Cool storm!
Last night we had a glorious thunderstorm with lots of good lightning and powerful, boomy, crackling thunder! Ooo I really like storms.
2001-09-25
What a day
I came in to work thinking I would help a gal in another group investigate a bug she is seeing. It's not "my bug", that is to say it's not in code I wrote, but I understand enough of the system that we thought maybe it was something I could help with. I already spent most of yesterday doing that. So I thought I'd continue that this morning.
During the day, I get:
- A voice mail message, left before I came in, which I didn't get a chance to read until close to 5pm.
- Notification that we cannot renew the insurance policy on the airplane unless I get up to 300 hours of total time before the renewal date. The renewal date is Saturday. I cannot fly without an instructor because of the new security rules. So that won't happen. One co-owner suggested dropping me from the policy. HELLO, I'm an OWNER, I need liability insurance even if I never fly it again. @$$hole. He just didn't want to shop around.
- A question from my boss about how we do such-and-so. He can look it up in the code as quickly as I can -- far quicker, in fact, since I'm spending all my time in the lab babysitting the investigation on this other bug.
- A question from my boss's boss about "the algorithm" for something -- we don't HAVE an algorithm for it, and that fact was the subject of endless browbeating a month or two ago. He was very involved in said browbeating. He is as familiar with this situation as I am.
- A report from the local Talker. Every office has one of these. Talker just drops in and sometimes takes upwards of an hour to drop back out again. This time the issue was this: Talker can't stand letting other people do their own work, but also can't abide having no other option but to take it over. Discussion ensued. At least it was mercifully quick. Today I just didn't have an hour to throw away.
- My default lunch date was a half hour late. Again.
- A bug report from the local Confused. After twenty minutes of very muddy discussion it became clear that there was exactly one problem, and that problem matches exactly a problem Confused had last week. Last week, my teammate wasted hours on it, and it was solved that time simply by rebuilding, ie, Confused isn't keeping his own work self-consistent. Several people around here (including teammate, Talker, and Lunch Date) are very aware of his tendency to do this. Confused says Talker will be by later to tell me why it's my fault. I'm so looking forward to that. :-) At the very least, Talker is intelligent and will give me a clear picture of what is going on. Hope it doesn't cost me an hour. Also hope that together we can figure out how to gently tell Confused that the problem is between the monitor and the chair.
- Lots of hallway talk, e-mail, etc about the bug I'm babysitting. Now there are four people involved: the gal I figured I'd be working with, a guy in Canada, a guy down the hall, and me. The two guys, I think, have a fighting chance of actually solving the problem. They wrote the two pieces of code that are actually involved. And now that I've babysat this investigation for long enough, one of these guys can reproduce the problem himself. MAYBE that one's off my plate.
What a day.
Maybe I will go take a bathroom break. No telling when I'll get another chance.
During the day, I get:
- A voice mail message, left before I came in, which I didn't get a chance to read until close to 5pm.
- Notification that we cannot renew the insurance policy on the airplane unless I get up to 300 hours of total time before the renewal date. The renewal date is Saturday. I cannot fly without an instructor because of the new security rules. So that won't happen. One co-owner suggested dropping me from the policy. HELLO, I'm an OWNER, I need liability insurance even if I never fly it again. @$$hole. He just didn't want to shop around.
- A question from my boss about how we do such-and-so. He can look it up in the code as quickly as I can -- far quicker, in fact, since I'm spending all my time in the lab babysitting the investigation on this other bug.
- A question from my boss's boss about "the algorithm" for something -- we don't HAVE an algorithm for it, and that fact was the subject of endless browbeating a month or two ago. He was very involved in said browbeating. He is as familiar with this situation as I am.
- A report from the local Talker. Every office has one of these. Talker just drops in and sometimes takes upwards of an hour to drop back out again. This time the issue was this: Talker can't stand letting other people do their own work, but also can't abide having no other option but to take it over. Discussion ensued. At least it was mercifully quick. Today I just didn't have an hour to throw away.
- My default lunch date was a half hour late. Again.
- A bug report from the local Confused. After twenty minutes of very muddy discussion it became clear that there was exactly one problem, and that problem matches exactly a problem Confused had last week. Last week, my teammate wasted hours on it, and it was solved that time simply by rebuilding, ie, Confused isn't keeping his own work self-consistent. Several people around here (including teammate, Talker, and Lunch Date) are very aware of his tendency to do this. Confused says Talker will be by later to tell me why it's my fault. I'm so looking forward to that. :-) At the very least, Talker is intelligent and will give me a clear picture of what is going on. Hope it doesn't cost me an hour. Also hope that together we can figure out how to gently tell Confused that the problem is between the monitor and the chair.
- Lots of hallway talk, e-mail, etc about the bug I'm babysitting. Now there are four people involved: the gal I figured I'd be working with, a guy in Canada, a guy down the hall, and me. The two guys, I think, have a fighting chance of actually solving the problem. They wrote the two pieces of code that are actually involved. And now that I've babysat this investigation for long enough, one of these guys can reproduce the problem himself. MAYBE that one's off my plate.
What a day.
Maybe I will go take a bathroom break. No telling when I'll get another chance.