Just got out of a really frustrating meeting and now I have a thumping headache.

My request for my team got bumped off the top priority and will not be done until tomorrow morning. I understand why it so, but when the person said sorry to myself, I felt even worse. I *think* I smiled and shrugged but knowing how bad I still feel about it, I looked either sad or mad.

The thing that’s really bugging me is I should have caught this problem before. I keep banging on about data-driven testing, parameter-ised test scripts but my review focused solely on test scenarios. I kept my faith on the members to implement the framework we talked about, I didn’t check it myself.

Now it’s biting me on the ass. And it hurts.

Maybe I really have ESP because is the sort of thing I fear most, and the reason why I wrote this.

I know we need to correct our current implementation once and for all. My call is to continue with what we have for the week and spend a couple of days next week correcting this mistake.

For now, I am going to take another paracetamol and I am going home where my husband can soothe my aching heartd.

——————–

updated 5 March 2008

Got home and found out my monthly visitor’s just arrived… So that’s why I’ve been loony the last couple of days.

I knew it! I knew that when we seal the deal with our test consultants my work will spike and I will not be able to blog as much. I couldn’t even bloghop. Hirap talaga nang walang maid. Please let me be true to myself and to you. Mahirap po talaga especially if I want to sit down and write instead of cooking til late at night.

Thank you to everyone who left me comments and dropped me emails. Thanks for repeatedly checking for new updates.  And apologies for missing out on so many things that you’ve been writing about.

Sabi ni hubby, magsulat na daw ako dahil baka akalain nang mundo patay na ko. As if the World will really notice.

So what happened? Well all my chilli plants are dead because of the cold season. My daffodils are sprouting up early because Global Warming is here to stay. Kelvin has had cough-cold-ear infection in a vicious cycle since December. Hubby and I are still fighting like adolescents. And my work will lock me up for the rest of the year.

Everything’s just as I expected, except for the fighting-part. But to be honest, I’m too tired to really care. I’m already stressed enough at work when I come home, I just want to chill. So I fry my brain with film after film. I have not gone back to baking, I’m resting my hands. I have not gone back to my exercise regime because most of the time, I’m not home until 8-9pm.

I’m enjoying myself though. It’s real wonder considering I’ve been working in the place for a year now and I’ve barely complained. In fact, just this week I was almost cheek-to-cheek with hot guy and he smelled really nice. You know, just-out-of-the-shower nice? I guess with little perks like those I can ignore my little whinges.

Anyhow,  I’m back & thank God it wasn’t depression that made me stay away. My brain is bursting with topics to write about here and for PMN. So please keep watching this space and I am sure to be more visible in the coming weeks. Salamat uli sa mga paalala at nakaalala.

You’ll find most offices will have signs in their kitchen saying “tidy up” with varying intonation & colourful languages.

Our current office space share the kitchen with 2-3 companies. So the building admin keeps on posting laminated & professionally written notices as above. Then one time I saw a sign that made do a double-take (picture to follow), it says: “STOP USING MY STARBUCKS MUG!” (excuse me but I have this strange feeling I mentioned this before, deja vu?)

It was handwritten & I could feel the “irritated” tone screaming at me while reading it. Not guilty, sorry. Why bring a personal mug anyhow when the kitchen is communal? You’re asking for trouble.

Then we received an email from the Building Admin this morning that says “polite notice - milk”… huh?

The email says…

“Unfortunately we had to move to another provision for the milk due to the fact that numerous people were using the milk for their breakfasts and not for teas and coffees. The milk we provide is on the understanding that this is used for teas and coffees only and this has been abused to such a point that we moved to the milk jiggers.”

Honestly, I can’t imagine writing that email with a straight face. But then I actually saw a guy using those “milk jiggers” to fill a cereal bowl! He must have used at least 10 of them in one go when he could have nipped out & bought a pint for less than a £1.

I would like to think I’m not an axe-wielding feminist but a liberal and enlightened modern woman. I do not expect men to stand up and offer me their seat. I do not expect to be passed over for a promotion because the competition is a man. I expect equal rights. But I know we don’t live in a just World.

Because I work in IT, most of my officemates are men. That’s okay, most of the time I’m more at ease with men anyway. Most of my friends are male. And I am enjoying my current workplace. We’re busy up to our necks with deadlines but that’s life.

