triumph! ... oh, dammit

Friday was a bittersweet day.

On our horrible project-released-every-month, they are frequently late starting their regression test, and very often late with the release. In 2007, it was only released on-time twice.

As bad as that is, the good(?) thing is they don't release until their regression test says the only differences are the ones they expect. Unfortunately, that typically means a team of 12+ BA's, developers and testers work the weekend.

But not this month. We started the regression test when we were scheduled to on Monday. And, rather than posting the release on the drop-dead Monday date, we passed the release off to customer-facing site on Friday. This is the first time in years that that has happened.

The process-improvements Jeff and I have been insisting on deserve some of the credit.
Odd things. You know, completely out-of-left-field things like code-reviews and communicating. It's unclear how much of this month's success was the amount of work included in this release, and how much of it was our process changes.

Unfortunately, the day of triumph was made bittersweet by Jeff's resignation. Probably not accurate to call it a resignation, since he was a contractor and decided not to pursue extending his contract. Or, to be precise... not wait until the final day of his contract to find out if they were going to extend his contract.

I don't blame him for finding something else, and I may follow him soon enough. The monthly release meat-grinder can be made less painful... but it'll never be fun.

ready. set. go?

I'm coming to the realization that I was so focused on leaving the previous employer that I didn't think critically enough before accepting the offer at current employer. Beyond the many dead horses I've already beaten, there were plenty of hints to which I should have paid attention prior to accepting the offer.

More mixed feelings today after a meeting discussing our project's migration from usage under the current application framework to its replacement over the next 2-3 years. Felt good that our hard work to stabilize the crumbling infrastructure is recognized by the business people. Felt worse when I realized that 2+ years into a multi-million dollar project, they're finally discussing the actual mechanics and workflow of how both systems are going to be developed and maintained together. "Oh yeah... we want to release in October. We need to figure that out."

Nearly all the positives about the new job have been snuffed out. There is the potential for it to get better, but it's hard to hold on to the glimmer of hope. Other than feeling like I'm giving up, it's getting harder to find reasons to stay.

Friends at 4 different employers are looking for people... positions with varying levels of awesomeness. Or, I could strike out on my own and find something different.

But, what do I want? That's the million dollar question.

Someplace more engineer-y than my most recent work in content publishing or healthcare. Some of the work was great and challenging... other parts have been mind-numbing or downright eeeeeeeeviiiiiil. Not that the previous work in simulation was fluffy kittens.

Someplace that views R&D as a vital part of their business plan, rather than whining by engineers for 'fun' work. Maintenance can be fun -- debugging an issue, finding the cause of the crazy and esoteric problems is like unlocking a puzzle and can be very rewarding. But, it's not something that you look forward to doing as your sole activity for the next 3+ years.

Something more back-end rather than UI or web-applications. I'm pretty sure that new fangled interwebernet thing will never work. It's all TUBES! TUBES I TELLS YA!

It'd also be nice to land someplace where I could use Python for more than just throw-away utilities, and not be viewed as a rabble-rouser.

pink eye!

Liz's brother's family visited us for a couple days while they were in town for a funeral. Bart turned us on to one of our new favorite shows, Corner Gas.

Good silly fun. Needs more explosions.