September 15, 2012
Dear Everyone:
Our vacation to
Oregon, for the annual visit to
the Shakespeare Festival, did not get off to an auspicious beginning.
I packed the car and got out the door a little
after 9:00 AM Tuesday morning.
The plan was: Get to
“Jeannie’s” place between 9:30 and 10:00.
Pack her stuff in the car.
Say good-bye to the kitties and head to
Vacaville, where
I-505
splits off from
I-80 to
I-5.
Have a late breakfast in Vacaville.
Drive north and stop for lunch in
Redding, where we would refill
the gas tank and continue on up to
Ashland, landing around mid to late
afternoon.
But then, some character got pulled over by a
Highway Patrol Officer near
Walnut Creek that morning for having “an
obstructed license plate.”
He shot the Patrol Officer, reason unknown.
Another Patrol Officer shot the shooter.
Police shut down the entire freeway system for “a while”.
It took me five-and-a-half hours to get to “Jeannie’s” place, a
trip that usually takes 30-40 minutes.
We won’t even go into how I got sidetracked to
Oakley.
We finally left “Jeannie’s” place about 3:00 that
afternoon. Had
dinner in Redding.
Drove through the mountains in the dark.
Pulled in front of the hotel a
mere 12 hours after I’d left my place (“Jeannie” called the hotel and
had them hold our rooms for us.)
Through careful planning, we did not have any plays to attend on
Tuesday; that would begin on Wednesday.
The plays were, of course, delightful.
As You Like It was
rustic; we especially liked the sheep.
Animal Crackers was just plain silly.
Henry V was, well,
Henry.
The
Merry Wives of Windsor tried a
little too hard to be “relevant”, transplanted to an idealized
Midwest
(Iowa), with many references to modern politics and
same-sex marriage.
The stereotypes would have annoyed anyone, let alone anyone from
the Midwest. However, on the
Plus Side: More sheep.
As for
Romeo and Juliet,
who could have predicted that we would see the exact same play just over
a month ago in
New York? In
a word…kids!!!
I’d forgotten how much walking uphill, and
downhill, is involved in Ashland which is, after all, a mountain town.
I did see a gentleman sitting on some kind of two-wheeled
Electronic Convenience Vehicle (ECV) that looked like an improvised
Segway. I’ll have to look
into that.
Meanwhile, back at work…
“Ludmilla” continues to complicate her “test
scripts”. She doesn’t just
toss in “everything but the kitchen sink.”
She also adds the kitchen sink, the attic, the basement, and your
third cousin’s mobile home.
And she still likes to jump around like a cricket on a griddle.
I’m currently “reviewing” the original test
scripts for “Functional Set 1”, which counts as Phase 1 and has already
been in Production since last year.
Nevertheless, there have been a lot of changes caused by Phases 2
and 3 and it’s important to make sure the
Ripple Effect hasn’t wiped out
anything important.
Example:
One of the programmers decided to “move” all the imaginary
Service Managers to “Hobby” for some reason or other.
However, one of the very first tests involves an imaginary
Service Requestor who “works” in
California.
When said imaginary Service Requestor requests some service, none
of the imaginary Service Managers can “see” the request because why
would someone in “Hobby” be bothering with moving furniture around in
California?
So my job is to either rewrite the test script to
use an imaginary Service Requestor who “works” in “Hobby”, or convince
the programmer to “move” one of the imaginary Service Managers back to
California. In the meantime,
all of the imaginary Facility Managers are currently “working” in
Aberdeen. The imaginary
Aberdeen, of course. Or
Concord, which is in imaginary California.
In the meantime, the Project Manager has decided
to “just do it”, as in, just get Phase 3 done and clean up the mess
afterward. So the light at
the end of the tunnel is still a couple of short weeks away.
After that, I can decide whether to continue to help out at work
or return to glorious unemployment.
I’ll have to think about that, too.
Love, as always,
Pete
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