Musings of a marginally sane feline-appreciating female.

And I’ve muted every reference phrase I can think of on Twitter.

A truly terrible thing happened. And then it became our national personality and with zero introspection, we used it as an excuse for more systemic and institutional racism, white nationalism, white supremacy, and further increase of the surveillance and carceral state.

Somehow we always have money for Homeland Security, but Indigenous & Black communities in the US routinely lack clean water.

So, when you say “Never Forget” – it’s more than just that day.

I am WAY too excited about this stuff, LOL.

Honestly, I am just leaning into being a dorky, middle-aged white lady who loves her arts & crafts fairs. Got some fancy soaps and a candle, had a nice sit down in the wine garden and got a bottle to go, some dip mixes and seasoning mixes, and this little bunny that is gonna go on the Christmas tree.

It’s nice to come home all tired out from doing something fun rather than being tired from all the shit in the world.

This thing I’m currently testing… There are a dozen separate calculation formulas to look at. I then have 14 groups of said formulas with different tweaks. So – 168 calculations to check. Which sounds like a lot, but the biggest pain in the ass is getting the data setup and then building the spreadsheet to validate the calculations, but that only has to be done once – and I’ve gotten pretty good at that part over the past two and a half years. The actual test is push button, dump data into spreadsheet, make sure numbers on Tab A equal the numbers on Tab B. Conditional formatting is the best thing ever. If they equal, GREEN! If not, ORANGE! Then that gets repeated several times.

So, I’d found some issues Wednesday, those got fixed, found another yesterday – and it took me a while to figure out why it was wrong until I had a revelation of “Oh, if I set X so that all these calculations should equal zero – then I can clearly see what is/isn’t included” – and I figured out what the issue was. (Why the hell this approach didn’t occur to me from the start, I don’t know.)

It only affected 8 of the 168 calculations – 4 formulas, 2 tweaks. Send it back to dev, let the folks on the other side of the world know, said I’d pick back up on Monday (PTO today) – but also offered to pop in this morning to do a quick check, cause we’re rapidly approaching the deadline on this. Team leads response was to tell the other person testing to please check it.

Cool! I still take a look at Teams this morning to see how things turned out, and the other tester has looked at one formula. One. And says it’s OK and he’ll look at the rest on Monday.

FFS. No. You can’t just look at one. I logged on – ON MY DAY OFF – pushed the button, dumped the data, and looked at all 168. 160 that were good are still good, YAY. 6 of the 8 which were problems are now good, YAY. The one that had been declared good by the other tester – STILL IS NOT WORKING.

I understand that everyone is overworked, especially my buds on the other side of the world, because I think the team lead is pushing them to do too much and no one dares say no. I get that. Hell, it took me a couple iterations to nail down the issues I found – they were all related, but overlapping, and I didn’t initially take the best approach to see them clearly. (Shoulda done that “everything should be zero” check first – it will be part of my protocol going forward.)

However, throughout this testing, which has been going on for a week now – this person has not found a single issue and then missed a problem that was still right there, plain as day. (Also, not the first time this has happened.)

The reason we split testing is almost always for time constraints – we’re testing the same thing in two systems, and yep, faster for each of us to take a system than one of us running everything through two systems. The added benefit is that theoretically, if I miss something, the other tester will catch it and vice-versa.

But I’m really feeling like with this one tester, I don’t have a safety net and that if I miss something – they’re not going to find it. I don’t know if they’re just missing things or waiting for me to find things first, but add to it the general weird attitude when I tell the team I’ve found an issue…

I realize that the attitude part is likely just the fact that trying to communicate via Teams is complete crap, and what I’m catching as “Ugh, why didn’t you find this sooner and why do you think anyone would actually be using this calculation/tweak variation?” is probably more just “Shit, why is this still fucked” – but I am still feeling a bit shit on sometimes for doing my job.

At least the other day, one of my coworkers did say “keep being curious!” which I did appreciate, even if I don’t think of my job as to be curious so much as “try to be 3 steps ahead of the clients” – which I suppose does mean being curious.

Threw my other tester under the bus a bit, cause I did have to say, “checked it, still broken” – but that had to be said, cause they need to know it’s going back to dev. Maybe someone will ask him what he looked at to determine it was OK and they’ll figure out that they didn’t pay attention to what I’d said.

