Musings of a marginally sane feline-appreciating female.

And in this country – that is something to be sure. I don’t know about you, but I am bone tired.

Every new piece of information coming out of Uvalde makes it worse. This morning I turned on the TV and they’re interviewing kids who were there. Why must we traumatize them more?

Work this week hasn’t been *bad* but it’s been a bit colorful with how many times I’ve told various levels of management NO. And then last night – I’d run a test three times, all perfect, fourth time – totally whacked out numbers. I did figure out the culprit, but I damn near cried from exhaustion on that one.

And there is still a whole ass pandemic going on – 600 cases a day here in the county and that’s just the reported ones, and everyone is just acting like it’s all over.

Well, I am going to get things wrapped up at work so I can enjoy the weekend – or at least be able to sleep through it.

Hang in there and be gentle with yourself.

And then it’s a proper, desperately needed long weekend. Work hasn’t been *bad* this week, but it’s just been a lot.

Tuesday I had a director ask me if our team could accommodate X, I said no, explained why, seemed settled, yesterday, she asks *someone else* how much it would blow the schedule if we accommodated X – I jumped back in and said no again and got her boss on my side. (I’m not just saying NO – there is an approved alternate solution in place.)

Got a message from my US coworker, can I get through to our friends on the other side of the world that a couple tasks are definitely going to take us longer than they’re estimating as she’s getting nowhere with them. So I just jump on the channel and announce “this is what we are doing, how long we think it will take, and we are full up” and left it at that. (I usually don’t even bother arguing estimates with them and just do my thing, cause they are inexplicably hard headed about these things.)

She is already waffling on if she should work all day tomorrow cause she’s off next week, I tell her in no uncertain terms she is to leave early with the rest of us, and I forward the “go home early and enjoy the holiday” email from corporate to the other side of the world with a “FYI, we’re leaving early Friday.”

Then I left work early for a haircut which felt weird given everything in the world, but I had the appointment and honestly, needed to get OUT of the office.

So, who knows if I’ll be able to even log on this morning. I was polite all day – but I was not taking any shit from anyone and I don’t know how many people above you that you can tell NO in a day, but 5 may be the limit. I am not getting paid enough to be the de facto US team lead, which is what I’ve been all week.

If I can log on this morning – I feel like I’m going to have to have an awkward conversation with folks on the other side of the world saying, “Look, I don’t know how much US news gets covered there, but while everyone may be at work this week, no one is OK, so please back the fuck off for a bit.”

Well, time to go fight the good fight.

I don’t know why, but I thought after Sandy Hook, we’d finally found the line and make it harder for this to happen. But 10 years later and 19 tiny kids are gone forever in Uvalde. With countless other massacres in the meantime.

Because America loves its guns more than anything else.

Things were well enough under control when I left work yesterday that I SLEPT IN UNTIL 7AM TODAY!

I have one thing that has to be finished today and it’s already halfway done and that should be finished by lunch. My next deadline is June 1, and I have plenty of time to get everything done, even taking into account the holiday, leaving early tomorrow, and the fact that we’ll probably get booted out early on Friday.

My other task today is going to be getting hold of the master capacity spreadsheet that the leads are using and figure out why and how it is so fucked up – cause that’s got to be part of the root of our over-commitment problems. It’s not a secret spreadsheet or anything, I just only learned of its existence in the past couple weeks, and I just need to understand what on earth is going on.

Am I overstepping my bounds? Quite possibly. Do I care? Not if it gets the capacity situation squared away.

You have a fantastic Tuesday! I know that’s my plan.

Lordy, these multliple special versions cannot end soon enough.

Today wasn’t bad – got in, 90% of what needs to be done by tomorrow was reassigned, one new things added – all doable, though we are at our absolute limit for this particular version.

Though it took me a long time to parse that damn email, cause it started with “4 new bugs” – bad – then “you only have one” – still not great – then “and 90% of your other stuff is moved” – much better – once it all registered in my brain, the day was off to a good start.

And our team lead and my manager were both appreciative of our weekend work and we’re getting some extra PTO for it.

So of course, client has 2 defects that show up today… Dev says, “Well, I can get the fixes in the current version today…”

NO. NONONONONONONONO. Me:

She was trying to help and get things fixed, I can’t be mad at that, but there is just no time this version – what takes her a half hour to fix takes us hours to test.

So – I stood up for my team, put forth an alternate solution that gets the client a temporary fix alongside this next version, did some very quick testing on it with my dev, and the permanent fix will go in the next version and we’ll have time for full blown testing.

So today was crazy, but good.

And another chance to go out and be awesome or something like that.

I got the most critical stuff done for work this weekend, so that’s something. Now I’m down to roughly… 2 1/2 days of work to get done in 2 days? Which is a far improvement over where I was on Friday morning, so that’s something.

Our weekend heat wave broke with some storms last night, and looks like we’ll have a cool and rainy week ahead.

Now, with work being all chaotic yet again, the house looks like a tornado hit it. How behind on, well, everything am I?

So, this week is going to be trying to ahead of things at work (which could be impossible, but I’m TRYING!) and get back on track around the house. So. Much. Laundry.

