Musings of a marginally sane feline-appreciating female.

AND IT’S 3 DAYS LONG FOR ME AND I’M NOT WORKING ONE SINGLE SECOND OF IT!

It’s mostly going to be the excitement of running errands and getting caught up on everything around the house, and Monday the LilyMonster is getting her teeth cleaned so that’s why I’m taking the day off. I want to be able to drop everything and get her when she’s done and we can spend the afternoon on the bed recovering.

And speaking of The Monster – she has been using her fountain! And sending water EVERYWHERE. I topped it off yesterday and was thinking, “Damn, I’m not sure she should be drinking THIS MUCH” and then realized there was water alllllllll over the counter and the towel I’d put under the fountain was totally soaked. The fountain isn’t leaking, but rather it appears that when she’s drinking, the flow is going down her chin/chest and then all over the place. So for the moment, I’ve now got the fountain on a tray & towel and I’ll be at the HMart today trying to see if I can’t find a nifty solution in the housewares aisle, or at least another tray for her food since the one she has has been repurposed to the fountain.

The last minute bug got done just in time, and as such, no lessons were learned by management about overcommitting the team. We got a nice shout out from the lead, but my dude, ya gotta learn to say no. I did have an epiphany yesterday about how this particular app should be tested – bit too late for this version, but I will be incorporating it into the next round of testing and I think it will make it easier to find the little things that have been getting missed. It really should be done against every version that has had these performance changes, but that’s time I don’t know how to find right now. (There is that voice in the back of my head going, “Well, you could just bring the laptop downstairs and do it while watching TV this weekend” – I am telling that voice to shut the hell up.)

And in fun news, T-Mobile/Sprint has a free MLB.tv deal – you have until 4/11 to sign up – I did and now I can see ALL THE PADRES GAMES! And I figured out how to send a tab on my laptop to the TV, YAY! In years past I had resisted the MLB.tv subscription cause I was all “well, I’ll never leave the house again if I can watch all the games at home” – I probably should have ponied up the $$ for it in 2020 & 2021 now that I think about it.

Time to go run ALL THE ERRANDS!

We did it. And I did not cuss out a single soul this week.

That new freaking bug? Rolled my happy ass in at 830 yesterday, and discover a dev in the PI had checked the fix in overnight and it had been ready for testing since 7AM.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Ah well, sat down, set everything up to test – and it failed. There were a half dozen related fields that should populate when you mash the buttons and they weren’t populating. The bug called out a couple of those specific fields, but no one looked to see if they were all populating, so, half fixed. Plus an A=B-C=D situation where it simply did not add up right. (This was extra weird cause it has always been adding up wrong in that particular scenario. Like, forever. Guess our clients never use that scenario, but it should still add up right.)

Send to back to dev. By now it’s late day. It gets into the build. I go back upstairs after dinner. A+B-C does now equal D! The remaining fields that weren’t populating…were still not populating. Quick sanity check in older version and yes, they should be populating. My dev is still online – I show her the other test, she’s on it. (I don’t know if she thought they weren’t supposed to populate or just spaced on it since it’s been a hell week.)

So, we’ll see what this morning brings. When asked, I said I thought it would take 12 hours per database to test. It’s looking like I wasn’t that far off the mark. And it occurs to me now – when whoever is estimating these things is doing that, I don’t think they’re taking “aw shit, it’s still fucked” time into account where you have to stop testing, figure out what it’s doing wrong before sending it back to dev, and then start fresh when it’s fixed. And that “aw shit” time does add up.

But, once this bug is done and out of the way, and hopefully that will be today – next week should be more normal. I sure hope so, cause the hours I’ve been working lately are completely unsustainable. My brain and body are very much in “fuuuuuuuck this!” mode, LOL.

Well, time to go log in AND TEST THIS BUG AND PASS IT!!!

You have an excellent Friday!

