fine =) so that was good.
* *
Plans for today:
- bring farm fresh eggs and filter bags for loose tea over to my parents
- get my hair trimmed (something like this but slightly longer)
- get Nescafé Rich Blend instant coffee for my Mother-In-Law
| weather | : |  | mainly sunny |
| outside | : | | 13.5°C |
| mood | : | | giggly |
Then, one day, I felt that I should explain something on the chart (explain a drastic movement in the numbers). Then I made a snippy comment the next day and was inspired to say more fun stuff the next. It was my own entertainment, but I was cognizant to make it presentable to, say, Senior Management™, as well as to make it reflective of Work through my eyes and from the point of view of IT QA.
I did get a little nervous about the content when I found out from the Project Manager that People™ were actually reading it. I wasn't sure what I could/couldn't, should/shouldn't say. She seemed to like what I was writing so far. She said it was giving the projects life and personality =D So, I'm sure she'll let me know if I really were crossing a line somewhere.
Yesterday, The Big Boss asked me to send him stuff in text format because he couldn't see it online with his Blackberry. Today, I pasted it along with the notification I usually send out, including the blog part. We had a great time updating the Wiki page with the most HILARIOUS comments!! XD Not to the exclusion of Work, of course, but it was so much fun to see so many people participating.
Some sample entries:
"Now that we have a few weeks' worth of statistics, this will help IT Management make very important decisions regarding our Projects. Such as deciding what constellations in the night sky the bug charts look like... I'm thinking Chart C looks like Cassiopeia, BTW."
_/~ _/~
Ya take a block from the BOTTOM and ya put it on top;
Ya take a block from the MIDDLE and ya put it on top.
That's HOW you build the tower; you just don't stop.
You keep building that tower putting BLOCKS ON TOP.It TEETERS and it totters, but you don't give up;
It WEEBLES and it wobbles, but you build it on up.You take a block from the BOTTOM and you put it on top,
You take a block from the MIDDLE and you put it on top,
Till SOMEONE knocks it over, and that's when you stop,
But you can start all over putting BLOCKS ON TOP.
_/~ _/~
[This was a comment on the stability of our system... that's just the reality of the stage of development we were in. Everyone knew it; it wasn't a big deal and there was an accompanying explanation. But I thought I might as well turn it into blogging fodder. =D]
One of my best teachers was my Financial Accounting teacher from highschool, Tim Ireland. He had had a bad skiing accident and surgery had left him with one knee that couldn't bend, afterwards. He always walked with a limp and could not go downhill at all. He would have to turn around and inch his way down backwards.Once, some smart ass asked him, "so, how do you know where you're going?"
Mr. Ireland looked him straight in the eye and said, "at least I know where I've been."
KNOW WHERE WE HAVE BEEN: *showed humongous effort here*
The world has fallen into chaos. The once thriving civilization is now but a gaunt shell of its former existence. None worse has humanity ever seen, this side of the Second Industrial Revolution. The people grow dissatisfied with their stale bread and dirty water. Tired of being awoken in the dark of the night by the wails of their diseased and dispairing brethren-- ...*ahem* Okay, maybe it's not that bad. The bug stats are climbing just because we're waiting for a new successful build.
Any day now, I expect to get in trouble for having way too much fun with this thing... XD
I'm rather in love with that last entry =) I was asked if this was a quote from somewhere by one person and another person said it sounded like Dickens. HAHAHA! DICKENS!! No, Sir. I was just A) really inspired by the bug chart today; B) have an intense desire to poke fun at the authors who caused me so much misery in English Lit. in school; and C) just so happen to have the arena in which to do it. XD
| weather | : |  | cloudy |
| outside | : | | 5.1°C |
| mood | : |  | content |
I remember there was a little bit of a commotion as he and his Exec. Assistant Lady scrambled to find a nearby florist where he could quickly grab something on the way home.
He's still alive, so I guess it was all good. =D
So, this year, on my first Ass-Not-Fired-Yet Anniversary at Work, I e-mailed him to thank him for a great year and to remind him that HIS wedding anniversary is coming up very soon. XD I know he's been married for twenty some odd years, so I thought I'd give him the heads-up just in case this was one of the big ones. =} He told me this year wasn't a big one, but he appreciated the thought nonetheless.