Maybe nothing will be said or followed up on and I’ll only have myself to count on when I do split testing, just like when I do solo testing. And that’s fine if that’s how it’s gonna be.

I’m not gonna quit my job or anything like that – I’m not even mad, I’m just annoyed today. It only took an hour and a half out of my day, and I didn’t have any special plans for my day off. It’s just not being able to count on folks that is really bothering me.

I’ll be fine tomorrow. Just had to get it out of my system. You have a good Friday!

To start, let’s fully acknowledge that the British Empire and Colonialism are shit and the monarchy should probably be relegated to fairy tales.

But, I’m a bit bummed about Queen Elizabeth. Not devastated, just more of a bit sad, “Oh.” I think more than anything is that during my 50 years on this planet, she has been a constant – my brother is a close second, but there were 4 years where he didn’t even exist and she was still the Queen. I guess that no matter what, she was always the Queen and it was hard to imagine otherwise.

Also, her coat, hat and brooch game were always ON POINT.

I can also understand why there are a fair amount of folks out there who aren’t particularly broken up about it – and if you can’t, you need to expand your world view just a bit.

I do have a weird fascination with monarchy in general – I guess it’s the pageantry and rules and tiaras and whatnot. I mean, there is a lot to be said for having all the protocols laid out in death, with an entire staff telling you where to go, what to do, what to sign, and it’s all taken care of. That would have been nice all the times I have had death rudely interrupt life.

But, back to my commoner life.

And it’s my Friday and it’s gonna be a loooong one.

Yesterday, the thing I was testing… Had a C = A – B thing, it wasn’t working. B = X – Y – Z. Well, Y & Z were missing from the equation. Took me forever to figure that out. And it wasn’t until that was fixed that I could clearly see that X was wrong as well, cause X is made up of 4 items and one was missing.

But I figured it out! Before a client found it! And before anyone else did, either! But I could still feel the “ughhhh” reaction from the other side of the world. But I’m not the only one testing this, and no one else found it so I am not gonna feel bad about that. Yes, I slowed down the process, but this is why we also can’t rush through this stuff.

But it also means today is gonna be re-testing, wheeeee. But at least my setups are done, and I won’t be reinventing the wheel on that point.

Yesterday morning I also got assigned some feature stuff out of nowhere – even the scrum lead was, “Uh, where did this come from?” and I was “fuck if I know” – and of course, I’ve had zero involvement in this feature, I have no idea what the tasks actually involve, except that it’s supposedly 16 hours, which means it’s likely gonna be more like 40. Before I do anything, I have to go find the Teams thread on the feature and see if there is a demo video or something so I can see what on earth I am trying to test here. I have a very basic idea of what the feature is – but no detailed knowledge that would actually be helpful. And because I haven’t been involved in it at all up until now, I haven’t been in any of the meetings up to now.

Well, time to go knock it all out so I can enjoy the weekend. You have a great day!

My day is already booked with ~2 1/2 hours of meetings and attempting to cram 5 days of work into 3 days this week, WHEEEEEE.

The good news is that the thing that was dumped on me yesterday to re-test by tomorrow is one of those things that starts slow as hell, but once I get a few rounds of data processed and dumped into my “are these numbers right for these formulas” spreadsheet and get it tweaked for the various scenarios, it goes really fast. It’s just those first few rounds that take FOREVER, and I’m still in that slow part.

I had half the formulas already setup, which helps – but the other person who had the other half is on PTO this week, so I’m stuck with those, too and those are all being annoying and fighting me, LOL.

Plus there was a “hey, can you replicate this?” thing yesterday and I have to look at that this morning, couldn’t even make my brain switch gears yesterday afternoon. Might be something I can do during meetings today. (Remote work with no video FTW.)

But it’s all good, cause I get paid tomorrow, I have Friday off, our case counts have dropped under 200 a day, and then we start FOUR WEEKENDS OF FALL ARTS AND CRAFTS FAIRS!!

But first, time to go slog through numbers. You have a fantastic day.

So, yesterday I found out that my brother has never been to the H-Mart!! (Unlike me, who was there opening weekend.)

