I HAD A PLAN

Posted on February 25, 2021 by A Dreamer

I seriously had a plan in place for the rest of the week and it was a good plan. I have 4 bugs that are “top of the list” – Bug 1 – finish today or tomorrow – needs to be done by tomorrow, but it’s not a hard deadline.

Bugs 2 & 3 – hard deadline of 3/4, and with taking Monday/Tuesday off, doing the data prep tomorrow so, two days of pure test time works.

Bug 4 – a weird out of cycle thing that won’t even be ready to test until 3/11, so, end of the list.

It was a good plan.

Then, “Oh, Bug 4, that’s ready now and needs to be done by 3/3″…

Well, fuck. But then Bug 1 – broken, back to development – and it’s already Friday over there – even if they fix it overnight, it’s *highly* unlikely the testing on that is done tomorrow.

So, Bug 4 is now in process, Bug 1 goes to the bottom of the list cause it doesn’t have a hard deadline and 2 & 3 are still on track. I think.

DAMMIT, UNIVERSE, STOP FUCKING WITH MY PLANS.

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Is the week just whipping by for anyone else?

Posted on February 24, 2021 by A Dreamer

Or is it just me? Cause I am having problems wrapping my head around the fact it’s already Wednesday night.

The Feature – IT’S DONE! Finished yesterday!! Of course not without a bit of drama along the way.

System: Printing, printing, happily printing!
Me: Awesome, let’s do another!
System: Sorry, can’t print to that drive.
Me: YOU JUST DID IT 5 MINUTES AGO.

A reboot fixed it, so I am sticking with “my VPN dropped, it’s not the software.” Then one of the product managers went, “Should we change X?” I usually stay out of this stuff, but I put my foot down and said no – a decision had been made, intentionally, on that exact bit of the feature and it was the way they wanted it – too late in the game for changes. Thank god another PM said no change, too.

But it’s done. Got multiple kind callouts today for the ridiculous amount of work I put into it, and while I’m in this for money, not glory – it’s nice that it was noticed.

Rest of the week, one bug – data already jammed into the system so that’s ready to go first thing tomorrow, and then jam some more data in the system to be ready next week for two other bugs.

AND THEN A LONG WEEKEND!!!! And not a moment too soon, cause I’m getting a bit twitchy.

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Happy Tuesday!

Posted on February 23, 2021 by A Dreamer

And a happy Tuesday it will be – the system that just shit the bed on Friday night was finally brought back up last night so today – THE FEATURE TESTING THAT WOULDN’T END WILL FINALLY END.

It will be the first thing I do once I get back upstairs. I want this feature off my to-do list SO MUCH. I did get a shout out on an email showing our bug burndown for the week cause I knocked out 16 bugs last week – granted, it was all this one feature, but I’ll take some recognition.

Honestly, if I had known this feature would take up something like 2 1/2 months of my life, I would have run away and joined the circus. It’s been an exercise in perpetual frustration, from “it won’t print and all and there are no dev resources to look at it for weeks” to finding bug after bug long after other testers had moved on to other things.

And then, “Oh, since you’ve tested so much, can you review the documentation?” Sure – only to find there was no example of the report itself in the documentation, and the second part of the report is really fucking confusing if you don’t know what you’re looking at (and clients looking at it for the first time will not) – so it sounds like we’ll at least have that, so that was some time well spent to look at it and go, “Wait, this is all?”

But it will be done today, and hopefully I will never have to look at it again, ever.

NOW, ON TO FINISH THIS SHIT!

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So, we’re all double masking now, right?

Posted on February 22, 2021 by A Dreamer

RIGHT?

I don’t love it, but I’m doing it. Surgical + cloth for Starbucks/gas station/quick food pickup, KN95 + cloth for grocery store. Basically – will I be around people for more or less than 5 minutes? Those are the only places I go, living this wild and crazy pandemic life.

The cloth over both is actually good – the surgical masks tend to gap on the sides, and the KN95 gaps a bit at the chin, but the cloth cover secures both.

However, with the KN95, holy super sweaty face, Batman. Hats off to those doing it all day, every day.