Yay me! Yay Big Boss! XD
On the subject of anniversaries, there seem to be a metric butt tonne of them around this time.
February 08 was the 5th anniversary of the creation of my LiveJournal. I've been spewing nonsense here for over 5 years.
March 16 was 
March 20. Today... well, this morning at 10:26am Pacific, was the beginning of the Vernal Equinox. Yay, daylight.
And coming up:
May 22, Victoria Day long weekend, will mark two years since 
And of course, July 7, but that's a little further out, yet.
| weather | : | | cloudy/cold |
| outside | : | | 4.4°C |
| mood | : |  | amused |
"I cover my food before I put it in the microwave... only because I don't want the bits of gunk falling INTO my bowl..."
I have the cutest co-workers. XD =D
*sigh* There are entire third world countries with less food right now than the splatter on the inside of our microwave at Work. It's scary, really.
| weather | : | | sunny |
| outside | : | | -0.8°C |
| mood | : | | ... |
I also brought a box of London Fruit & Herb Company assorted teas to Work. I love their teas. I've also gotten everyone addicted to the Rooibos tea that I brought back from South Africa. They keep asking now... =) My Mother-in-Law found some at Superstore so we'll try some and see if it's any good.
The Executive Assistant Lady is also intermittently not in the office because her back is all whacky-dooky from her car accident. It's even too whacky-dooky to do physio just yet. It's hilarious that we're so lost without her. They had some guests in the office for meetings all day and wanted to order pizza for lunch.
I ordered pizza for them from Panago. XD
The most hilarious thing is that the call-takers knew who I was. "Is this Work-dot-com down the street? On the 5th floor?" BWAHAHAHA!! =D =D
I told them how many people we had and we figured out how many larges we would need. Out of the total number of pizzas, I picked vegetarian ones for ¼ of them, chicken ones for ¼ of them and random assorted meat for the rest.
If I had time, I would have ordered from Bella Pizza. I like Bella much much better. But they open at 11:00am. With only an hour's notice, I wasn't sure if they could do 15 assorted larges in time. =P I should give them a call and see what their lead time is.
NotWork is so much more fun... sometimes I wish I could do NotWork all day instead. Sometimes. XD
| weather | : | | light rain |
| outside | : | | 6.1°C |
| mood | : | | ... |
I don't spit on them or kick them as I walk by, but I won't use them and I will speak ill of them when my opinion is asked (or not asked as the case may be). But today, in an amazing feat of Schindlerian proportions, I fixed the one at Work.
I don't actually know if it's really fixed, but we turned it on, let it do a small run for a few minutes and we didn't get a lake in the kitchen. The true test will be when the thing is full and we actually put detergent in it for a full run.
A few days ago, someone noticed a little lake forming in our kitchen coming from the dishwasher. They put a little tupperware tub at one corner to catch all the water. And, of course, as soon as that happened, no one knew what to do with their coffee cups and lunch plates anymore. It all got piled into the sink.
The sink started bothering me. And I was curious. Knowing that the symptoms started in that corner where the little tub was, I opened the door and I peeked. There's a tubie thing that runs from the door to the machine and up the frame... probably for the detergent. This tubie thing looked All Wrong And Weird™ to me. There was a bit of it that was blorping out and the door closed itself on a portion of it.
I stuffed it back in with my fingers. And made sure the door closed properly.
We'll see what happens when we try to do a load next week.
| weather | : |  | cloudy |
| outside | : | | 6.8°C |
| mood | : |  | ... |
New release went live last Friday, so Monday morning was full of questions from Production. Many of them were not bugs but phrased as bugs, so I still had to investigate and write up responses. Same ol' same ol' on Tuesday.
One co-worker called in sick.
I had to go get cake for The Big Boss at noon yesterday. I was in cahoots with his Executive Assistant Lady to get him cake for his birthday. The most cost effective option was to get three small cakes, so I had "Happy Birthday (en-US)", "Bonne Fête (fr-CA)" and "Buon Compleanno (it-IT)" written on each. Complete with locale codes just because I'm, like, The Localization Girl™ =D
I had a meeting with The Big Boss right after that to discuss the essay for one of those "Best Of" contests to nominate his Executive Assistant. Yeah, I'm a Double Agent. XD
I wrote it and sent it to him over the weekend, but he didn't use much of it. His Exec. Assistant Lady does a lot of Office Manager stuff for us as well as Executively Assisting the Big Boss too. When I read his essay, it was worrisome that the description was more for an Office Manager instead of an Executive Assistant. I pointed out that it sounded a bit like a labour code violation... or at least it's not very nice of us.