And I’m making an H-Mart run today, and he is getting dragged along!

I do not know how has not even wandered in there to see what there is to see!

We’re gonna get some K-Beauty stuff, new scrubby towels, rice cracker snack mix and he’s gonna lost his mind at the Pocky selection, and who knows what other cool stuff we’ll find.

Not sure why it’s on my mind today, but man, if I went back and talked to early-20-something me about things now…

I would believe that the Republicans had basically aligned with Russia, but for the wrong reasons – I’d be all “Damn, that perestroika and glasnost stuff really worked out!” I’d also believe that I still love stickers and cats and animals in general, and still cannot go to the grocery store without forgetting *something*.

The rest of *waves arms at everything* – I probably wouldn’t be able to wrap my head around.

World stuff:
– That TFG was actually the President
– That folks literally tried to overthrow the fucking government
– That saying “fascism is bad” would be called “divisive”
– That a President probably sold secrets to foreign governments and likely won’t face any consequences for it
– That we’d have a damn plague and half the country would not want to do anything to stop it, so it’s gone on for 30 odd months now, and we have a new one, too!
– The MaryJane getting legalized all over the place
– That despite a lot of talk about global warming and threats to the environment, we’d have made little to no progress

Personal stuff:
– That I was pretty much a bleeding heart liberal
– Getting up early (for me) on a Saturday to get to the farmers market on a routine basis
– Being a cherry tomato snob
– That my kitchen would have 3 different kinds of sea salt and I would use all of them
– That I’d be working in an ENGINEERING department!
– That adequate pockets in ladies clothing would still be a goddamned novelty.

Really, never would have seen any of this coming AT ALL.

And we are getting booted out early today, AND the thing I thought was going to trash my early out Friday IS NOT HAPPENING!

In other work ridiculousness, time zones are killing us. We do have some overlap in work times (it’s partially why I started going in early, because at least a couple folks from Makati are still there for a bit) but most anything that requires the team lead means it waits until the next day. This is usually fine, until the shit hits the fan, then it gets very messy and I have to start making decisions that are above my pay grade, and I know it pisses off the team lead, and I know I don’t like it, and yeah, time zones SUCK.

This week alone, I had to tapdance through a client meeting because we didn’t have the plan in place, and then yesterday in the AM I’d asked, “So, do you want me & B to do X today to get it out of the way?” and literally as I hit enter, he went offline for the night – which is fine! He needs to sleep, too! So I then announced, “Welp, team lead is offline, we’re gonna do X!” It worked out OK cause X did need to get done, and it’s now off our plates, but again, just, WHYYYYYY.

And honestly, I’d go in earlier, but because the system is down between 6-7 AM/PM, I really can’t start really *working* until 7AM, so… Seriously being exactly on the other side of the world makes things more challenging than it needs to be.

I’ve seen bits & pieces of Biden’s speech last night, and where has this guy been the past year and half? I don’t know who got in his ear and told him it was time to go on the offensive, but it’s about damn time. And R’s are clutching their pearls and honestly, and there is some Republican lady on the BBC right now going, “BUT, ANTIFA!” and seriously – get bent. Last time I checked, the anti-fascists didn’t storm the damn Capitol building.

Welp, gotta go to the thing – you have a fantastic weekend and stick it to the man for labor!

I mean, I get how time works and all, BUT STILL.

Went 10 rounds with the team lead yesterday and won, so I’m probably higher on his shit list than usual, LOL. But, you can’t send out a plan to deal with the shit hitting the fan a full day after said plan was desperately requested and then upend it two hours later and not expect people to get cranky. We got him to un-upend everything and things are on back on track.

We were laughing by the end of the call, but I was very cranky for a bit. And I know he’s getting some blowback from the scrum lead over what has to be prioritized, but we have to fix the stuff the clients are using *now* before we worry about the next version. And if we rush through it, and people work too much – things get missed and mistakes get made and then we have more work on the current version. In short, we can’t do the hours we did this past spring – I flat out told him that wrecked me.

Well, off for the FML meetings and lord help me, probably defend the team lead, LOL.

You have a great day, and in a few short hours, we’ll be on the downhill side of the week – with a holiday weekend!