Yay, longer days!

Posted on December 22, 2020 by A Dreamer

We get a whole additional second of daylight today! OK, it’s better than nothing, and I’ll take it.

Another half day today, and my enthusiasm for work this week is waning – just having multiple cases of “I cannot brain today, I haz the dumb.” One thing I was working on this morning, I had to go at it three times before I got it right.

Christmas brunch shopping is done. Though in recent years, I’ve had that shopping list *memorized* – I wrote it all down, cause my brain has been slowly turning to swiss cheese this year.

I picked up the goodie bags from the local hardware store yesterday – nice reusable totes with a calendar, masks, candy, hand sanitizers, can cozies – AND A ROLL OF TOILET PAPER. That made me legit laugh out loud in the car. Worth the drive over to that side of town for the pickup. (And nice that there was a Walgreens right next door, knocked out stocking stuffers.)

And Congress is getting vaccinated. Whole big ol’ bag of mixed feelings there. I understand why they’re getting it – continuity of government and it’s important that their constituents see them get it. Little annoyed at the ones who have spent 9 months pretending this didn’t exist getting it. And then you have Rand Paul, “I’M IMMUNE!” Fuckin’ idiot.

Anyone else notice that 45 doesn’t seem to have gotten his inoculation yet? Does he think he’s immune? Is he scared? Is he just dumb? Just seems a really odd thing that he hasn’t gotten it yet – I mean, if there is any asshole who would shove their way to the front of the line for this, you’d expect it to be him.

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Happy Solstice

Posted on December 21, 2020 by A Dreamer

And not a moment too soon – not loving the pitch black upon waking up. Bring on the longer days. (Though Weather Underground tells me tomorrow will only have an additional 1 second of daylight. At least it’s going in the right direction.)

Republicans are acting like Scrooge on Christmas day, even though the bill is shit and not nearly enough. Seriously, never seen a group of people more in need of a visit from a dead colleague and three spirits.

What they’ve done is better than nothing, but highlights yet again that they do NOT understand or really care about what is going on in their own country. Angry does not even begin to describe how I feel about all this. Incandescent with rage may be closer.

We need to flip the Senate and D’s need to just go to town on progressive policies in 2021. Fuck these half-measures.

Half days on tap this week at work – would have preferred full days off, but at least I’m not looking at losing leave, and given that my to-do list just got totally jacked in the past week, some work must be done. Still, at least I can jet off at lunchtime, which isn’t nothing.

Alrighty – time to go do the thing so I can not do the thing this afternoon.

You – go eat some Christmas cookies for breakfast – you’ve earned it this year.

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Very out of sorts today

Posted on December 20, 2020 by A Dreamer

No idea what in particular has gotten me off my game, but just feeling at loose ends.

It’s probably just that I’m so fucking tired of everything.

It was too cold to get out walking today, which probably didn’t help.

Another friend has tested positive for Covid19.

The government has already fucked up vaccine distribution.

Congress is probably going to pass a craptastic bill that will get folks a whole $600.  I do not understand why they cannot grasp that the best thing to do here is give people a decent amount of money, no strings attached.  With what they’ve spent so far (which really hasn’t helped actual people) they could have sent everyone over the age of 18 a check for $14,000.  (Your math may differ, but we’ve wasted a fuckton of money by not just giving it straight to people.)

THAT would have actually fucking helped.

I swear, if we do not flip the Senate and actually do something to actually HELP people…

Watching a Frontline documentary on how badly we fucked up the Covid19 response might not have been the best choice for afternoon viewing, LOL.

Trying to look on the brighter side of things.  Quiet, half days of work this week.  Our local hardware store apparently usually has a holiday party, but can’t this year – so they have goodie bags for customers to pick up.  Getting mine tomorrow, and it’s right next to a Walgreens where I need to go anyway.  Also, hardware stores have all sorts of goofy shit that makes for fun stocking stuffers.  And fuck if we haven’t all earned a goodie bag this year.

And we’re getting a Honey Baked Ham for Christmas.  We usually just do Christmas brunch, but this year I’ll get super fancy and make some cheesy potatoes to go with it for dinner.  We haven’t had Honey Baked Ham in *years* and I decided today, dammit, I want one, and it has been ordered.  (OK, a quarter ham, but HAM!)