He pauses, turns his head to the side and says, "I hadn't thought of that..." I felt good about that, and I don't mean in a schadenfreude kind of way. I felt good to have thought of something important, being able to contribute and help make the result better.
He ended up using the bulk of mine and changing bits of that instead. And we beat it up for grammar, etc. The hardest thing was pounding it into 150 words. It's REALLY HARD to be outstanding in 150 words.
| weather | : |  | rainy |
| outside | : | | 4.8°C |
| mood | : | | ... |
There was a significant undertaking in one part of the system. This should make the software work better, go faster and smell nicer. They drove the last spike Friday afternoon. The guys worked really hard on it and that was cause for celebration, with alcoholic beverages even.
I love working in the different locales of our system. I work almost exclusively in Italian. I mostly go by muscle memory, but I'm actually starting to be able to read what we have. Italian is very comfortable to me even though I don't understand bloody.
There are some really cool internationalization issues that come up. Internationalization causes much more and different issues than you could ever imagine. It's not just a surface thing. Supporting the ability to have the exact same thing in different languages in software goes very very deep.
One icky bug came up in Production and it turned out to be an exporting thing that was slightly off, but only if it came from Italian. They thought it was the Euro currency that was causing the problem; they thought it was certain people; etc. But it turns out that it was the Italian locale causing a problem.
Dude says, "the localizations should only be affecting the UI". Well, exporting IS an interface...
But I loved that bug even though it was completely my fault for overlooking it. I'm the only one that works in anything other than English, so it would fall to me. *sigh* I was trying to make sure the money bits were correct... That's my story and I'm sticking to it.
<_< >_>
We were herded into the big board room to watch the President/CEO's Quarterly "State of the Union" Address that was pre-filmed. He used to visit all the different locations in person, but the company is all sprawlie and big now so he just plain can't do that anymore.
I'm not sure what I can and can't repeat, so I just won't say anything specific at all. But there were some things I noticed.
His desk is awfully clean. XD
He needs a continuity person during filming. =) There were cuts back and forth between angles. Between cuts, his monitor in the background was off, then it flipped on and went off again.
There was a big black mug that was on his desk just to his left that was visible at certain angles of the second camera. This mug danced around every time it went back to that one angle and finally hopped off the table altogether near the end.
Yes, I was one of those crazy kids who watched Star Trek episodes frame by frame and got into lengthy discussions about continuity snafus like that on rec.arts.startrek.misc.
At least his shirt was the same colour throughout, his tie was on the whole time and his accent was consistent from scene to scene... which is more than we can say for Kevin Costner, for example.
| weather | : | | partly cloudy |
| outside | : | | 4.1°C |
| mood | : | | giggly |
Backing up slightly: while in Taiwan, I had my hair partially permed. My Mother-in-Law's hairdresser, Nicole, gave me really cute curls on the bottom half of my hair when she styled it because she thought I was 16 (BWAHAHAHA!! XD). I liked it, so I got it permed the same way so I wouldn't have to mess with a curling iron. In the dry Canadian winter, curly becomes frizzy unless you specifically fix it. So, in the spirit of Not Caring™, I must look like a dead broom most days at Work.
I thought since this was my first Christmas Party at a new company, I'd make the effort to clean up a bit.
Boy, do I ever clean up well. I clean up SO well that people seriously didn't recognize me. It was the funniest thing. =)
At first, I couldn't quite understand why people were ignoring me. Someone I worked fairly closely with, took a few minutes to realize who I was. I'm in and around the same office, but if I didn't work with them much, they took even longer to recognize me, if at all.