So the good news is the release from hell is done. Dev asked yesterday, “Can I check in a new bug fix to the current (aka, hell) release?” I took initiative and answered in lieu of the QC team lead who is on the other side of the planet, NO, NO YOU CANNOT. (Seriously, the release is already locked down, I wasn’t really stepping on any toes, and really had to prevent it getting checked into the wrong version.)

Get email later from lead on this new bug – what’s your time estimate to test? I give a very large number, cause this is a high risk fix given all the whack-a-mole we’ve been playing with this particular app, and while I adore my team, they have a horrific track record of underestimating how much time testing takes, especially lately.* Realize later in the day I am gonna get dragged into this.

Worked late last night on a different release cause my particular bugs had to be done early for the performance team – which has a ridiculous amount of time to get their speed testing done and after the release from hell we should have told them we’re taking an extra day or two, but whatever. They’re done and out of the way, so it’s all good.

While working, get email. “Dev can check the new bug fix into ‘release from hell + 1’ and we can do a special build and the testing can be split between Cindy & the PI, and then we can jam it into the special client release that has to also be tested by Tuesday!” THE FUCK? Checking the fix into the next release is great, everything after is fucked beyond belief.

I tell team lead, I CANNOT commit to testing this – we have a half day Friday and I have an appointment and can’t work late (like for real, this isn’t even a “fuck you for trying to make me work late” fake appointment**) and I am out on PTO on Monday. Leave me the fuck out of this one.

“Oh, just ask for a special build once the fix is checked in and you can work on it Thursday and we [PI] can pick it up on Friday.” Here’s the thing, they can no more just “pick up where I left off” than I can fly to the fucking moon. That was the point where I logged off lest I respond with, “Please go yeet yourself into the sun” and/or gently throw my laptop out the window.

We do these special client build/releases WEEKLY. The client is not in production, they are testing before going live. We can tell the client “Hey, we know about bug X, the fix will be in the next special build NEXT FUCKING WEEK, so no need to lose your shit.” (OK, maybe we tell them without the sweary bits.)

But no, we’re gonna try and do a full proper test by COB tomorrow in release from hell + 1, then test in special build by Tuesday. Assuming that it doesn’t have to be sent back to development because fixing X broke Y.

Good thing I don’t have enough other work already to last me until August. OH WAIT, I ABSOLUTELY DO.

After logging off, I hollered to my brother, “HEY WANNA DRINK SOME BEER AND WATCH THE LUCKIEST DIPSHITS IN SPACE?”***

So, there was some mid-week beers and shots and general bitching about my QC leads’ inability to say, “No, we can’t do this in X timeframe, but we can do it in Y timeframe.” And as such, my ass slept the fuck in this morning, cause I am not doing them any favors today.

Am I gonna rush the dev to get the fix checked in today? Fuck no. Will I not hesitate to send things back to dev for the tiniest issue? Fuck yes. Am I being incredibly petty about all of this? Fuck yes. Is it reasonable to be incredibly petty about all this? Fuck yes.

My brother said he had a dream this week that I quit my job. I am shockingly nowhere near that point. This stupidity is temporary and I genuinely like what I do and the long hours right now suck, but no one is yelling at me or telling me directly or indirectly that I’m an idiot, so this too will pass.

But they’re not getting above and beyond today, cause they don’t fucking deserve it. (She says knowing she’ll quite likely end up working late again tonight cause she’s a dumbass.)

You have an awesome day and for the love of all that’s good and holy, DON’T BE AFRAID TO SAY NO. OR EVEN JUST NOT TODAY, BUT LATER IS DOABLE.

* I have learned to utterly ignore the time estimates on any given bug. It takes the time it takes and I do not even think twice about it anymore. (Actually even in my early QC days, I kinda went, “Oh well, it took longer than the estimate, but it got done by the deadline, fire me.”)
** My brother actually asked, “Wait, do you actually have something Friday, or are you just telling them you won’t work late without saying you won’t work late?”
*** The Expanse. He’s gotten me well and duly hooked on it. We did end up watching the new Moon Knight first.

