2019-01-25:

Fri:

Looked at the new VBS, made some suggestions for improvements and found errors.

Worked on the next chapter

nothing really exciting.

The usual after work stuff, but I did go home as it was a little early, put stuff away, fed the cats, then went to my parent's house.

Then out to Sean's, we stayed on track okay but I wouldn't say great. We need to take down a cooperation doing experiments with monster blood in humans, but we can't prove it because conventional science doesn't detect the blood as being a contaminant. Quite the pickle.

Left a bit early, Sean was banged up from a puppy pulling him over. Bad puppy!

Light snowfall.

Sat:

Some snow in the morning, went out at 10:00 to see phone woman. Her phone was somewhat reset? I don't know, it had her pictures but not her apps. She said they said no repair was done so who knows what the actual issue was.

Then back here. Did snow pretty heavily but but quite as much as they claimed.

Watched some stuff, worked on plot for the next chapter and finishing up the last one.

Played more El Shadai.

Got dad some stuff for his birthday.

Sun:

Certainly got "a bit" of snow last night. Total of over a foot, and it's still snowing as I write this at 12:30. I guess we should be thankful it happened on a weekend, so thanks to whoever scheduled that. Took about an hour after I got up this morning to clear the driveway. The front was of course the absolute worst, the rest wasn't that bad despite it being as tall or taller than the unit itself. It was fairly light and fluffy. I saw a number of cars on the road, but many more trucks with plows going to and fro. 

Checked my sites after that and cleaned up a little. Then started the next chapter.

About 4:00 I went out and did the driveway again, just to make sure as much snow was off it as possible. It's still coming down, and not much had accumulated, but still.

Finished it up after that, and looked to the next bit of story I would write. Of course, we have to get Erika on the team, but I needed more material for after that.

Mon:

Not too much snow to contend with on the way to work, but it kept up blowing and snowing all day. I had to clear the driveway when I got home. Again.

Wrote only one bug up, when you open a menu there should be a darkness that takes over behind it, but it's not the full screen on one page. Exciting. But as it's the only bug written today I guess I did 100% of the work for the day? Also had a meeting, but Gina was not feeling well so she did it remotely.

Did not work on coloring Sean's gift or a new chapter, in order to order it and the tree when I got home. Nope, just working, all day, work work work that was what I did.

Got home, did the usual sites, and talked to Ellen for 45 minutes to try and get her printer back online. It recognizes it, knows if it is plugged in, but shows in the device manager some "HP thingy" I forget the name of. Trying to load this manually did nothing. She had the latest Win10 update pending so I just crossed my fingers and let it start that. 

It worked! Yay!

I'm going to York tomorrow, they say they are having intermittent problems. With my luck everything will be working fine and I will have wasted my time totally.

Ordered the tree and Sean's gift, hope it prints okay.

Snow stopped, we're getting rain in two days? Then more snow again? What's that going to do to us?

Made some additions to chapter 15.

Tues:

Started the day with a bit of excitement. There was a mouse under the cat food shelf that everyone was very interested in getting out of there. Me included. I fed everybody and thought about how to take care of it.

Before leaving I blocked that part of the kitchen off and figured if I could coax them out they could run over to the oven, where I believe there’s a hole they typically come from. Well, I sort of shoved them and I don’t know if they had fatigue or wound penalties but they didn’t resist. So I just picked the little one up. Put them in the basket, then downstairs into the third tank. We’ll see how they perk up later, but what am I going to do with a third mouse in the middle of winter? Anyone want a mouse?

Got to work, certainly didn’t finish chapter 16, I was working. With no more test cases to write or really anything to do I went over to poke at the tablet some more. Got an email from shapeways, about a few problems with the model, so I quickly corrected them and uploaded a new file. Apparently cutting the back part off so I could easily apply a subsurface modifier to just it made it a “loose part” so I had to reattach it, despite it looking attached to look at it. And the hair wasn’t as solid as I thought? Anyway, the preview looks a lot better so it might be fine.

Back to poking at stuff.

Ultimately wrote five of the five bugs for today. Lots of stuff in copy, of all things. You think copy would be pretty well finalized by now, but no, not so much. Weird. Little stuff for the most part, text not lining up but losing the features when you go back in? Having some features look like they have been lost but actually not be? Very odd stuff.

Went out to York, and a more vague description of troubles I've never heard. I left them some directions to get actual useful information but did perhaps solve one problem? 