Once it dawned on me that others might not have recognized me at all, it became funny. I felt like I actually had to say who I was and what my job was. "Yeah, I sit in the corner... right behind you. I _work_ with you." XD XD
My own boss didn't talk to me for half the night. I'm really not exaggerating. XD
| weather | : | | rain |
| outside | : | | 8.6°C |
| mood | : |  | satisfied |
Work got me a humongous sheet of mocha cake on Friday. Thank you, Work! =) Everyone gets cake for their birthday. The most hilarious thing at Work is that the Birthday Person has to cut and serve the cake =D I think that "tradition" started because the Birthday Person usually makes the first cut, then hands it over to someone else who finishes the job. But someone went full-steam ahead with it and the rest of us were not going to argue with a person wielding a big knife.
Anyway, someone mentions candles and I gave the standard, "that would be a fire hazard because I'd have too many candles". And I'm within earshot of a jab about "these twenty-somethings always make it a big deal". =)
They think I'm twenty-something. HAHA! I haven't been a twenty-something in a looooong time XD
I didn't do too badly at cutting cake even though I hadn't done it too many times before Friday. I'm not really a cake person, but I discovered I'm a real cake cutting snob. =D Because I'm sure you people want to hear about my neuroses:
On the rectangular sheet cake, I cut down the middle, then split each half into quarters, then each quarter into twelfths. And I did the same in the other dimension. I have an unfounded neurotic need for every single piece to be perfectly the same size.
On a round cake, I'm even worse. =) I abhor long skinny wedges. Assuming a 9" round, I'll cut a circle in the middle of the cake (half radius or a little less than half radius works best). Then cut the outer ring into 8 pieces and the inner circle into quarters for 12 nice evenly proportioned chunks.
But. Birthday. Me. Yes.
It was a four-day social gauntlet. >K}
The Mother-in-Law Woman brought us and the Brother-in-Law out Thursday night because the Brother-in-Law was going to be out of town this weekend. I got cake from Work on Friday. My parents took me out for lunch Saturday. And Husband Guy and I went out tonight.
He and I were joking earlier this week that because we went to the most expensive restaurant on the planet last year, we have to watch our budget and balance it out. This year, I get a small cup of fries. Bought with a coupon. For dessert, he's taking me to Baskin-Robbins at the mall for a free taster spoon. I get to pick the flavour (how magnanimous is that?). XD
Just kidding. I got an e-mail invite from OpenTable.com saying that I would be "picked up at 7:15pm" by toturi. ... Haha, yeah, he's going to toddle upstairs and yell at me to get going =D
We went to West. It used to be spelled "Ouest", pronounced "West". But people kept either thinking it was "Quest" or because of the name, they expected French cuisine, which, if you look at their menu, is only slightly French inspired. They Anglicized the spelling three years ago because the French caused way too much stress. I understand the decision, but I thought "Ouest" was more interesting... "West" is all normal and boring. =P
The Husband started with a nice cheesy pumpkin soup and I, a fantastic artichoke heart stuffed with foie gras. He got the baked Queen Charlotte halibut. It had really great butternut squash in it! I saw rabbit on the menu and I had to try it. It was very very good — sort of like a chicken-flavoured ham — with a pine nut risotto on the side. And we shared the fully loaded, severely stacked pumpkin tart.
| weather | : | | sunny |
| outside | : |  | 18.6°C |
| mood | : | | okay |
Husband Guy's office.
This morning started off with a fire drill. I guess it was to be expected. The alarms were tested several times in the last few months. We're also adjacent to one of the building management suites that they use for training and seminars. We got a earful that day they had a building emergency procedures seminar. Some of it was quite amusing. Some of it was pretty harrowing, like the terrorist simulation.
We're on the 8th floor of a 20 story building. Instead of the traditional red fire alarm bell, they have a blinging intercom signal.
"What's that?" we ask each other.
"It's a warning... it, like, _warns_ you."
It warns you... and THEN the fire starts. XD
The Concierge Lady speaks over the building-wide intercom: "Attention please, attention please. We are investigating a fire in the building. Please stand by for further instructions."
We're still cracking jokes at this point. "Screw the fire, I'm busy."
"Okay, that blinging is bordering on annoying." Right on cue, the signal blings faster and angrier.
"Thanks a lot, man. Now you've offended the blinger." XD XD
Concierge Lady: "Attention please, attention please. We are evacuating the building immediately. I repeat, we are evacuating the building immediately. Please follow the instructions of your floor warden."
