Musings of a marginally sane feline-appreciating female.

If you haven’t seen this week’s episode, I’m gonna put in a whole load of white space here so you have plenty of time to navigate away. Also, if you haven’t seen it – you should!

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WHAT A FUN EPISODE!!!! I know there are haters out there, and I am sorry you’ve lost any capacity for joy.

Lizzo & Jack Black as Royal President and First Lady?! LOVED IT. I agree with my brother, we now have two people now that we’d trust babysitting Baby Yoda, the other being Amy Sedaris’ Tattooine mechanic. 

Hologram dress accessories? Brilliant!

The call to Alice in Wonderland with the oversized roly-polys used as bocce balls? Loved it.

The importance of cultural knowledge when talking to the Ugnaughts was awesome. I was yelling at the screen, “SAY YOU’RE A FRIEND OF KUIIL!!” Watching Bo just fuck that all up, and Mando save it because he knew their cultural traditions was fantastic.  (And not the first time he’s been all, JFC, shut up, you’re just insulting folks, let me fix it.)

Bo finally getting the Dark Saber – well, I may have screamed, “TRANSITIVE PROPERTIES, BITCH!” 

And then – the best part for me – the ethical questions raised by living in a droid dependent society. I mean, it’s great for the organic folks to not have to do the shit work and have it all done by droids. But, is it exploitation? The droids have time off and I think must get paid, as evidenced by the fact that there are droid bars.  Droid bars where they hang out and worry about getting replaced by humans.

They must be paid, but are they well paid?  Do they have to pay for their own maintenance?  Do they get enough downtime?  Are they treated with care and respect and appreciation for the fact they do all this work that is hard and/or dangerous that no one else really wants to do? 

When they were trying to trigger droids to battle status, all I could think of was those Boston Dynamics videos where they’re trying to fuck with the robots and well, Chad, you’re gonna get offed first, cause those robots are gonna remember you being a total dick to them. 

And in the end, I know they reverted to battle status because of outside intervention – but damn, this is why I am very nice to my little Roomba.  When the robot uprising happens, I want Iggy to remember me fondly. 

But I have a much needed FOUR DAY WEEKEND!!

Client that we did all the data cleanup on got all fixed up, YAY, AWESOME, WOOHOO!! And they were pretty damn pleasant during the whole process to boot, especially since I know they were very tired and frustrated, but understood that bad historical data needs to be cleaned up and it’s not always the easiest process.

Then, I shit you not, right on the heels of that at 5PM on Wednesday, another client shows up with an emergency. By 7PM, I’m getting texts from the support manager to please, please jump in, cause somehow, she couldn’t find anyone on her team to handle it. (No, I don’t get it either.) Of course, on a day I’d started work at 7AM.

Good news was that it wasn’t the software’s fault, it was doing what they told it to do, they just told it the wrong thing to do. Worked half the night, got most of it cleaned up, couldn’t totally get there, we have to reconvene in the morning. Morning comes, look at data for the last bit, figure out fix, tell client. One dude gets chippy cause I’d not been able to fix it the night before so he doesn’t think I can fix it now. I am grateful I’m off camera, and I manage to hold my tongue.

They need to do a bunch of other shit first, want to meet at the end of the day to actually do the thing together. Not ideal, but OK. It shouldn’t actually take that long, and then we’ll be done and dusted, and I’ll start my 4 day weekend. At 4PM they say they’re running way behind, need to move meeting back several more hours. Nooooooooooooo. 😭😭😭

Now, my VP is already livid that I got dragged into this, and informs support that they need to find another person from their own freakin’ department to take over and finish this, because it’s not going to be me on the phone with them in the middle of the night again, cause I am on PTO, and I’ve just come off a week of dedicating all my waking hours to another client. And amazingly, they can find someone. And I do so appreciate that he put his foot down.

And the thing is, the client is probably still gonna be unhappy cause I couldn’t fix it all Wednesday night and had to drop out of Thursday night, but the person going in had the full rundown and I have total faith in them. Die mad and all that.

I don’t mind helping, but fuck, support isn’t my job anymore and frankly, I’m kinda out of practice with getting on the phone with 10 cranky people who don’t want to hear that they set something up wrong, and trying to be brilliant on the fly with issues I just don’t see on a daily basis anymore, especially at the end of an already long day.