Hopefully tomorrow will be a little better.

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More cookies acquired!

Posted on December 19, 2020 by A Dreamer

Now we definitely have enough for distribution and increased pandemic snacking. And a couple of ham & cheese croissants to boot. And a couple chocolate swiss army knives and white chocolate snowman lollipops for stockings. I have no impulse control.

When I ran in the bakery this morning, they had Christmas music on and I found myself bouncing along with it and realized – I’ve spent so much time at home, this was really the first time I’d actually heard any Christmas music this season. Told the clerk I knew he must be sick of it, but it was very nice and festive and legit cheered me up.

I also emailed the bakery thanking them for just being awesome. (And given the “OMG, thank you!” response, it sounds like folks have been…challenging this year.)

I’m still having problems processing that Christmas is less than a week away. Time is just so very, very broken these days. The good news is that I have cookies and I’m only waiting on one last gift to arrive.

Lily’s shopping is done – mostly treats – some of her existing toys will be wrapped up in tissue paper because she already has a fuckton of toys (and she was literally just playing with trash) and OMG, TISSUE PAPER, HOW DID YOU KNOW?

Cookies have been dropped at the vet’s office, the other boxes have been stuffed and ribboned and are ready to go. The rest are ALL FOR US!! (And yes, getting more this morning was the correct move.)

And I am going to sit back and do jack shit for the rest of the afternoon.

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Little Christmas Miracles

Posted on December 18, 2020 by A Dreamer

I don’t know what made me go back and look again at the most recent status email on this feature I’m testing that the bug assigner sends – it’s basically the same thing every week, the only thing that changes is the % complete.

The finish date was moved out by 12 days.

No one actually mentioned it, it just got moved a couple weeks ago and despite the fact that I *do* actually look at these emails – it did not register that the date had changed. (Probably because I was not looking for the date to change.)

I emailed the gal who assigns the bugs and thanked her for giving me a time machine.

I feel like an idiot for it not clicking that the date had changed, but 12 extra days is 12 extra days. (Seriously, those dates never change.)

Still going to work next week, but HALF DAYS, BAYBEE!!

Hit my beloved Swiss Bakery after work – we have cookies and I have a weekend back! But maybe not enough, I may run back in the morning for another pound… And if I get there early, I may be able to snag one of their ham & swiss croissants. So good, but sell out quick.

So, if nothing else, between the “surprise” schedule change and acquisition of cookies, I am going into the weekend very relaxed.

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How am I awake?

Posted on December 18, 2020 by A Dreamer

Didn’t get to bed til around midnight – wide awake at 6:15 AM. Which, given that we’ve got a half day today and they’re moving some servers I use at 1PM so I can’t work past that, and I have a fuckton of work to do – not the worst thing in the world to get an early jump on the day.

I emailed the gal who assigns all the bugs to say, “Um…yeah, I can’t get all that done properly by Tuesday…” Told her I could take a high level swing at it all to check for any obvious problems, but real detailed work would take far longer, and I’d at least update the bug tracker when the high level look is done. I felt like shit having to admit I am not Superwoman.

Response? Oh, no worries, that will be fine, thank you for all your work on this so far, just wanted to make sure you know which ones were assigned to you.

OK, then. Of course, I’m also held up by a print issue that my developer can’t fix and needs a different team and they have no resources to look at it right now – this server move happening today could theoretically help – it’s for a performance problem on a different part of our software and my print issue is with really honking big print runs – we’ll see on Monday I guess.

Granted, all this still trashes most of my leave plans even if it doesn’t have to be done by Tuesday, but eh, they upped the amount of leave we can roll over this year so I won’t lose any, and it’s not like I was going to go anywhere or do anything – I just needed to burn leave before next Friday.

I did realize that though we sent someone (I don’t even remember who now) our PTO plans at the beginning of the year, I don’t think our bug assigner ever sees them and they end up changing anyway. At the beginning of the month, I usually just send my supervisor my PTO dates for the month – well past time to CC her on those just so she knows what’s up. (It’s another one of those “coworkers on the other side of the planet” challenges. It’s so hard to not be able to just *talk* with them.)