It’s early meeting day and of course, it took me until the wee hours of the morning to fall asleep last night. Nothing went spectacularly wrong yesterday, but it was a very, very long day.

I did get in some yoga at lunch and right after work yesterday – decided after ~1 1/2 years of the beginner sessions, I’d try intermediate! OMG, they were only 15 minute sessions, but they kicked my ass. And I had my acupuncture appointment last night – 6:20 my phone beeps at me, and I look at it and think, “No, that’s wrong, my acupuncture appointment isn’t until the first week of Apr—-OH SHIT!” Was only 3 minutes late!

You’d think that would have had me sleeping well, but NOPE! Any other day, I would have just set my alarm later, but…meetings.

But, in some good news, the one monthly release we’ve been working on that has been an utter nightmare is DONE. It was an absolute case of whack-a-mole with a couple of apps we’ve been working on. Fixing X breaks Y, fixing Y breaks Z… And one thing I’m still not convinced isn’t broken but the dev said it was OK, so, I’m letting it go. These extra releases are just beating the hell out of us, cause though we’re finding things that are wrong, because of the extra work, we’re finding them later in the process and just scrambling.

But, we get paid tomorrow, we have a half day on Friday, and I have Monday off. Lily is getting her teeth cleaned and I want to be ready to dash to the vet and get her when she’s done, and then spend the afternoon commiserating with her. If that doesn’t call for a day of PTO, I’m not sure what does.

Now, does this day of PTO mean I’m gonna be working this weekend? If history is any indicator, yes, but I’m gonna try REALLY HARD to not have that happen. Not helping that the team lead sent out the upcoming PTO list and forgot mine. Again.

Welp, time to go not participate in some meetings! You have a great day.

And I only hit the snooze button once – not too shabby.

Got in yesterday, started on my Monday stuff I’d planned, and get “Hey, I tested this in DB A, can you test it in DB B?”

Sigh. Yes. Not a huge deal, should be a reasonably quick test.

Discover that fixing X broke Y on the second test run. Other tester didn’t see it cause they were focused on X. Send back to dev. Fix is checked in, will be ready after evening build. Go back upstairs after dinner. Discover that fixing Y broke Z, again on the second test run, and the dev was quite reasonably gone for the day. Mind you, testing was supposed to be done Friday – I told my folks in Makati I didn’t even know what the hell to do since we’re so far behind – it’s getting kicked up to the QC lead to decide what’s next, and I logged my ass off for the night.

This is what happens when folks are just trying to do way too much.

In silly Lily news – she’s been drinking from the bathroom sink for a while now, which is fine. Thought well, maybe we could try a fountain again – she & her sister didn’t really get into it the last time we tried, but that was then and this is now. Got a super nice ceramic one that looked really nice – but it had no flow control so it was too splashy for our gal. Got the somewhat unattractive plastic version (at least they make a smaller one now) that does have water flow control and while I have not *seen* her use it, she has come out of the kitchen with a wet chin & chest on more than a few occasions and she’s not dashing for the bathroom sink every time I go in there.

So, at lease ONE win for the week. Time to go see what’s what in my testing world.

You have a great day.

And I am once again calling for a 4 day workweek. But, at least it’s a half day Friday and pay week, so I’ve got that going for me. And I hauled my ass out of bed before 6:30 this morning, so if things go reasonably well at work today, I can be done early. Let’s all cross our fingers for that. My cranky old body and brain can’t take these 11 hour days anymore.

I’m trying to offset it with exercise, but there is only so much that yoga & walking can do against capitalism, LOL.

But I keep telling myself that these extra builds aren’t permanent and we’ll get better at them. Hopefully not so good that they decide to do this again in the future, though, cause this was definitely a mistake.

BBC is talking about an airline having to cancel a fuckton of flights out of Heathrow due to staff Covid infections… Weird how that would happen after mitigation efforts were dropped all over the place.

Well, I forgot to hit post on this, and it took less than 2 hours for the shitshow to start , LOL. BUT I HAVE EVERYTHING UNDER CONTROL.