My VP has been very appreciative of my efforts with both clients and has said he’s gonna find something better than just saying “thank you” over and over again.

But it’s all good, cause we got it back to support where it should have been the whole time, and I am enjoying 4 days off, and I’m gonna go take an afternoon snooze with Lily.

Lemon, it’s Tuesday…

The client has continued to client. But we’ve tracked down the last of the bad data, they have instructions on what to do, and when I left they seemed to be starting the process. Told my boss this morning I couldn’t work late tonight cause I had an appointment, and bless him, he told the client from the get go and chased me offline at 5 and told me not get back online later.

My acupuncture appointment couldn’t have been more perfectly timed this month. I even dozed off on the table.

I am gonna sleep so well tonight.

By 9:30 AM I’d already made the coffee run and done the shop for Easter Brunch. Go me! Hashbrown casserole seems to have become a popular Easter dish, so you can’t wait til the last minute to get those frozen shredded hashbrowns. Only thing left is to snag a danish later in the week.

And thanks to the last two weeks of work being hell, including yesterday, my little Tody to-do list has gotten utterly out of control and frankly, overwhelming. So, I put on my headphones and my jams and just went through it, knocked out everything I could handle and put the rest on hold so I can get the various and sundry tasks spread back out again. And I did get a bunch of stuff done and didn’t curl up in the fetal position and do nothing, and I’m pretty proud of that!

And I’ve spent the rest of the day trying to relax, but being on edge cause I’m waiting for that client to call back in. I think we got them all sorted yesterday, but, clients gonna client.

Definitely doing a 4 day weekend next weekend.

But it’s done and it’s Saturday and YAY, even if I am basically on call this weekend cause, clients.

Got all my shit done and made the dumb, artificial deadline pretty early yesterday and thought to myself, “I ain’t doing shit the rest of the day. I’m gonna sit here and stare at the wall.” HAHAHAHAHA. My dev needed me to test one more thing, which was fine and thankfully easy, and then…clients.

Client: Thing still broken after we did the fix you told us to do.
Me: Send data!
Client: The test db was auto overwritten last night, we have to start over, it will be 3 hours til you have data
Me: Sobs. Gets data. WTFs a lot. Dev sees the problem and why the fix didn’t work.
Client: Y’all are gonna be available over the weekend, right?
Me: Here is a new and improved fix. Me and my dev are logging off now, you can call support, they can find me tomorrow.

I’d like to say I was putting out reasonable boundaries and expectations, but I was already on hour 13 of my day, completely brain dead, and just proud of myself I didn’t tell them to go yeet themselves in to the sun.

Thing is, this is cause of some bad historical data, and we fixed that last month and it should have taken care of it, but suddenly there is more bad historical data. (If it was there last month, it would have caused problems last month.) I think I know what they did that caused it – but they swear they didn’t. My dev said it was a different process that caused it, but I’m not totally sure. If they call in this weekend, I have a query ready for process history so we can see for sure which process touched this table, cause that is gonna bug the fuck out of me not knowing for sure.

I will give the client a ton of credit for being incredibly gracious and acknowledging that it is their bad data, not our app causing the problem, but ugh, could you start looking at these things on IDK a Tuesday?

And between all that and “blitz testing for an app with an artificial deadline” is how I turned in a 120 hour timesheet for the pay period. Not repeating that any damn time soon, and I need to get those comp days I’ve got on my calendar here very soon. Now that we’re past crunch, things will slow down and Easter Monday looks like a nice day to take off since I’m already taking this Friday off.

And I’ve got a ton to catch up on around the house this weekend, but I am also just still flattened, so I think it’s just gonna be critical stuff today.

You have a restful day!

Nats game is on, Orioles at 2, and a night game for the Padres.

Working downstairs today so I can have ALL THE GAMES ON!

Of course, I’ve been at work since 7 and lost 2 hours to a DB server that was full, and then my dev & I managed to deadlock the system which has cost me another hour or so and I’m taking an early lunch cause it is gonna be another hour to get that deadlock cleared.