But it is just also one of those, yay, the reward for decent work is more work! (Still don’t understand why these 10 bugs couldn’t have been split between the four of us doing the testing on this feature, but OK.)

Gif of white monkey asking WHY

And despite having a 2 1/2 day weekend coming up in about 6 hours – Christmas baking is just not happening this year. I am very tired this year, even moreso than usual. But, we do have an excellent local bakery and I am going to swing by this afternoon and get a fuckton of tea cookies and tiny Swiss chocolates to distribute. Win-win – everyone loves tea cookies and no one ever buys them for themselves, a local business is helped, and I give myself a break this year. And if any year has called for any kind of break – it is this year.

Still feeling horribly inadequate about, well, everything this week, but it seems to be going around – just given who I follow on Twitter, everyone has just hit a damn wall. I can’t help but think a tiny bit is seeing that the vaccine is here – and yet SO far away, plus the holidays, and at least for me, work isn’t doing any kind of holiday slowdown. (And yet it seems like half the people around me at work are out for the next week or two…)

But, it some good news – THE CHRISTMAS SEES CANDY IS SHIPPING TODAY!! It has been a Christmas tradition since I was a kid to have this candy in the house at the holidays. We get an assorted box and then a couple custom pack boxes (I love, love, LOVE that you can get a box of your handpicked favorites) – when I ordered on… 12/7, they were already saying there had been an overwhelming demand for the custom boxes and they couldn’t guarantee Christmas delivery. Ordered anyway – hey, New Year’s chocolates are good, too – but it looks like we may have it by Christmas after all. And I shouldn’t have been surprised – if there was any year folks would be a) sending more chocolate and b) saying, “dammit, we’re getting all our faves” – it’s this year.

No chocolate jimmies on top of the Bordeauxs this year – but that’s OK, they make them rather messy anyway, and it’s the gooey goodness on the inside that matters. I do appreciate that they took the time to say, “Hey, we had to change some decorations this year, the candy may look a little different, but it’s still the same!” (Cause you KNOW people will flip their shit.)

I’m so very tired, but it is Friday, we have a short day today, two short weeks in a row, and chocolate is incoming.

Onwards!

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No good deed and all that…

Posted on December 17, 2020 by A Dreamer

So, those 9 bugs I found working on this new feature? (Now 10 after yesterday?)

They’ll ALL got assigned back to me for retesting, with an email asking if it could be done by 12/22…

Theoretically, I can check for them as I retest the entire feature itself, but even that won’t be done by 12/22 – and I’m only testing three high level scenarios (which I then go nuts with the details and various permutations.)

But to do a deep dive on *all* scenarios on each individual bug in two systems – can’t get 9 of those done by 12/22.

I can do a high level check on all of them, but to really do them properly – it just can’t be done that fast. That’s going to be a fun email to write this morning.

I’m good, but I’m not THAT good.

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Happy Hump Day!

Posted on December 16, 2020 by A Dreamer

I think? I am not great with time these days and the upcoming holidays are not helping.

I have a big feature test I’m working on – needs to be done by 1/6 and my brain keeps going, “That’s the end of next week!” No, it is in fact, three weeks from today. Hopefully now that I’ve sat here and really looked at the calendar, I’ll stop panicking every time I hit a defect going, “I’ll never get finished at this rate!” (I’ve found nine defects so far! It’s a brand new feature, so not really unusual to find all sorts of little bugs. Quite proud I’ve found so many. I’ve found the most. It’s not a contest, but I’VE FOUND THE MOST!)

Our state health department is doing a vaccine town hall tonight and they’re taking questions ahead of time, and because I really can’t let go of shit, I emailed with “WTF is up with the studies not measuring infection? And don’t tell me keep masking up, that’s not a damn answer to the actual question.” (It was somewhat better worded than that.)

I hope they can address that, cause I genuinely don’t understand why they wouldn’t measure infection itself, even if they weren’t spraying people in the face with Covid as part of the study. Yeah, I am REALLY stuck on this – I just can’t make it make sense.

Well, time to go distract myself with work – you have a wonderful day.

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2020 has the worst writers

Posted on December 15, 2020 by A Dreamer

Seriously, the first vaccines are administered the same day the electoral college meets to make Biden’s win official – how hackneyed and overwrought can you get?

