ace’s blog

I’m utterly disgusted by how my shop deploys software!  We (frequently) have a need to do a rush job on a project, be it an update or completely new functionality that a customer “needs…like yesterday”.

Short version of this bitchy-rant is every software shop needs QA!  If you don’t care to read the rest, thanks for reading so far.  Bye…

Now if your still here: WTF is wrong with this company that about 90% of the stuff that I do is a rush job?!?  When I worked at Terminix, about 1% of the stuff that was developed was put into a production environment the same day it was developed; at this company, that percentage jumps drastically to about 30%.   That is way too high.

No wonder we have so many bugs!  No wonder I’m becoming so good at SQL and data fix functions!  I’m a fucking data cleaning machine.

This is bullshit.  I’ve jumped up and down on the “we need QA people” soapbox so many times this week that it’s not even amusing anymore.  I’ve become the person in the office who talks about how things were done at their old company.

In short, I love and miss the Crystals/Mistys/Debbies/every other good QA person that I got so used to at Terminix.  You guys rock!

…

Writing this post just made me write a ridiculously long email to our HR person asking for QA people.  I copied my manager and the owner of the company.

Aaron had his first soccer practice today! He had a ton of fun running around and kicking the ball with the other kids. Most of the kids are around his age but some of them are a bit older (I think there is a 5 year old on his team). He was hot, sweaty and very tired by the time we got home. Below are some pictures:

My plugin was in a write up about WordPress plugins on the blog Mashable.  Here is a link to the entry: http://mashable.com/2007/08/02/wordpress-readers/.   How cool is that?!

I found it by looking through some of the incoming links to my blog.  I clicked on a link from an Asian site and saw a link to Mashable.com.  I clicked on the Mashable link and then did a search on the blog entry for “vox” and found my plugin listed!  That’s freaking awesome!

This pregnancy is different than the last.  Meri is only 8 weeks along and her tummy is already getting a shape to it.  It’s already getting a little harder and she’s already showing, but just a little bit.  With the first pregnancy, I don’t think she started to really show until she was about 5 or 6 months along.

Lately, Meri has also been preoccupied with a lingering thought and some dreams regarding the same subject: twins!  Although neither of us have a history of twins in either of our families, Meri has been dreaming and thinking about twins for the past few weeks.

Today, Meri had her first doctor’s appointment.  She was surprised to learn that they would be doing an ultrasound.  We did not know that they would do that yet and that is why I didn’t go.  I wish I had gone now.  They did an ultrasound and at first, it looked like there were two babies in there!  Meri said “is that twins?!” and the doctor said “I don’t know!” … “I don’t know”; hm, now it’s interesting!

So far, the one heartbeat that was found is strong, currently beating 156 times a minute.  We will need more ultrasounds to determine if there are actually twins in that tummy or if it was just an odd angle initially.

After I got off the phone with Meri, I actually had tears in my eyes!  I really thought I would be somewhat scared at actually having twins at this point (with Aaron already).  Three kids is definitely different than two!  You aren’t one-on-one anymore.  I am really excited about the possibility of twins now.  I can’t wait to find out for sure!

After a ton of anticipation (and crabby neighbors), the community pool finally opened (several weeks ago).

We have been taking Aaron to the pool quite a bit. Now you would think that a kid who hates water over his face in the bath tub would like to stay above the water on his many, many flotational devices.

Oh no, not my boy! He is dunking his head, jumping off the side (to Meri or myself) and just being very (scarily) daring! He has been dunking his head and floating around for about two weeks now but yesterday, he started to actually swim, underwater, by himself! It was very exciting for us to see him doing that. We are trying to teach him to come up for air while swimming but he didn’t get it down by the time we left the pool yesterday.

On a side note, I highly recommend every parent take their child(ren) swimming about an hour before bedtime! No wakey-uppy in the middle of the night!

My birthday was yesterday.  I am now a whopping 28 years old (social security, here I come!).  I’m officially in my late 20′s, not that I’m counting…

We had a simple night, I got a few cards, Aaron helped me open my present (yay GPS device for me) and we went to dinner.  We came home and all ate cake and ice cream.

Aaron was really good, despite being really tired.

Aaron has offically begun to get money for helping clean up!  Initially, when I thought it was going to be a once in a while kind of thing, I told him that I would put $20 into his savings account for every dollar that he got from mommy for helping clean up.  My idea was that he could have the dollars for us to buy him things that he wanted (candy, toys, etc.) and that the money in the bank would be saved.

Well, I found a dollar in my wallet before going to dinner and asked Aaron to help me clean up his playroom.  He helped and then I gave him a dollar and put it in his wallet (yeah, he has a wallet).  When I opened his wallet, there was already $3 in there, which meant I owed him an additional $60, as per my promise…

Hm, now that just got expensive.  I’m thinking I’ll scale back my promise a bit and give him a much smaller amount (like five or ten dollars for every dollar we put in his wallet).  I don’t know…. so long as he has some sort of savings, I’ll be happy(ier).