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I am so tired. I am so glad it's Friday.
During this week I've been under pressure at work to get a bunch of simulation runs done. Naturally, everyone wants results yesterday. Naturally, no one is willing to tell me things like "By the way we reconfigured the simulator so all your old images won't work and it will take you two days of groveling through enormous output files to figure out why." In a way, knowing that no one is willing to keep me in the loop is kind of freeing. Clearly, the pressure I'm perceiving is not about actually getting the tests done. The results are obviously not what's important. Maybe it's political -- I just need to be seen making a whale of a lot of effort. If so, I can do that. I learned how to look busy long ago!
Also this week, Rob is out of town, so I called his Wednesday night club (I'm not very skilled at C-2 sight calling any more so that was stressful) and our Thursday night club. My every-other-week C4 practice happened this week as well. It's been busy.
I've been trying to "coordinate with Kim" on flipping the hot tub, but every time we have a plan, she decides not to do it. Usually she has a good reason, but this is getting really old by now. We still haven't turned it. The electrician still hasn't started (because he'd rather not start until we turn the thing around). It's been a week now. I wouldn't mind so much if I didn't feel as if I had any kind of responsibility for "coordinating" (?) to get this done. Responsibility without the ability to do anything kind of sucks.
I slept wrong a couple nights ago and have been unable to turn my head since Wednesday. The amount of pain is less staggering now than it was then, but still pretty annoying. Wish I had time to make a run to the chiropractor.
Today, I got to go over to another facility at work and help them screen chips. We are refining our tests so that we can discover more quickly which parts are good and which are flaky. Until that's done, we need warm bodies to push buttons in the lab. The hardware folks particularly wanted warm bodies with some knowledge of the low-level software -- that'd be me, and a few other people -- so that we might see patterns of failure and have some insight. I just got back from doing that. Insights have thus far failed to appear.
I am fervently, ardently, almost desperately looking forward to the weekend.
That is all.
During this week I've been under pressure at work to get a bunch of simulation runs done. Naturally, everyone wants results yesterday. Naturally, no one is willing to tell me things like "By the way we reconfigured the simulator so all your old images won't work and it will take you two days of groveling through enormous output files to figure out why." In a way, knowing that no one is willing to keep me in the loop is kind of freeing. Clearly, the pressure I'm perceiving is not about actually getting the tests done. The results are obviously not what's important. Maybe it's political -- I just need to be seen making a whale of a lot of effort. If so, I can do that. I learned how to look busy long ago!
Also this week, Rob is out of town, so I called his Wednesday night club (I'm not very skilled at C-2 sight calling any more so that was stressful) and our Thursday night club. My every-other-week C4 practice happened this week as well. It's been busy.
I've been trying to "coordinate with Kim" on flipping the hot tub, but every time we have a plan, she decides not to do it. Usually she has a good reason, but this is getting really old by now. We still haven't turned it. The electrician still hasn't started (because he'd rather not start until we turn the thing around). It's been a week now. I wouldn't mind so much if I didn't feel as if I had any kind of responsibility for "coordinating" (?) to get this done. Responsibility without the ability to do anything kind of sucks.
I slept wrong a couple nights ago and have been unable to turn my head since Wednesday. The amount of pain is less staggering now than it was then, but still pretty annoying. Wish I had time to make a run to the chiropractor.
Today, I got to go over to another facility at work and help them screen chips. We are refining our tests so that we can discover more quickly which parts are good and which are flaky. Until that's done, we need warm bodies to push buttons in the lab. The hardware folks particularly wanted warm bodies with some knowledge of the low-level software -- that'd be me, and a few other people -- so that we might see patterns of failure and have some insight. I just got back from doing that. Insights have thus far failed to appear.
I am fervently, ardently, almost desperately looking forward to the weekend.
That is all.
no subject
Simulation of a big honkin multiprocessor telecommunications chip. I get to figure out why it doesn't, for example, boot the OS. It's usually something I can narrow down within two days. I point to the one offending line out of sixteen million lines in the trace and say "It shouldn't do that", completely without comprehension of what the model is really doing deep inside to make instruction execution behave so wrongly. Then the hardware guys see what I'm pointing to and say OH, with instant understanding. A day or so later it doesn't do that particular wrong thing any more. All this makes me very glad I'm a software dweeb!
I'm finding and pointing out problems, which is good. However, the pressure from above is not consistent with the timeline and our current status. There's something political going on and I have yet to figure out what it is. I am sure I will flame about it when I figure it out. :-)
no subject
It sounds like the timeline isn't consistent with the testing or bug-discovery rate... which is hard to force, unless they can parallel-ize the testing and go to multiple shifts...
Actually, the guys planning the next-generation Shuttle maintain that they can test it with only software sims, no prototypes... with which I disagree. *Some* hardware is necessary, sometime...
no subject
Even more confusing, the timeline (if you mean the posted schedule) is completely consistent with our rate of progress, but I'm getting the kind of repeated little "status?" queries that I usually see only when things are way, way behind. It's as if there is a hidden agenda to finish a month early.
*Some* hardware is necessary, sometime...
Yeah. Trusting the perfection of one's simulator is a risk... one I wouldn't want to take with something like a spacecraft.