It’s gonna be another hella work week. Probably with me saying “No” a lot if anyone tries to dump anything new on me – I’ve got enough work on my plate to get me through April as it is.

But – we get paid this week, half-day on Friday, and this gal is taking a 4 day weekend, where I will *not* be logging on, unlike the last two long weekends I’ve had in 2021. So, probably some late nights and a fair amount of cussing on tap, but I will finish the week with a metric assload of things marked DONE in the bug tracker.

As it is – on the page where I have all my bugs, it’s finally down to the point where I don’t have to scroll to see all of them, which is quite nice.

I still can’t really get over the fact that PTO in this department is just…announce that you’ll be out of the office. Sure, some advance notice is appreciated, but compared to the cage match to try to get time off in the last gig, it’s just such a pleasant change.

That being said, time to go grind those gears so I can log off on Friday with a clear conscience.

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Welp

Posted on February 20, 2021 by A Dreamer

I went back upstairs last night to take another swing at the damn report printing and that system just completely shit the bed after the evening build. Like, couldn’t even log in.

Gif of Moira Rose saying You Can't Be Serious

I mean, I don’t *enjoy* working late on a Friday, but I was just so hoping I could get the damn thing done and dusted.

As it is, I’ll be working this weekend (on the system where I *can* log in) cause this feature has just taken up so much of my time, and I still have other shit to get done. It’s been a workload distribution nightmare – something is just not quite right when out of 4 testers, one person finds 19 of 26 bugs and has to be the one to re-test those 19 bugs.

And I can’t help but feel like it makes me look vaguely incompetent because the other three testers have been done with this feature for like, a month, and here I am, still testing. Sure, I rationally know that I am still testing because I kept finding bugs – but I don’t know that anyone up the chain actually knows that. Are they looking at the projected testing end date that keeps moving and thinking, “My god, what is wrong with her?”

But, it will be done here very shortly, and I’ll get caught up on the rest, and since everything on my plate is due by this coming Friday – I will be celebrating by taking a long weekend.

Is my job perfect? No. Has this feature been a disaster for me? Yes. Is this still far and away better than dealing with clients on a daily basis? OH HELL YES.

And a small bonus today is that even though I have to work, the sun is out and there is still a bit of snow on the ground, so the house is positively flooded with natural light. Add in a bigassed cold brew courtesy of my little brother who made the Starbucks run this morning, and it’s a hella mood enhancer.

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So Close. SO CLOSE.

Posted on February 19, 2021 by A Dreamer

SO VERY CLOSE TO BEING DONE WITH THIS FEATURE TESTING.

18 of the 19 defects I found have been closed.

The last one will be as done as it can be for now about 2 hours from now. The system was just dying on really big print runs, and it turns out the problem wasn’t with the report itself, but a setting on the back end that I of course do not have access to.

They tweaked it on both systems I’m testing on. First system, awesome, no problems. Second system – waaaay better, but still have a couple really big ass reports (like 2x the size of what I was running on the first system) that don’t want to print. But it’s SO much better than it was already. I’m going to double check again after the build is done tonight just to be sure (I’m not totally clear if they made the change before or after this morning’s build) but if it still is all pissy about printing, it will just be a matter of having that setting tweaked a little more and then maybe a half hour of work on it next week AND IT’S ALL DONE. ALL DONE!!!!

So, so close.

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A very early good morning to you

Posted on February 18, 2021 by A Dreamer

We have winter weather going on, and VDOT has been on top of it and we have had sand/salt/plow trucks going by repeatedly since 5AM. This is fantastic for keeping on top of the roads, however it is very incompatible with sleeping.

So, rather than trying to get an hour and a half of crappy sleep, I am up with a very large coffee.

Now, the question is – will I jump on my work laptop at 7 when the morning build is done and get a real jump on the day, or will I putz around online until my usual ~8:30 start time?

Speaking of work – that feature that I have been testing, and testing, and…testing some more? IT’S ALMOST DONE! LIKE REALLY JUST ABOUT DONE!