Not sure what to do on the work front. I’m not quitting or looking for another job, but someone needs to advocate louder on behalf of the whole team, and well, guess it’s me. Just gotta do it enough to get the point across but not get fired, LOL.

Labor leaders didn’t die for a 40 hour workweek and tolerable working conditions so I could be working nights and weekends. My great grandfather helped organize unions in the oil fields in California, so I guess being an annoying pain in the ass at work is genetic.

Welp, time to go be an awesome pain in the ass.

Gonna be another scorcher out there today and it’s not even Memorial Day. We’re killing the planet and no one in power cares, so that’s awesome.

Got some office work done yesterday – I was admittedly petulant about it and put it off until late afternoon and OF COURSE discovered that the database I’d been working in on Friday had gone tango uniform and I had to start over in a new database. This is why we shouldn’t be working weekends when no one is around to feed the hamsters in the servers, among other reasons we shouldn’t be working weekends.

I’ll be getting going on it all again here shortly and I hope to have the things due tomorrow done today, and the Tuesday stuff to a point where I won’t be working until midnight Monday/Tuesday. Realistically we need to push back the Tuesday stuff by a day or two – and have said so out loud – but I’m not at all counting on it.

And I know, shit happens, things go sideways, sometimes you have to work late or a weekend. And I’ll do it because it has to be done. But I am also going to be petty as fuck about it this week and there is no fucking way I am working over the upcoming holiday weekend. And I am leaving early on Wednesday and I am not coming back to work afterwards. Team lead has me marked as out for the whole day – I didn’t even correct him because otherwise I’d just end up with more work and I’m trying to avoid that.

I don’t have much of an exciting life outside of work, but I DO have a life and I am TRYING to keep my personal time to myself.

But this too shall pass. Probably like a kidney stone, but it will pass.

And now it’s time to go be the fucking awesome employee that I am.

OK, shingles shot sore arm is definitely worse than covid shot sore arm. It did at least occur to me that I could take some Advil for it, so hopefully that will kick in soon.

I still can’t quite believe that on top of everything else – Monkeypox. Seriously?? I am very much in “I can’t even” mode on that one. Plus a heat advisory for the weekend – Mother Nature is very pissed off and understandably wants to kill us all.

I am not *as* annoyed that I am working this weekend than I was yesterday, but still pretty annoyed. When they assigned this extra bug to me on Thursday, I told them I did not have enough time for it. Then they said, oh, it’s deferred, don’t worry. I pointed out because dev had in fact made changes, it could not be deferred. And though I had said NO TIME – Friday morning they’re all “it’s yours…”

I genuinely don’t know what is going on with our team lead these past couple months, but folks are gonna mutiny if he doesn’t get it together. He’s been given carte blanche to move new feature tasks out and he isn’t – it’s like he wants to put it on the individuals who simply don’t have enough hours in a day to have to *say* they can’t do it, instead of clearly seeing that we just don’t have the time and being proactive. It’s like he’s decided if he moves things out, he’s failed somehow and he’d rather have that failure on us.

The saving grace is that there are people above him who see what is happening and continuing to push him on moving out feature tasks. It’s just really disappointing that he’s just not looking out for the team.

I will at least say, when I decided fuck it, I’ll work on things this weekend, it did take a ton of pressure off, but still – working over the weekend… I’m not gonna quit or anything, but I am just seriously fucking annoyed. But I do think my US partner in crime may be looking for a new job, cause she is really not happy right now.

But in a nod to the weekend, I will be working downstairs in front of the TV. But not until I finish all my Pokemon Go Community Day challenges, because, priorities.

You have a great weekend and be blessed with managers that understand what a 40 hour workweek is.

I did manage to get off work on time and go get my shingles shot and an ice cream and do the marketing – and now I get to go back upstairs and work again until vaccine side effects hit.

Because I have roughly 5 days of work to get done by Tuesday and we told them this will require weekend work to get the Monday stuff handled and then an extension for the Tuesday work – which I know our lead will not give a shit about.

So my weekend is now going to be split between work and shingles shot side effects.

YAY.

THE LILYMONSTER! She survived the night of no food, was very good at the vet, didn’t need any extractions (yay for her mouth and my wallet) and the hardest thing when she got home was convincing her that she really needed to take a nap.

She also discovered her nails were trimmed as she tried to scale the side of the bed and suddenly realized her kitty ice spikes weren’t working – the “WTF” look on her face was pretty priceless.

She’s all back to normal this morning and happy that she doesn’t have two humans basically on top of her going, “So, how ya feeling?”

Half day today and I will NOT be working late, already made that known. Went 10 rounds yesterday over a defect that has been “deferred” to the next release, but the developer already checked in fixes, so it has to be tested now. Saying it’s deferred doesn’t mean anything if the developer has made changes.

But, not my problem. ETA: It became my problem. Though I very clearly said yesterday that I could NOT take this extra bug and then was told it was deferred, they decided oh yes, it does need to be tested and gave it to me. THOUGH I SAID I DIDN’T HAVE THE CAPACITY FUCKING YESTERDAY.

Y’all have a great Friday!