We follow the floor warden lady in the sexy construction orange vest with the yellow X-shaped reflector strips and a red hard hat that she wouldn't wear, but just waved in the air above her so that we could see her.
We went down 8 flights of stairs. Our route must have taken us near one of the boiler rooms because we joked that "um... it's getting _warmer_ in here..." Yeah, it's the old addage: in case of fire, head to the centre of the earth.
Anyone who hates fire drills and always stays at their desk for these stupid things, I have to tell you:
The Fire Marshall can go through the building and for each person that is still sitting at their desk, ignoring the drill, their company can be fined x number of dollars. It's a good idea to participate, no matter how busy you are and no matter how much "x number of dollars" is.
Go outside, get some fresh air and take a breather. It'll be good for you. Seriously.
Remember to save your work though.
| weather | : | | clear |
| outside | : | | 18.3°C |
| mood | : | | amused |
V'la l'bon vent, v'la l'joli vent
V'la l'bon vent m'amie m'appelle
V'la l'bon vent, v'la l'joli vent
V'la l'bon vent m'amie m'attend*
"Portage", she says. *guffaw* Yeah, I "portage" my few pieces of paper and my jacket maybe. Anyhoo, that's the fun that is moving offices.
We've become a carbon dioxide hazard in the office we're occupying now — 23 people, plus some roving folks, packed into just under 1000 sq.ft. So, Work is moving to a "bigger" office. I say "bigger" in quotes because the new space seems to be just as crowded as we are now, at least for the QA group. We'll have to see when we get in there next Monday.
We were picking out our new spaces for the new desk/seating arrangements. Someone had the brilliant idea of cutting out little 'L' shaped pieces of paper for everyone's desks. It was all done to scale, so we could see exactly how the furniture would go. We spent a lot of time trying to fit all our desks in optimum locations and orientations. And it started to look like we were not that much better off in the new space.
After a while, prospects were looking grim that we'd actually have a configuration that we all liked. So, we started getting all silly about it and arranged the desks in the stupidest ways possible. Co-worker, C, and I decided that we'd put our two desks together and form a little corral. Then we realized we'd have to jump over our desks to get in and out... but hey, it was cool for two minutes.
Then we started playing Tetris with the furniture, stacking them all together with the short and long, non-L table pieces, trying not to leave holes.
Today, the final master floor plan diagram got posted up on the wall and everyone had to gawk. Someone noticed they didn't have an L-shaped desk anymore, just a regular table.
I could not resist: "I'm sorry, man. I was playing Tetris with the desks yesterday and part of yours disappeared... but, boy, did I get a buttload of points for it! It was great, you shoulda seen it!"
Yeah, go me! =) Clear the level, get the high score, but now we all have to sit on the floor.
In other Work stuff, I saw this slogan in a company media kit brochure thing:
"TOTAL WORLD DOMINATION. Did we just say that out loud?"
That would have been much funnier.
* V'La L'Bon Vent is a 300 year old song that, as near as I can figure, is like She'll Be Coming 'Round the Mountain When She Comes with a chorus and umpteen billion versus to it. The French-Canadian voyageurs used to sing it as they paddled around in their canoes to keep their stroke time and keep their minds occupied while they paddled up to 16 hours a day.
| weather | : | | partly cloudy |
| outside | : | | 14.0°C |
| mood | : | | cheerful |
* * *
I was helping my Mother-In-Law in the yard today in the early evening. Since she's been in Taiwan running the café with her sisters, our yard has become a sty. Weeds and random alien flora species were eating everything up. It wasn't quite as bad as "mow your lawn and find a car", but... it was pretty bad. =}
I learned very quickly that I should ask her before I pulled up anything. I can't tell the difference between weeds and purposely planted things.
"The good looking ones are the plants, the ugly ones are the weeds" she tells me.
Um. They all look the same to me. They're all green, leafy, have thorns, flowers and berries and stuff on them. So, I was relegated to snipping everything she pulled up into small pieces and putting them into garbage bags.