Back here I checked the mouse. He didn't make it. Sorry little one. 

Spent 45 minutes on the phone with new printer guy, resetting his password first. At least that worked, saved me the trip.

Then 15 minutes getting the IP address of another printer to be right. It was set on auto, why did it have a 192.168.0 address when it needed a 192.168.1 address? Weird.

I think they accepted the changes to the model, no more nastygram about it.

So no other job tomorrow, hopefully I can make it home through the rain or snow or hail or whatever it is we're getting weather wise.

Wed:

It wasn't as bad as I imagined, which is a pleasant surprise at any time of the day or night.

I wrote my 800th bug, followed quickly by the 801st bug. I am still 2x anyone else, so go me. And I only test half a day! I mean, I test all day, every day. Even weekends, I'm still just testing the software. More weird stuff, like not being able to select one of the choices in the menu. Why was that never seen up till this point?

Yes, it was another fun day of testing the software, and nothing else.

Meeting day tomorrow, and it'll be nice and cold again. Super.

Came back here, checked my sites and took delivery of two of dad's gifts. 

Only three chapters left in the Susan story. Wow, I've been posting that thing for years. I debated putting up three chapters next week, but maybe I'll still only do the two, then the last week is just the ending one. Haven't really decided.

Had no calls when I got here but one came in, solar guy. 

Spent half an hour with him supposedly setting up (again) his Alexa unit. Supposedly he download the alexa app, but there was no evidence of that, but he had somehow called a scammer of his own free will. Well done. At least he didn't pay the guy and called me, as he should have done in the first place, instead. 

So we installed the actual Alexa app, and did the actual setup, which I think was unneeded as it was off while running the app, and when he plugged it in it was just fine. So why did you need me?

Played more El Shaddai.

Only one more week of January. Everybody ready for the big game?

Thurs:

As usual our half an hour meeting turned into two and a half hours, as we discussed various ways Gina should do her job of providing somewhat meaningless data to upper level managers. 

To all upper level managers: There will never be enough testing. Give us the time the business case says is the absolute maximum time/money we should spend on a project to maximize returns. We testers, in turn, will do our best to test everything at least once. If there is extra time we will test twice! More even! If you have people like me (doubtful) they will test as many times as they possibly can. No fooling! If the testing is not done, then your business case says this product should either a) not be released because your programers obviously can't meet targets (due to it being too complex or… you know) or b) released with some sort of caveats and asking how much more time until test is complete. Then release a new version with JUST FIXES. No new features. No. Bad Dog. Just fixes. That is all you need to know. 

You do not need to know the number of test cases we run.

You do not need to know the number of hours we estimate the test cases will take to run. 

You do not need pretty charts created by a person who went to collage to learn to write software specs. They did not go to collage to learn to make pretty charts, that you will look at for five minutes (though they took days upon days to create) and declare "The business case says we should ship in 2 months. Get it done."

Just say: You have two months to test, because that is what you are going to say anyway.

Testers will say: We'll get right on that. 

Anything else is busywork THAT TAKES TIME AWAY FROM SPEC WRITING AND  TEST.

Anyway, given how important test is, rather than meetings about test, I then tested. I did not write another chapter. No, I did many, many tests, and helped to write the many, many bugs alongside what my fellow testers found. We found many, many bugs. Which we wrote up. Today. Yes.

By the way, do you know we have almost 1,000 open bugs right now? Yes, yes we do. We have a new build in four days. How many bugs do I have to verify at that time? Twenty? Fifty? A hundred? No my friends, you are thinking too big. I have

one bug.

Yes, one bug so far to verify but they have three days, they could fix more. It's possible.

And then another half hour meeting. And more test.

And leftover pizza and rice and veg that I found in the break room with the still broken ice machine, took home, yum yum. (It's been broken about two weeks now? That seems about right?)

Checked my sites, the usual, had two calls. One person with just a few questions, the other person some website thing? She wasn't home wants me to call back at 8:30. I will be sure to do this.

Looking to the future I see more monster mash game this Friday, and maybe something will even happen? I hope so. Of course doing the shopping as usual, no bank I only have two checks. Pointless. Oh, and one of them is dated 2018. Brilliant.

Then perhaps Saturday the missing week of having my parents over for movie night? 

Sounds good. 

This time next week will be the last day of January 2019. Highs in the 20s.

Join me next time for tales of more test, more bugs, no writing at all. It's sure to be a great time for one and all. 

See you then. Stay warm.