Musings of a marginally sane feline-appreciating female.

And damn, things are not awful on the work front! One app, we’re deferring the last issue, so I can wrap that up instead of waiting for next another fix. The other app, I FINALLY GOT THROUGH A FULL TEST RUN AND DIDN’T FIND ANYTHING NEW!! AND THE OUTSTANDING ISSUES DIDN’T MASK ANYTHING ELSE!!

Now, I have to repeat that test run 11 more times, BUT, SERIOUS PROGRESS!!

On the home front, I’ve been trying to setup my mortgage payment for autopay since…like 2 days after we closed. Website still couldn’t find the loan #. Emailed my dude at the mortgage office and they’ve already sold the loan, LMAO.

So, this morning I set myself an alarm to remember to call the new mortgage servicer this after and see how to get things setup since I’ve still not gotten the snail mail notification. Then I thought – I wonder if I could do it via their website without having a damn bit of information?

Well, butter my ass and call me a biscuit, I put in my name and phone number and BOOM, mortgage located, and autopay all setup and ready to go! And the escrow account balance for tax and insurance is hella bigger than I realized – I really did read all the closing docs and whatnot, but it didn’t fully click that damn near half of it was set aside for taxes.

Well, it’s time to kick ass and take names at work and get my ass off work on time, aka, EARLY today!

You have a fantastic Friday!

I woke up 15 minutes before my alarm this morning! Feeling refreshed, no less! So we’re off to a good start already with extra time to enjoy my coffee and sit here and do a brain dump for all of you. :-D

Work crunch-ish continues and it’s gonna be a long day, and tomorrow is a half day in theory – I’m still gonna try to log off on time, but we shall see – and there is probably some weekend work in my future to boot. BUT THE END IS IN SIGHT!

Things would be a smidge better had I not lost three hours yesterday to a client issue where it turned out they’d changed a calculation parameter and everything was in fact calculating correctly… I mean, if you tell the system you want it to multiply by 3 instead of 2, well, the numbers are gonna change.

Today I’ve got to sit down and figure out what bugs I’ve got that aren’t covered by my massive comprehensive testbed – I know of at least one, but it’s a small, fast, specific thing I can whip through.

Then figure out what one calculation is actually doing – as of last night, I couldn’t tell if my formulas in my spreadsheet were hosed or if the software is wrong – but I was also brain dead at that point, so it should be clearer this morning.

Did a quick swing though my email and no crises on tap today, YAY. A coworker does need to know how I tested a bug in a previous version so he can test it in the new version – my tests are linked in our bug tracking system, but the way Sharepoint is, he may very well not be able to get to them. Of course, we’ll see if my tests make any sense to me, much less anyone else given that I did them something like, IDK, 3 months ago and I can barely remember what I did last week.

Couple good things, though! The additional feature they want to add – they’re adding it, but WE HAVE MORE TIME TO TEST! I pitched a fit about time when they suggested it – and they heard me! And my team lead has given me a couple comp days for my work on the last version, which is nice, too.

And it is now time to go hit the ground running – you have a great day!!

Little long, but not too bad, and I FIGURED SOME SHIT OUT!!!!

Found a couple things that were just calculating wrong.

I figured out why some numbers were right one time, but wrong the next time! (Couldn’t nail that one down last week to save my life.)

If my dev can get the fixes checked in tonight, I may be at a point where I can run through more than 3 tests before finding a problem, LOL. (She works later hours, and I’m sure she’s enjoying the peace and quiet right now without me going “Hey, found something new!”)

Feel like I’ve got my feet solidly under me for all the testing on this app, and that is really making a big difference. From the outside, it may not look like I’m making a lot of progress, but the start of these types of things is always the rough part – once I’m over that first “OK, it all works with this calculation formula” then it’s pretty much off to the races on the rest.

Good start to the week.

The universe said, “It is your weekend and you are not gonna fucking work.”

I logged on and all our test systems are down, LOL.

But it’s all good, I have a solid concept on what I need to do tomorrow and it will all be fine and get done one way or another.

The new and one size larger 3-in-1 jacket got a real world trial with the Starbucks run this morning, cause it’s 28 FREAKIN’ DEGREES OUT THERE. It was warm and comfortable, even over a very substantial hoodie, so, a successful purchase.

The overnight front that came through with all the damn winds at least cleared every cloud from the sky and it is a sharply sunny morning out there, and the LilyMonster approves.

On the work front, yeeeesh, it’s gonna be a rough two weeks coming up, and I of course thought of a couple more tweaks I need to add to my scenarios – but the good part is that for the two I have setup already, I can just add to what’s already there, I don’t have to trash everything and start over. And, I thought of a better way to do the initial validation in my test spreadsheets, so that’s good, too.

But it also means I’m gonna work today – but, if I can get through one full test run for one calculation formula today, then I can use that template for everything else, and make life a little easier, and honestly, that will be worth it, as much as I’d just rather not.