What bothers me is the number of doors we have to go thru to go from place to place within our office. The first is the main building door, then the secure door on our floor. Then there’s a door that separates the Technology and the meeting rooms from the rest of the floor, then there’s the actual Technology team’s door. Then there are the meeting room doors. And if you need the admin & marketing people or some stationeries, you go out the Tech room, thru the separating door thru another door. (more…

Some would say my work is very “negative”. I assure the quality of our products. Test the beejesus out of it. Make sure nothing is broken. Make sure that if something is broken, it’s isolated. I can go on for a long time.

One of my better managers once said that we actually have the best job in the software industry. We find a bug, it’s great. We don’t find a bug, we give an all-clear, it’s great. But underneath that second statement is a lot of sweat & some nerve-shaking decisions (read: risk management and cost-cutting).

Anyway, that’s my job, it’s me, it’s part of my life. I’m a software tester, and I love it.

I am pretty reasonable. I don’t go loggerheads with developers or management (okay I do gnash my teeth a lot). Experience taught me that there’s no point. At the end of the day, I am here to get my money at the end of the month. I am not here to fan anyone’s ego. Or be someone’s fall-guy. Eff you if you think that. And you’ll have a rude awakening if you think, I’m a pushover.

I guess most non-Pinoys I worked with, think I am a soft touch because of my mild demeanour. I wish I could tell them that’s not how my Filipino colleagues would describe me (or could I be mistaken? hmm). I do encounter attitudes but most are tolerable & I let them pass, so yes that’s probably why they would say I’m “nice”. But whenever someone pushes me a little too far, I can be like Wolverine and turn them into muttering brats.

In my second London job for example, there was this Irish “call-me-Dr” know-it-all. I’m not sure if I blogged about him in the past, but here goes. I reported a major crash on our Symbian application. Our phones were crashing with KERNEL-whatever errors and his code’s log weren’t sufficient. The problem was straightforward to reproduce & I allowed him some attempts to send it back to me with a lame “fix” and at least 3 “not reproducible”. The latter was a push to close and forget about it. I told him we can work in tandem & showed him the steps & voila! The crash. Then he stood up and said “Okay, reproduce it again and call me.”

“No! You sit down, watch what I’m doing & FIX your bug!“

I must have looked like the Furies. He can only manage a barely audible ‘ok’ & meekly sat down. When I finished, I slammed the phone in front of him so hard, I thought I’d broken it. The nerve of this PhD-wielding-weasel! He picked himself up & said something about going to work. That afternoon, I received a fix that actually worked.

London offices are open-planned, so yes my raised voice carried throughout the floor which houses the sales, marketing, HR, support, and dev teams. Everyone in the dev team were smiling and looking at our direction. My then manager gave me two thumbs up and later on in the pub bought me a pint. Then everyone gave their “horror” stories about the red-haired geek, apologies to good geeks out there. Well, let’s just say he wasn’t very popular.

Are you getting the picture?

Now, as in an hour ago, a developer whose component has been the weakest of our entire trading system, had the gall to tell me he “doesn’t have much time to look at the problem” because he’s busy! WTF?! I told him the bug (which is really at least 3 months old as it’s related to other failed fixes!) is with his dev manager & they will deal with it appropriately.

I am a software tester, not your “debugger”, jack—.

I wasn’t hot at all. In fact, he probably went away thinking “I showed her”. Thing is, I am the QA Manager, mate. Even before you gave me that attitude, your lack of, uhmm what’s the nicest word to use?, let’s say: your lack of focus has given me cause for concern for a while. I already had a 5-minute chat with your boss about my observation, albeit I didn’t pointedly say you’re “not good”. He did.

Okay that’s it. WHEW. It’s been a while since my last work-related post ah.

“I live to break your world”

My probationary period is over & thus like an acceptance to some exclusive membership, some of my benefit certificates started arriving. Goody.

Then I opened the healthcare policy. Three (3) things were wrong with.

First. It was addressed to hubby when I’m supposed to be the main policy holder.
Second. I was not even mentioned in the policy, just my husband & Kelvin.
Third. It was missing the dental & optical plans.

Total screw up. Our company hired a benefits service company to handle all our benefit packages. I can only surmise that when I emailed our administrative staff to “do not include my hubby & son on my healthcare plan”, it was interpreted either by the service company or the health care provider that my hubby, being a man, is the member of the technology team not Mrs.

The service’ account manager called me to clarify what happened & then tried to get away by saying the original instruction was to include all family members. I asked her how that explains my missing name & my husband being the policy holder?