In about an hour or two, we collected up about four full bags for the yard trimmings collection folks. It looks awfully empty along the back fence now. I thought it looked better before we went at it — all wild and verdant. But I think she would have clod-beaten me with the broom if I said it out loud =D =D
We're talking while we're working. Well, she talks. I just listen, nod, laugh, etc. She likes to talk. I like listening because she has funny stories about the family in Taiwan. Then all of a sudden, she looked up and quipped at me, "Did you see that I straightened up the flowerpots by the steps?"
I think about it for a second and reply, "I walk by the steps every day without paying any attention to the flowerpots, so I can't tell anyway."
Her face drops and she says, "I'm going to beat you up." =D =D
The other night, we made 粽子 (zòng zi) for the 端午節 (Duan Wu) festival. She did most of them, but I helped wrap about a third of them. In the evening, she announces that she's not going to do the dishes that night. She meant that one of us should do the dishes. I said, "oh sure, you can do the dishes tomorrow morning..." She was going to smack me, but I quickly rolled up my sleeves and started towards the sink, so she stood down =) =) =)
That's the kind of relationship we have. XD
| weather | : | | sunny |
| outside | : | | 10.4°C |
| mood | : |  | elated |
We had a fire in the live, production environment and it was a SHOWSTOPPER FROM HELL. Big Customer™ was broken. And, of course, we couldn't repro the problem in any of our environments. Not Dev, not QA Test, not Pilot Test. It only happens in Production. Ooooooof CCCOOOUUURRRSSSEEE. XD
Over in the QA Test environment, the Windoes apps are not installing right which is a huge showstopper as well. It hoops up the registry... and we all know that Windoes registry issues are Loads'o Fun™. To find and to fix. =\
And the Universe is collapsing in on us. Okay, only one data thingie is disappearing slowly in a really bizarre way. It was prompting all kinds of wise-cracks about ST:TNG "Remember Me" when that warp bubble was closing in on Beverley Crusher making people around her disappear one by one. It's also kinda like that Stephen King story about something eating up the Universe. It really did that too! It would slowly shrink and shrink and shrink until it turned into nothing.
There's something very satisfying about hitting the "Submit" button on the bug report of a Red Alert like that, walk over to the Developer's desk and from a little ways away, seeing them already frowning in intense concentration at your bug. XD XD
Considering I had a stressy, intense evening and I couldn't fall asleep until well after 4am, this was one of the best Mondays I've ever had.
| weather | : |  | cloudy |
| outside | : | | 10.9°C |
| mood | : | | amused |
| music | : | 鍾愛一生 - 杜德偉 | |
It makes sense, in a way. In general, most of us are attracted to others who look more similar to our own likeness than average. This is part of the reason why people are generally attracted to partners of their own race. And we're attracted to partners who are of the same (or similar) level of attractiveness as ourselves.
This piece of brain lint was brought to you by Work.
Every once in a while, in the CCs of company e-mail, there appeared a female name that had the same surname as one of my Bosses ... not my Direct Report Boss, but the Departmental Big Boss With Three Non-Punctuated Letters In All Uppercase And A Slightly Smaller Type Size After His Name. I know he's been married for a while, because the whole office was laughing at him one day in mid-March when he remembered his wedding anniversary at 1645h and his assistant was helping him think of where he could pick up flowers on the way home =D =D
But this lady with the same last name was based in another office and I usually don't see her name enough to remember to wonder too often.
At first, I thought she was his wife. Then one day, she was in our office for a meeting. I was never formally introduced, but I did hear someone refer to her by first name and I knew it was her. She looked A LOT like him. And I kinda giggled inwardly...
Hehe... 夫妻臉 =)
But it turns out, I was wrong. They're siblings. =)
| weather | : | | sunny & freezing |
| outside | : | | 9.5°C |
| mood | : |  | content |
I don't have my alarm code or security passphrase set up yet. Usually, I'm not the first one in; I'm the second or third. This morning, I opened the door to the high pitched squeal of the 45 second grace period noise.
Bah.
All I could do was walk over to my desk, put my stuff down and wait for the timer to run down.
*WHIR-WHIR-WHIR-WHIR*... blares the klaxon. It's a DSC system just like home. I've tripped the alarm at home before*. I know the drill: roll my eyes, grab what I need, call the monitoring station on my cell from a little ways down the hall so the sirens won't be right in my ear.