And I’ll be perfectly honest – this particular app, I LIKE testing on it! It’s like a puzzle, but one where I know exactly where all the pieces are supposed to go, and when one doesn’t fit, I can see it right away. Now, figuring out WHY it doesn’t fit – that can be kinda hard, but it’s a…fun challenge? I know I like it better than new features where I have no fucking idea where the pieces are supposed to go in the first place, LOL.

But, in a nod to it being the weekend, I’m bringing my laptop downstairs and we’ll be working with spring training baseball on in the background.

And on that note, I’ve got a bigassed cold brew at my side, a very sunny room, and it’s time to change laptops and engage in my bad work habit of “Oh yeah, you screwed shit up, fine, I’ll do my job twice as well as I already do!” LOL. Retirement cannot come around soon enough.

You have a lovely Sunday, and don’t be like me, avoid work!

And I didn’t tell anyone to piss off at work yesterday! Even when someone called a 4PM meeting! But the meeting was good, cause we were able to tell a rather vexed client that we have a solution to their angst.

I will say, I am in between a damn rock and a hard place for the next two weeks – nothing BAD by any means, just…oof, it’s gonna be kinda ugly. In the next 10 days, I need to have all my app testing done for our newest version. But, I also know we’re gonna have one more feature dumped in to boot.

Thing is, it’s not like the testing and fixing will stop after 3/31 – I can (and will) test and retest and retest right up until we release this new version – this is part of why I’m making this comprehensive testbed that I can re-use over and over for this one particular app. And, I’ve wanted to do something like this for freakin’ AGES vs just “setup for the problem at hand” and just never had the time to do it.

And it’s not like I’m only just starting on the new version testing – we’ve been working on it for ages – but I’ve been constantly having to go back and work on the current version and boy howdy has that just sucked up time. Every week for the last three months, I’ve sat down and said, “THIS IS THE WEEK I KNOCK OUT THE NEW VERSION TESTING!” And…something in the current version goes sideways and that is where I have to focus my time and now I have a buttload of new version testing to plow through. The trick is gonna be “can I be left the fuck alone to just work on this one thing”?

We’ll see!

You have a great Saturday.

And not a moment too soon, cause people are trying my last damn nerve. But I have tried my best to stir shit up at work, probably to no avail, but should it all hit the fan, I swear to god, I will be very I FUCKIN’ TOLD Y’ALL, I FUCKIN’ TOLD Y’ALL.

When the choice is between “narrow scope to meet an artificial deadline” and “go get more time to do the thing well” – the answer isn’t narrow scope. IT. JUST. ISN’T.

I’m in the process of setting up a new COMPREHENSIVE testbed to test my shit on this version so I can hit as many things as I humanly can at once and NOT narrow scope on this current testing round. Team lead’s “tell me how you spent your time” micromanaging shit be damned.

Welp, I’m gonna go fuck shit up. You have a great day and don’t compromise your principles if at all possible.

It has been A Monday and it’s only halfway done.

Get in and discover that on Thursday night, after I logged off for the weekend, I was assigned a 20 hour bug. Due Wednesday. On top of what I’m already doing that is due Wednesday.

Found a different problem last Wednesday, fixed checked in Thursday, warned team about said bug and to be aware of it – still broken this morning. Which means no one looked at it Friday or Monday-other-side-of-the-world-time, despite the fact that it should have been on everyone’s test list.

Dev fixes issue, I put in a ticket to get a build run – no one who usually does it is at work today. Another person volunteers, thank gawd. Except they just ran the deployment, but didn’t run the build first to capture the new code. There were definitely a few moments of “why is this still broken?” before I realized what happened. The build is running again now.

Client meeting. Now lunch. Another client meeting after that and I have zero idea what they actually want and I am praying I can just be quiet in the background.

Then back to the thing I was trying to test when I logged on 7 hours ago.

And the cherry on the sundae is that something I ate yesterday is making my stomach somewhat unhappy.

I will not be cutting my lunch short today, cause that sure as shit ain’t gonna shorten my day.

• It is Monday.
• DST kicked in. It will be great tonight, I know it. At 6AM it is not.
• Even that cat is all WTF, it is still dark.
• I went to bed early two nights running. It did not help.
• I forgot to turn on my sunrise alarm last night.
• I did not fix the time on the thermostat yesterday.
• I did not put in for today off last fall as I usually do. I DON’T KNOW WHY.

Oh, and it is the 3 year anniversary of Plague Friday.

And today I guess we start to see the full fallout from Silicon Valley Bank. The UK arm has already been sold off to HSBC. US pre-markets show a positive implied open – maybe that is a sign this shit will get sorted quickly. The last thing we need is for this to seize up the credit markets.

We also see that Tim Davie is an idiot, but we knew that since last week – at least he’s realizing he’s a dumbass. Glad to see Lineker’s colleagues stood up for him. Tim, a protip: Your employees are allowed to have opinions, especially when they’re calling out the government for being fascists. BBC needs to get their shit together.

And there is now a wee bit of light out there and on that note, it is time to go slog through the day.

Just get through the best you can today.