Babies, Bugs, and Books

Life was full of interest today.

First my wife woke me as I woke up (I think we tied) to tell me she was leaving. Friday morning at 0400 was when she was supposed to be leaving, but some little person decided to make other plans. I just heard my wife is in Kansas now and soon will be babysitting two little girls and some other thing. The two girls aren't really babies now, but toddlers, so one could say my wife is toddling. She'll be back in a couple of weeks, I hope and God willing.

             

Work was way interesting today. A little background. The companies produce a very flexible database. We have several internal applications that must work well, including that database. Staff throughout the company are the initial guinea pigs after it gets out of the developers' and testers' hands. The final clients are Fortune 500 type of companies and aren't too fond of incompetence. (Though we could tell you stories about some of our clients who famously didn't make it financially a few years ago.) So our product is necessary for our companies both in beta and final form.

I ran into one bug. Minor. Routine. I then tried to corral it so that the developers could duplicate it easily so they could dissect the thing. After a time I wanted to make a new record to strip it of as many variables as possible. I brought up the record template, tossed in some needed data, and tried to save. I couldn't. Why? I ended up hunting a new bug.

After some time, I got enough clues to get others into the bug hunt and we discovered the source. I went back to the original bug while the new bug was being fixed by someone who knew what they were doing than the bug's creator. At the end of the day, I downloaded the fix and updated. Will it work? I'll find out tomorrow morning.

That bug find was a feather in my cap and I'm certain will make my boss happy I'm around. If I hadn't caught it, the next level would have been the help, sales, administration, testing and development staff. That is, the whole company would have been at a standstill. Nothing like knowing that one is wanted.

              

I was able to get move several boxes of books back to storage and bring back several more. I'm listing them all by size and hope to keep them neatly in boxes on the shelves. Thus they will be arranged mainly by size and I'll have to have a database to tell me what I have and where.

What do you do with your books?

Envy

I recently read about someone named Samantha Brick, who wrote "I know I’m beautiful–Daddy told me so." It was reported on Yahoo and I read the comments from many people.

It was strange how so many of the people were very angry at her. One would think that she murdered people for fun and profit to have such a reception. I don't know, but perhaps all these people were envious. I don't think I've seen such anger even in politics. At least in politics you are usually defended by your own side.

              

I've had a long day at work today. The whole morning was devoted to a problem with the password. No helpful message was given, but I finally deduced that the age of the password was limited and figured out how to turn that off. I made out a bug report, too. That shouldn't be like that.

I doubt if the future users know what testers go through for their sake, but when you get something done almost without thinking on the computer, remember to thank all the people who worked on it in the past. :-)

              

Yesterday, my wife asked if I wanted to go for a walk and I assured her I did, but I wanted to keep it short. We ended up going halfway up the hill and walking along a trail for a little bit more than half-a-mile. There are some flowers that I vaguely remember that are beauties. I'll have to look them up soon before I forget. I wonder if my wife still has her camera?

We finally got to where the trail split and went straight up and down the side of the hill. We went down and walked home. That's my wife for you    as adventurous as she is sweet.

Tested and reCycled

I've had a month preparing for a tsunami of extra duties at work and yesterday was the breaking point -- I was to add my jobs to the Testing Cycle Incident report.

The wave broke, separated, and passed by on both sides. I seem to be safe for now.

My supervisor turned up the heat and I appealed to the team leader, who was under her. He subsequently arrived at her office during a discussion about me with the head of the company.

Turns out that there was a misunderstanding and all the pressure I was under wasn't necessary. I was relieved of the extra duties (which by now I had managed to automate) and the testing red tape, which was really the stuff I was going crazy from. So now I'm back to square one with only loss of their time -- I get paid for nothing, though I'm happy to learn more about the application.

I would even be happy to learn more about the Testing Cycle Incident report, but I'm afraid that the Lorentz transformation is a snap compared to that.

Work and Insanity

Right now I'm trying to learn a bit more about the testing cycles to run some new tests. I'm becoming rather exasperated by the lack of information. I ended up developing the three tests myself with hardly any worthwhile input. Worthwhile because much of the input I did get was either, "I don't know," without someone to refer the question to, or just plain wrong answers. Crazy.

Now I'm trying to figure out how to document this stuff. The tests themselves are now more or less documented, but the procedure for reporting is still unknown and unknowable. I feel that I'm given a nibble a day of a different, unknown substance which could be poisonous or nourishing.

The ugly thing is all the to-dos piling up on me. I'm blocked by a revoked certificate. I'm told to chat with the keeper of security. The chat window is sitting there, waiting, getting in my way, but needing to stay uncovered so I can tell if someone is answering. I ask questions, but they are unanswered. Sooner or later, the testing cycle will end and I'll be asked, "Why didn't you hold up your end?"

Indeed.