People were poking their heads out their suite doors by now. I did a little sheepish "yes, hi... all my fault, sorry..." This is Vancouver. No one gets too upset at anything. Everyone is just glad to find out it's not them, it's not their fault and have a giggle at your expense.
They sent building security up to kill the noise and that was that.
Two things:
- 45 seconds is way too long of a grace period. In 45 seconds, someone who knows what they're doing can get in, cut the connection and disable the system completely without it showing up as an anomaly at the monitoring station [in time? at all? not sure.] There were a flurry of B&Es happening this way some time ago which prompted us to shorten the length.
If the alarm panel is even a few steps away from the door, 10 to 15 seconds is more than enough time to walk over and enter your code in slow motion.
- If you make a mistake, press the '#' key. This resets the timer and resets the data buffer so you can enter your code over again. I think you have a limit of 2 resets (3 retries) before it goes off.
* Apparently, I look like lumpy blankets when I sleep, so a certain Brother-in-Law can't tell I'm actually there and will arm the entire house without bypassing the motion detectors in the hallway outside our bedroom. Oops. =}
| weather | : | | clear |
| outside | : | | 10°C |
| mood | : | | satisfied |
Men define themselves in large part by
the work they do. Their self-esteem is
primarily generated by a job.
That's me exactly. I was talking to someone and I accidentally said "I'm homeless" instead of "I'm jobless". We laughed that the two were practically synonymous for me. XD
I've been around this last week, but I haven't been able to concentrate on a whole lot. Not enough to write about anything else, at least. I can't seem to relax and enjoy not having to work. I couldn't get my mind off being unemployed. Ex-co-workers were talking about going to Mexico for a looong vacation. I couldn't do that.
I never did hear back from Dev House Close By. Oh well. So, I made my choice. After a week of mulling it over, I'd have to be stupid to not take the IT position at the Finance Company. Ultimately, the main reason I took the position was because I think I'd be more useful to them. Being useful to whomever I work for is most important to me. I very much appreciated the promptness and clarity of their communication and demeanor. Salary is... within range. Benefits aren't fantastic, but I'll live. I think they said they'd be reviewing that in May, so that's cool too.
I'd be working close to Husband Guy again (woohoo!). I'm kitty corner to kat_box (woohoo!)... though not for long. They're packed like sardines into the office they have right now, but moving to new digs in May (still not too far away though). They were talking about where the devil they'd put me when I start on Monday. They're trying to get a good parking rate in a lot close by.
I can learn to dress better in this part of town. Yaletown wasn't too bad either because it's a trendy place as well, but it's more of a hi-tech district with executives and film crews once in a while, so it's still very casual. The Finance Company (which will be christened "Work" on Monday) is in the financial district of downtown Vancouver. People (well, minus the panhandlers anyway) dress well around that area because they kinda have to. The co-workers are all in jeans and floopies, but I've always worn pants with blouses as well as jeans.
But I can probably get ideas for styles and colours from everyone else. Once in a while, I'll see a woman walking opposite to me wearing a really spiffy outfit that jumps out and looks really good. I try to remember and once in a while, I've actually gotten around to doing something very similar with whatever I could find on sale at the malls. It's usually worked very well. I will have to make better use of my little note pad and pen that I keep on me for miscellaneous things like that.
Anyway, the wedding is tomorrow. Hair is being done tomorrow morning by the same guy who did a fantastic job cutting it for me in November. "Yousef, make me pretty... I don't care how... but it needs to hold until midnight before I turn back into a pumpkin."
| weather | : | | mainly clear |
| outside | : | | 7°C |
| mood | : |  | hopeful |
But I'm still waiting on Dev House Close By (could you all maybe aim the good thoughts a smidgeon to the right, please?). I'm mad at myself because I just found another e-mail address to submit my resumé that's slightly different from the one I originally submitted it to and this one looks more appropriate. FRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA........ ={
The other two are great opportunities as well.
One is a finance company, stable and solid... which doesn't guarantee anything either. Acquisitions and mergers happen to successful, solid companies as well — Work was a case in point. This Finance Company is extending their IT department to replace their legacy systems a piece at a time. They seem very keen on hiring me because of my Developer background. I was offered a good salary to begin with, but apparently someone fought hard to get me even more because I got a call this afternoon saying they decided to offer me more to start. I would effectively get a cost-of-living raise from my last salary and that's a pretty amazing thing for them to do for me.