And I came in this morning going, “I’M GONNA GET IT ALL DONE TODAY!!!” HAHAHAHAHAHAHA. I’m gonna be working until midnight at the rate things are going.

But I have legit 11 hours of baseball on tap, so I’ve got that going for me.

Our team lead quit. Don’t know when he told management, but he told the folks in Makati on Monday, said Peace Out, Bitches and then went on PTO for the rest of his notice time.

While ya gotta do what ya gotta do, and lord knows I understand just being done with shit – the timing is awful. Not that there would have been a great time to do it, but damn.

I don’t have the time or energy to break in a new manager…

Or something like that. Testing on The Current Thing continues apace.

Will I have every last thing done by Friday? Unlikely. Will I have enough done that I can say I met a completely artificial and meaningless deadline? Yes.

I mean, it’s not like we’re stopping testing – so I’m not particularly stressed. I will be able to say, “I tested X” – might still not be fixed by Friday, but I can say I tested it!

But you know what? My testbed is fucking gorgeous and wonderful and has already done it’s job, cause I am finding shit that ain’t right. My product manager even poked me yesterday and said she was seeing stuff come through left and right with my name on it and well done on that front.

Well, time to go be awesome.

You have a great day!

That was me…

Logged on yesterday afternoon, knocked out App A while on the couch with baseball on TV. Not terrible, considering I was working on a weekend.

Let coworker on the other side of the world know it was done, I’d updated the bug tracker, but if she saw something I missed, let me know, etc, the usual stuff.

“Oh, the new code for App B has been checked in.”

The new code that was supposed to not be in the system until next week. We were supposed to have everything currently outstanding done by Friday, then start with essentially a clean slate and re-test starting next week. I don’t know if dev wasn’t told, or just forgot.

But now – anything that breaks this week, we have no way of knowing if it was broken last week and we didn’t get to it, or if the new code broke it.

I mean, as far as I’m concerned, anything that breaks this week, whether it is an old bug or new, is because of the code change. Told coworker we need to tag any new or reopened bugs this week as related to the code change, because we’re gonna have shit still open this Friday, and I’m not gonna get hollered at for it. She’s gonna “talk to someone” about that. I’m gonna create a tag and use it anyway, if for no other reason that my sanity so when Friday rolls around, I can say “BROKE THIS FREAKIN’ WEEK AFTER CODE CHANGE.”

And I just took a peek at Teams and we’ve already got one bug reopened. Did the fix just not work, or did Friday’s code change break it? WHO KNOWS!

Already told coworker I’d have the overall testing done by Friday, but zero guarantee that all my currently open bugs would be closed.

It’s not the end of the world, we have until the end of April to deal with this code change, but this throws our “finish X and then start Y” strategy all to hell.

You survive this Monday, and may no one unexpectedly change code on you. :)

And this is some nonsense, LOL.

I have a really nice 30 ounce Yeti tumbler that I got for like, half off on clearance at REI and it’s great, except that the top part is fairly wide and it’s heavy, which makes it kinda hard to hold with one hand, because I am elderly or some shit.

Then the other day I thought, “I wonder if they make handles that like, IDK, clip or slide on or something?” Went to their site AND THEY DO! So now I can actually lift up my cold brew when it’s in my pretty tumbler.

And also, when I get up in the morning, the muscles and tendons in the bottom of my feet are all tight and kinda owie, and it’s fine after I stretch, but damn. So I ordered a wooden foot roller dohickey to keep by the bed and that arrived today and well, that is delightful. We’ll see how it works in the morning, but it does feel nice.

I was going to work today to try and make next week a little less painful, but I decided I’d rather do my budget for the rest of the year and my taxes. I will get some work stuff done tomorrow, but we all need at least one day off a week. And the plan is to knock out App A tomorrow, cause that has the least left to do, and some add’l prep for App B, which will be my life for the rest of the week.

Then April 1, we basically start allll over again with App B, cause One More Thing! But hey, at least I’ll have everything setup and ready to go – and I am hoping we can find things we may have missed in this first go round, which has gotten kinda rushed – at least for me, cause I’ve gotten fucked on a couple releases where things that should have taken a couple days took a couple WEEKS, and I keep getting dragged into client issues.

But, it’s all good – it will all get done one way or another. It always does.