I could, of course, be jumping to conclusions here but it’s happened several times to me before. I work in IT so I must be a man. Letters addressed to Mr D S…, my hubby’s name is Joel! And he doesn’t work in Central London, he’s a nurse, people!

Funny though sometimes I get addressed as Dr, too. Why? Who knows.

I always feel guilty when I don’t have enough to do at work. Today I will probably spend 2 hours in total for work related activities, and those are limited to emails, reading contracts, and perhaps a quick meeting with the boss. I finished my revision for my API tests yesterday. I should be happy as I have the time to bloghop, blog & I even managed to update my links! But as I said I feel guilty.

Sometimes I torture myself by wondering if the network has spies installed. Arrggh my head will certainly roll, as my network traffic will direct them to blogs!

I know I should savour days like these as these are exceptions. There’s a hold on any commercial moves and so I’m still by my lonesome. In reality it’s just a slow day. Next week I will have to work with some consultants for an outsourcing project, I will also need to follow up some NDAs with software vendors, perhaps start evaluating tools and, potentially work on creating demo Market Data. So I know my plate will be full, but still…

It’s similar when I threw occasional sickies in my previous jobs (I have no reason to do it with my new place - yet). If I venture outside the house, I’m always on red alert, I cannot relax. I always fear bumping into someone & then having to explain myself. If I stay indoors, I get paranoid & wonder if the company may want to have some investigator watch my every move. You’ll get the feeling that perhaps I do it so often that the guilt is killing me. No, I don’t. Because I still get the same feeling when I am really sick. If I go to the hospital or to the doctor’s I still wonder if I’m being followed.

Insane. Well that’s me.

One done, one to go. For documentation that is. Ahh I can finally breathe through my only functioning nostril. The biggest chunk of my deliverables is finished. The bosses aren’t really checking & I’m the one who gave myself my tasks, so I don’t expect them to come over when look at the WIKI & give me hugs. Though I wouldn’t mind one guy in particular to give me a little squeeze.

Anyway, I have at least two more files to finish. Then I can work on some “fun stuff” like tool & software evaluations. Then meet with consultants. Then have a life…

I know while other bloggers are rejoicing about margarita’s, I am rejoicing about my technical documentation. But I met up with a teammate last night & had an Indian dinner at Spitalfields Market, that counts right?

And also tomorrow is Friday… no more ‘puters, no more docs, no more bosses and dirty looks!

I did nothing but review & comment on documents since Monday! I barely managed to work on my actual deliverable (a traceability matrix). True the files I’m reading are not even thick but I find it really hard to “read & understand” because my sinuses are so blocked, I feel so lightheaded. Sometimes I feel like passing out. It’s taking me twice as long to get anything done, except for blogging.

I hope this doesn’t continue for too long. I need my wits in order to function properly. I’m sorely tempted to take my work home just to get moving as I know I’ll be swamped soon.

I took Pining’s advice to heart & have started on a no dairy diet. I now drink my tea black, no milk, no sugar. Sugar is not dairy I know but it’s less calorie intake as I plan to copy Melissa’s South Beach Diet. I also checked the net for more food related allergies & found that I should stay clear of food additives, too, as they inhibit the anti-histamines from working. It looks like I’m going to work harder to beat this Hay Fever season (2007 is set to be the worse on record).

Just as well I follow the above list, I’ll end up healthier & fit enough to run for a bus without wheezing. The thing is hubby bought some freshly-made siopao last night & I gave in & ate one for breakfast this morning. South Beach says no carbs for 2-weeks. I told myself it’s my last f*ck before the final goodbye. I plan on disposing of the sweets & other tempting goodies by giving them away to neighbourhood kids. Then hubby reminded me that I should not stop baking & cooking for them. Ah the horrors. I need He-Man strength & resolved.

The other day I sent an email to everyone in the office & I used LMK (i.e. Let me know) at the end. Our COO, whom I adore, asked me later on what it meant. Then laughed when I told him.

Working in IT I just always fall in the ass-u-me role all the time when it comes to things like these.

When I was inducting a couple of DLSU interns years ago, I used “FYI” in a statement. A hand came up asking what it was. I “assumed” they knew because presumably they’re into texting (they won’t stop even when told & most of them are brats) and also chats.

Oh well.

On the otherhand, I often encounter NB (nota bene) here in London. Normally in Manila, we tag them as spelled out “note:”. Maybe NB is used in Pinas, too I just didn’t encounter it in my former workplace?