I feel awful about that because my choice is not based on the money.
The other place is a successful, combined consulting and product software dev house, much like Work. In fact, they recognized my name from the paper I presented at the conference two years ago.
They're looking for a QA/Jane-of-All-Trades™ which is exactly me. I'd be on contract for the first month (which is how they do probation, I guess). They have no office. The entire team works remotely, they communicate over IM, e-mail and the old telly-foon thing. This apparently has worked better for them and I'm more vocal/tenacious in electrons anyway.
That's fine with me. I can come and go as I please and I can deduct the hell out of my house when tax time rolls around. They do plan to get office space some time this fall. I'll be campaigning hard for the Yaletown area.
My first choice is still Dev House Close By. I'm so wanting to go in there and totally wow them. As I read and re-read the job description on their site, I began to get this sinking feeling that it might actually be a step back or a demotion from my QA Engineer position. The list of responsibilities looks shorter and I can't tell how technical that role is in their organization. I don't think I'm necessarily overqualified for it, there are responsibilities that I don't have much experience with (resource management, budgetting, etc.).
I've always wanted to go in the direction of Project Management. I actually had the opportunity back at Ex-Work, but I didn't take it. The best Project Managers I have ever worked with, were ones who had a strong technical background. With those role models in mind, I wanted to get Development experience under my belt in order to command the respect of my team.
Now that my professional experience has covered much of the software development process, I think it's a good time to try my hand at something less technical and more overseeing. Unless the job I want pays massively less or turns out to be not right for me, I'm taking it.
*sigh* Dev House Close By has until the end of next week to look promising. I feel terribly guilty stalling the other two already.
| weather | : | | partly cloudy |
| outside | : | | 8°C |
| mood | : | | blah |
Work was bought out by a much larger company that didn't want to keep the QA group. My last day was Thursday, February 24. We were told at noon, we headed out for beer and then went back to pack up our offices.
They were very apologetic, they'd been negotiating hard to keep everyone, but the larger company wouldn't have it. I believe them. I've never had reason to doubt them. They've treated me very very well in the three years I've been here and I absolutely do not begrudge them for this decision. Whether I'm on the winning end or losing end of it, the ability to make the hard decisions is one of the reasons I admire them so much.
It's a little sad. I loved my job. But, ah well. Onward.
I was given job leads, recommended to a few local companies and they said if I needed a reference I could use their contact info, so we'll see. I've already made contact at a few places and started looking, just because it could be a while before I find something. It would be really nice to not actually have to go until the end of the severance.
I have my eye on the dev house close by. They're NEAR PERFECT. They have a position that's EXACTLY what I want to do and it would be like a promotion or at least "a step up" (if only in title). A good portion of the posted job description is what I'm doing now.
They must have a bazillion and a half resumés to go through though. *sigh*
There's another company that sounds interesting. They're in the same building as The Big Corporate Ex-Work which is pretty far out there and in the opposite direction of downtown Vancouver, where Husband Guy works. I would take the car every day and he would have to bus it. But it's do-able and there is someone I know at that company.
There are a few other leads for companies that are in the finance industry but who are building their IT departments.
(+) they would put me closer to where Husband Guy works.
(–) parking is insanely expensive in that area of downtown because they're right by the water.
(+) they are stable companies... although, what exactly does that mean in this day and age?
(–) I'm a bit wary of having non-technical senior management calling the shots.
(+) one of the companies has a strong technical guy at the helm, so I'm a little less worried about that one, but still...
I've also applied for employment insurance benefits right away just because I have no idea how long it will take to kick in (the EI office operates at the breakneck velocity of molasses running uphill). And if I don't need it, I'm sure they won't have a problem NOT paying me.
There was also the thought of not working in IT anymore. I don't know if I'm still buzzing and panicking from the layoff, but I have no idea what else I could do and this hardly feels like the time to do soul searching.
*bigsigh* Wish me luck at Dev House Close By...
[Update]
Thank you, everyone, for all the kind thoughts, comments and support. You guys are wonderful =)
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