Musings of a marginally sane feline-appreciating female.

I was gonna get up early today – 6 – just to get a jump on things cause I’ve got something to test that has to be done today and I just want to make sure I’ve got plenty of time. Normally I wouldn’t be starting a bug test the day its due, but things happen. At least it’s the regression test, so it’s already worked fine once, and regression usually goes faster anyway.

But at 5:15 AM, the LilyMonster decided to go rummaging around in the bedroom and woke me up and by 5:30 I realized, fuck, I am totally awake. I have enough cold brew in the fridge for one good sized tumbler, but today is definitely gonna require more, so Starbucks has been acquired, so I am well and duly supplied for caffeine for the day.

So, if things take longer than anticipated, I have plenty of time and if not – in early means out early! But – 0530 was not exactly the plan this morning…

The mini-feature from heck is done, YAY! Regression testing is next up for it, but that should be a walk in the park compared to the first go round. Of the 7 bugs we found in a week, I found 5 and got a little shout out in our weekly meeting for it this morning, and a nice note on my great collaboration w/our dev on the last bug. (All I did was ask, “Can you fix this before the deadline” and she could and did, but I’ll take it.)

And that other bug I shoehorned in on Friday and turned around the same day? Got a shout out for that, too.

AND our Christmas gifts from the department arrived! (They did warn us it would take a while.) So now I have another cozy fleece jacket – setting up the little storefront where we could pick what we wanted was a really nice idea.

I’m not the type of person who needs constant validation in my work, but I do need it every now and again, just to know that someone is paying attention – and it’s nice.

It FLEW by and I am not happy about it. Got a flurry of notifications on Teams last night (the joys of the Philippines being 12 hours ahead) – something about the special build being run on Friday afternoon – I assure you, there was no special build run when I was in the office. I left early-ish, around 4:30 – and there is no way it would have been run after that since it gets run at 6PM, so I have no idea what they’re talking about.

But no matter, today and tomorrow I will continue with this slightly disastrous mini-feature – it really shouldn’t have been put into a regular monthly release – we should have setup a separate system to test it in to get all the kinks out without a deadline, then moved that code to the regular build, done some regression testing and then sent it out. But no one asks me this stuff.

Now we just have to pray to the dev gods & goddesses that we don’t find anything new wrong with it, cause we are damn near out of time for fixes and retesting.

But, it’s a half-day Friday week and payday, so I’ve got that going for me.

Have a great week and don’t let the stupid stuff get to you. I’m certainly trying not to.

Got up, came downstairs and discovered the TV was dark but still had audio… Figured it was the cable, tried switching channels (usually works) and basically I’m standing there with the remote in my hand looking like a confused puppy going WHY NO PRETTY PICTURE?

Then my brother walks in and says, “I’m already on it!” – I figured it must be a cable problem if he knew it was going on, but no – he had come upstairs earlier, seen the audio/no picture problem, done all the googling and troubleshooting and the diagnosis was that the display was basically dead.* 8 1/2 years old and roughly 75,000 hours of viewing time – it had a good run. (I leave in on 24/7 – turn the volume down a bit at night – I like the white noise. A silent house is creepy AF.)

He’d already been on the Target website to see what they had and off we went. Ended up getting another Vizio, a little larger than the old one, and with 4K and some other bells and whistles. It was on sale, and then actually cheaper at checkout – and I shit you not, cost LESS THAN HALF of the one that I got 8 1/2 years ago. Moore’s law and all that I guess.

My last TV was the first HD TV I’d had (15 years after they came out) – this is the first 4K I’ve had (only 9 years after they came out, LOL.) The picture is nice and crisp and the short track mixed relay speed skating is looking good! It’s not as big a leap as going from my old very failing CRT display to the HD (holy shit that was a huge difference) – but it’s really nice.

And most importantly – it works.

*The LED’s gave out – they can technically be replaced, but it also requires a soldering iron which is where my brother noped out of that option – understandable.

It would seem that the car inspector only works every other Saturday and today was not his day AND YET THEIR DAMN SYSTEM LET ME MAKE AN APPOINTMENT SPECIFICALLY FOR A CAR INSPECTION TODAY.

Like, what the fuck? I know for a fact that the scheduling system can take the inspectors schedule into account when a state inspection is selected – it’s just one more if/then statement in the code. If “state inspection” = “Y” then exclude these dates for availability, or lookup availability dates/times on inspector X schedule. It can be done.