I’ve found at least 15 defects so far I think? The last run I did yesterday – ALL FIXED! I did find one more new one yesterday (and it kinda pisses me off, because it should have been caught early on by one of the other testers as it was specific to what they were testing, but whatever) but I’m really close to being able to put this behind me. (I really enjoy my work. I am sick of looking at this report.)

The thing with testing a feature vs. a defect is with a defect, you know exactly what you’re looking for. New feature – it’s kind of a shitty “Where’s Waldo” game, because while you know what the feature should do, and you have some idea of what could go wrong – you don’t really know all the things that could be buggy with it. So you’re kinda just looking for things out of place. And then when something doesn’t look right, you have to stop and investigate – is it bad source data, an actual defect, or do I just not actually know WTF the feature is supposed to do?

So, it can be very slow going, and this one especially so, as it’s a report with a ton of moving parts and so many potential scenarios to test – and everything can look great for scenarios 1-4 and then it all goes to shit in scenario 5 – and once it’s fixed, you need to do 1-4 again to make sure the fix didn’t break anything else. All while still keeping an eye out for anything else that doesn’t look right.

The initial time estimate on this was 48 hours for my testing. I’m approaching 200 hours. The good news is that no one has bitched about how long it has taken – because I keep finding shit wrong. Slow and steady finds all the bugs, or something like that.

Well, it’s 7AM, I’m on my second cup of cold brew and well, might as well go work.

Have a safe and warm day.

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So much for pre-work productivity

Posted on February 17, 2021 by A Dreamer

The plan was to run to the market before work. It’s 24 degrees out there. I will be waiting until lunch when it will be a balmy 34 degrees.

The good news is – WE HAVE SUNSHINE!! Granted, just for today and then the weather is turning to shit again, but for now, THERE IS SUN!

I am so worried for the folks in Texas. Years of shitty leadership avoiding regulation at any cost has resulted in an isolated grid that hasn’t been winterized and can’t handle a bad cold snap – and people will die for it. Not to mention the property damage from all the pipes freezing and bursting left and right.

And then you have Gov Abbott going on television and lying out his ass about the frozen wind turbines and non-existent Green New Deal being the problem when he knows damn good and well it’s the natural gas & coal plants that had to shut down. Lying ass fucker.

I feel for the people of Texas. The leadership of the state can fuck off into the sun.

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I would like to speak to a manager.

Posted on February 16, 2021 by A Dreamer

It was supposed to be sunny today. It is grey and raining. WTF.

MOTHER NATURE, I NEED SUN, PLEASE.

As does most of the country it seems – Texas, it sucks to be you right now and I am genuinely sorry your infrastructure can’t keep up and that the answer was “turn everything off” – hopefully no one will die because of it. Seeing the pics from El Paso – looks like fun until you think about how many people may not have decent winter gear, because they live on the border of TEXAS AND MEXICO. (Though I did laugh when someone pointed out there is a Texas prepper somewhere with 37 machine guns and no snow shovel.)

It’s going to be a balls to the wall week at work… My cohorts on the other side of the world had a holiday on Friday, we had a holiday yesterday, and I haven’t opened my laptop since Friday afternoon. (Mind you, I *shouldn’t* be working weekends, but this one dumb feature has taken so much time and even with the target end date for testing being moved out, there still aren’t enough hours in a day.)

But, it will get done. Someday. Maybe. Hopefully.

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So, the impeachment.

Posted on February 14, 2021 by A Dreamer

I am super insanely pissed off about this. That asshole* is going to try and run again and he’ll be sending his goons out during the primaries, and the fucking Republicans will just let it happen so they can have access to his base. These fuckers acquitted on a technicality that they created in the hopes that they can get back in power. Fuck. That. Noise.

I honestly do not understand what kind of person lives through January 6th, watches all those videos, knows that 6 people died and 140 were injured – and still votes to protect the man who caused it.

Hell of a statement on American society that we not only create people like this, but we then enable and reward them.

And I don’t know how we change this.

*My brother thinks he’ll keel over first, but my experience tells me that shitty people live long lives.

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