Went for a good long walk and saw what I am pretty sure is a Cooper’s Hawk. Cleared my head and I got most of my bitchiness out of my system. (Yet again, how dare exercise help!?!)

Got my work done, only took about 2 1/2 hours, so not near as bad as I’d anticipated – everything is prepped for testing tomorrow, and the bit I couldn’t finish on Friday night is done. Of course, the table structure that was supposed to have been updated on Friday night still doesn’t look like it was updated, so…IDK what is going on there, but that is a tomorrow problem.

And then I took a very long hot shower and ate some pizza and now I’m going to go draft myself a fantasy baseball team.

Here’s to the coming week not being a total shitstorm.

I did not work yesterday. Too tired and too salty about it all. I’ll get things under control today, but damn, this is maddening. I like my work. I have a great team. Management is usually not completely clueless. But this, “well, raises are shit again this year, because, reasons, and hey, let’s double your workload without any changes in staffing” – it’s some seriously short-sighted bullshit. Add to it the promotion I was promised at hire + 1 year that has yet to materialize – yeah, I’m super salty. (It was because I went from a Level 5 in support to Level 4 in QC, and it affects the bonus payout, so they wanted to get me kicked back up to Level 5, but I’ve given up on it ever happening. I assume it went out the window when I bailed on being scrum master after the position was completely misrepresented to me.)

If we weren’t getting fucked on our workloads, I probably wouldn’t give a shit and just roll with it. But I’m sure management also knows that no one is in the mood to try to find a new job, so they’re just gonna keep squeezing.

In other shit that’s making my brain hurt, I’m apparently eligible for another Covid booster shot. Though there is part of my brain wondering why bother since it’s not like I am taking advantage of being vaccinated in any way, shape or form anyway. I’ll get it, but it feels a tiny bit pointless. I also have to figure out how to coordinate it with the shingles vaccine I need to get, too.

Ah well, it will all work out one way or another. Gonna go for a walk and see if I can’t burn off some of this pissiness and then try to see what I can do to make tomorrow less of a shitshow.

I brought the laptop downstairs. Had a sandwich. Went for a nice long walk. Sent an email to the animal shelter to see if they can use the brand new pet fountain that Lily doesn’t like. Ate some cheese and crackers.

The work is not getting itself done.

I think we’re approaching the point of, “Fuck it, there is still tomorrow.”

And it’s not over, waaahhhhhhhh. The plan for doing some prep work to make the upcoming week easier is out the window and it’s going to be actual work – there just wasn’t enough time to wrap everything up last night. :( Going from 3 maintenance releases a month to 6 SUCKS. Zero stars, do not recommend.

What’s frustrating is everyone is overloaded so things are getting missed. One thing I’m working on involved the structure of the tables being changed – like, 10 tables. First thing I did was look to make sure all the tables had been updated before processing things. Well, one got skipped. Asked about it Wednesday, didn’t get an answer til Thursday, the dev put in a database change request, that didn’t get touched until Friday morning and wasn’t finished until the evening build Friday night. And I’m mystified as to how this was tested in another database – I guess they just ran the process and it didn’t blow up, so all good.

And, it meant that something I’d tested earlier in the week had to be re-tested, cause though it was for a separate defect, it involved the same tables and when I tested it, I was running on the assumption that all the tables had in fact been been updated. Definitely my bad for choosing poorly on what defect to work on first. I did at least get that re-tested last night, so that’s something.

I’ll readily admit that I’m sitting here dithering cause the alternative is unpaid work in some form or fashion, either around the house or for the shareholders, and I don’t really want to do either.

I suppose I could just say, “Fuck it, I don’t work on weekends” but that is gonna make Monday a true hellscape and Mondays are bad enough on their own. I’m debating bringing the laptop downstairs and working with the TV on. but I’m not sure if that would just slow me down, and I don’t really want this to take longer than it has to, but I also don’t want to be locked upstairs all afternoon.

But first, I think I need a sandwich.