I don’t know about you, but my Saturday is off to a great start cause my brother made the Starbucks run! They lured him in with bonus points – they do a good job of “hey, come buy these things you get all the time!” (Seriously, it’s rare they do a bonus points promo where I go, “Oh, I never buy that.”)

And I am fully in Winter Olympics mode. If your country only has one person competing, I am totally rooting for you. Bonus if it’s a warm weather country. GO EVERYBODY! DO GREAT! HAVE FUN!

And you can get through a LOT of coverage when you fast forward through the commercials, instant replays, waiting on scores, and filler commentary.

My big exciting plans for the day beyond watching ALL THE SPORTS is getting the car inspected. The registration is due in June…the safety inspection, February. Had I been thinking, I should have had them do a safety inspection when I bought it to get everything in sync – I think when June rolls around, I’ll just get the safety done again so it’s all due at the same time going forward – $20 to only have to remember car stuff once a year vs. twice a year – worth it. (Also one less reason to leave the house in the dead of winter.)

I’m taking it to the dealership, and I have to say, that’s an experience that has seriously improved over the years. Online scheduling, a huge comfortable waiting area, enough folks on staff that when you get there at your appointment time, they’re actually ready to work on your car. And for inspections, being able to just make an appointment vs. getting in a line of 20 cars and just having to wait…well, that’s nice.

It’s also going to be nice to not be holding my breath to find out what needs to be fixed to make it road-worthy. (I loved my old Jeep, but those end years, whew, inspections were kinda stressful.)

Well, time to go warm up the car and venture out into the world. You have a warm Saturday.

Maaan, folks are trying me today, LOL.

So, the thing we’re working on is kinda big-ish/split amongst 4 folks to test – and that was all I was planning on doing today and Monday and Tuesday. Let’s call it a mini-feature – bigger than a bug, not as big as a full new feature.

Get in this morning from the other side of the world, “Hey can you test this totally different thing on a another version that the dev checked way late…” “Well, that’s gonna cut into mini-feature time, but OK.”

The first thing I do with mini-feature this morning just to see what’s up with it after special builds and whatnot last night – find another issue. (I have found 3 of 4 bugs so far. This kinda feels like a crappy group project right now.) Let dev know. Dev fixes it and checks it in. Not going to be testable until after the 6PM build, aka Monday morning, cause WHO IS NOT WORKING LATE OR THIS WEEKEND?

But hey, that’s OK, time now freed up for that other thing. Get an email to me & local boss – can you do a special build so more mini-feature testing can be done today? Um, what about that other thing you so desperately needed me to do today? Huh? WHAT ABOUT THAT? I CAN ONLY TEST ONE THING AT A TIME.

I don’t even know how to request a special build and local boss answered with “No. The version doesn’t lock down until mid week next week, no need to shut it down for an hour in the middle of the workday.”

And it’s all worked out OK – I have had time to do the other thing, I’m on track to finish it up right around quitting time – and that quitting time will be early (I even posted on Teams – 0700-1600 EST in my status when I got online, ROFL) and I will not be turning that laptop back on until Monday morning.

And if anyone asks, I have an appointment after work. No one needs to know it is with a beer and the Olympic Opening Ceremonies. We are still in the middle of a whole ass pandemic and I need my damn downtime.

YAY! Though once again, I suspect we probably shouldn’t be doing the Olympics in the middle of a pandemic, but I am also looking forward to tuning out the entire world the next two weeks.

I’m up at 6 this morning, cause I’ve got what will probably be a hella long day at work, and if it’s not, then I at least start the weekend a little early.

Testing a thing at work, kind of a tight deadline, we’ve split up the testing among several people. Found an issue*, sent it to the dev yesterday morning, got an email back late afternoon that she’d fixed it and the new code was checked in. Briefly thought about working again after dinner and seeing if the fix worked after the 6PM build** – decided against it cause it wouldn’t matter if I found an issue at 7 last night or 7 this morning – so I didn’t. Look at me setting healthy boundaries for myself.

And then of course, I get a text from the other side of the world at 9PM – “Hey, did that fix get into the 6PM build? It’s not showing in the build notes. Is your issue fixed?” Like, IDK if it got checked in before the deadline or not, you got the same email I did from the developer, you can check the timestamps in the tracking system, and if it’s not in the notes, then I think you already have the answer? And you know the issue I had, you could recreate it and see if it’s working or not… But I did end up popping on and punching a few buttons and determining that no, the check-in was after the deadline for the 6PM build.