I’m still hung up on the fact that we don’t technically know if the vaccine prevents actual infection and spread. I even went back to look at the two initial articles about the effectiveness, and the Pfizer article never actually said *what* it was effective against, and the Moderna one just said it was “effective at preventing illness” – yeah, I did NOT recognize that bit of carefully chosen words.

And I realize part of the reason we don’t know is that we weren’t spraying people in the face with Covid to see what would happen. (Probably a bit of an ethical no-no given that half the folks would be getting a placebo.) But I also think that folks who are willing to sign up for a vaccine trial are also masking up and social distancing and whatnot, so – how do you take those mitigation acts into account? Or, do you just assume that the mitigation acts don’t matter because half didn’t get the vaccine?

Preventing obvious illness is VERY GOOD. But – how are we going to make sure the vaccine doesn’t accidentally spur asymptomatic spread when our testing and tracing is still absolute shit?

If everyone stays masked up after getting the vaccine, and cases go down, how do we know it’s the vaccine and not behavior that is the mitigating factor? (Well, OK, given that like half the country is not going to behave well, that probably answers that question.)

Gawd, I wish I had an infectious disease doctor or vaccine scientist in my circle of friends – I just still have so many questions. NOT THAT I WON’T GET THE VACCINE. I just have a lot of questions, cause I am not an infectious doctor or vaccine scientist, and I’ve never lived through something like this before, and I wanna know all this stuff.

I guess it really boils down to this: What is the breakpoint that tells us, yes, the vaccine is working and you can eat inside again. And I’m not focused on eating indoors just because I miss it (and I do!) – but you can’t eat with a mask on.

I guess I want to know when Dr. Fauci is getting a reservation at Chef Geoff’s for dinner. And what is the metric that will make him do that.

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Oh…

Posted on December 14, 2020 by A Dreamer

So last night before bed I was reading this Vaccine Q&A over on NPR and buried down in the 9th section is this bit below (emphasis mine) which just had me going, OH COME ON, ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?!

If I get vaccinated, can I go back to life as normal?

No, not right away. Studies of the new vaccines only measured whether vaccinated people developed symptoms, not whether they got infected. It’s possible that they got light infections — not enough to make them ill, but enough to pass the virus on to others. “That’s why I tell people when you get vaccinated, continue wearing your mask,” Carlos Del Rio, a vaccine scientist at Emory University who helped test the Moderna vaccine, recently told NPR. “We’re going to know later if the vaccine actually prevents infection.“

The CDC is calling for those who are immunized to continue wearing masks and practicing safe physical distancing until more is learned. “Experts need to understand more about the protection that COVID-19 vaccines provide before deciding to change recommendations,” as well as how many people are getting vaccinated and whether the virus is still spreading in communities, it says in an FAQ.

WHY WOULD YOU NOT BE MEASURING IF PEOPLE WERE INFECTED?

So…all we really know is getting the vaccine shouldn’t kill you, but we don’t know if it actually prevents getting infection, or if it’s going to fuel further asymptomatic spread – because folks WILL try to go back to normal.

I mean – if folks are still getting infected, and truly getting “light” infections, that is better than landing in the ICU, but are we looking at another wave of asymptomatic long haulers?

This is the hazard of pushing the vaccine out so fast. We don’t know when the “later” is that they talk about as to if it actually prevents infection. And when the average person hears “vaccine” – they think of an injection or such THAT PREVENTS THE ACQUISITION AND SPREAD OF A DISEASE.

And we don’t know if it actually *does* what we expect a vaccine to do, and won’t know until we get a fuckton of people getting it to be additional beta testers for it.

I’m not saying folks shouldn’t get it. But this information shouldn’t be something you stumble on at the end of an NPR article at 10 o’clock at night. And it’s going to make it harder to convince people to get it if experts can’t say for sure that it won’t prevent getting infected or spreading it – people will say, “well, it’s pointless if it doesn’t work.”

I’ll still get it when I can. Maybe by then we’ll know if it really prevents infection & spread. (Yay for being end of the line?)

But my god, how deflating to think of waiting for the vaccine, getting two doses, waiting two weeks for the immune response and then…continuing to stay home and do nothing.

It’s so fucking 2020.

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