I’m not mad, they were in a panic and not really thinking straight, it’s fine, but seriously – it just had to happen when I said to myself, “No, this will wait until the morning and it will be fine.”

But it’s all good, it’s Friday, the Olympics are here, and I am NOT working this weekend.

February 4 wasn’t a big picture day it seems.

* Second issue I’ve found in 2 days. Both immediately apparent as soon as I ran a test and anyone testing should have seen them straightaway. Why am I the first to find these?
** The 6PM & 6AM builds are when some magic shit happens that takes the code the devs have checked it and gets it in our test systems. Having it on a schedule like that is great, except when someone misses the check-in deadline and it doesn’t get pulled into the test system until 12 hours later. (Which usually isn’t an issue except this time around, but my friends on the other side of the world were able to get an extra build run.)

It’s a balmy 20º and grey as fuck out there this morning, but I bundled up and braved it for coffee, because – social interaction. And coffee.

Our cases continue to significantly drop, which is a relief, though I’m still glad I pushed my January appointments back. Hair in February, dentist in March. The dentist actually called me to reschedule cause they were going to be closed for a continuing education day and my appointment shouldn’t have even been scheduled that day. I told them good, cause I wasn’t keen on coming in anyway with case counts so high. The office manager tried to be reassuring and said “Oh, but we’re all vaccinated and we spread out the appointments” – easy for you to say, you get to keep your PPE on.

I don’t know if anyone else has run into this, but I’ve found a new-to-me shitty thing happening on Amazon – massive price gouging for shipping. Ran into it twice in the last few days. Humidifier cleaner fish – 1 for $5 sold by Amazon, free shipping. 2 for $7, different seller – $50 shipping. Ice melt – 1 for $22, non-Amazon seller, but shipped by Amazon, free shipping. 2 for $30 – different seller – $150 shipping. Seriously shitty nonsense there – I reported both sellers to Amazon, but I doubt it will do any good – so keep an eye out for that bullshit.

My Facebook memories tell me that on this day in 2009, the late great Moxley dog brought me a very large, very frozen squirrel. He was SO PROUD that he finally “caught” a squirrel. That dog brought me so many things. Squirrel (frozen). Possum (living). Fox (very dead for a very long time). Mortally storm injured baby squirrels (they did not make it). I don’t know if he thought they were toys, a true catch, or in the case of the baby squirrels – that I could somehow save them. But each time, I tried my best not to be horrified. I miss him so much, just not that little part of him, LOL.

So, January 30, 2014 – it was very cold, and could only be fixed with carne asada for lunch at the local tex-mex spot. I really miss having the occasional sit down lunch. Pandemics really fucking suck.

We got lucky here, just an inch – what my Mom used to call decorator snow. Clearing off the cars took longer than shoveling the sidewalk. It’s cold as fuck out there, but sunny and we’re getting SO much extra light reflected off the snow – love that!

Roads are in good shape – sand/salt trucks were coming through all night. Pre-pandemic we were on a Metrobus route to the Pentagon, so that kicked us up a notch on the road clearing priority – we haven’t had a Metrobus come through here in… near 2 years now I’d say, but it seems they haven’t changed how the snow clearing works – which is nice. And thanks to that, I was able to get up to Starbucks and we have lattes and cold brew and breakfast sandwiches. (A better person would have simply stayed home, but the 90 seconds I spend picking up coffee is a ridiculously large social outlet for me.)

And I found out something new about my car! I knew that if it was remote started, it would only run for 10 minutes. (I guess it’s for when you either a) forget you started it or b) somehow butt started it, even though you have to hit the button twice.) It will also only remote start 2 times in a row, then you have to get in the car and manually start it. But still, as my brother was clearing the car, it was fun to say “hey, do you want me to start mine up?” and then just hit the button to make it happen from the living room, LOL. I really love that feature. Don’t need heated seats if the car is warm when you get in it!

In looking back through old pictures, this past week was also when I temporarily fostered Spot the Leopard Gecko from the classroom I’d been subbing in – if I remember right, she was supposed to go home with one of the kids every weekend, but there was snow, classes were canceled, but the building was still open – so I was able to beg a maintenance man to let me in and retrieve Spot and she stayed with me for a week. The dog didn’t care, and the cats pretty much lost their shit over having a lizard in the house.

There was a lot of snow on January 29th…