Done last week (20160724Su - 30Sa)

[mdlbear]

Fairly productive at work this week, though I lost Friday to an all-day training session. (I made up some of that yesterday in between lab work and my doctor's appointment. Went in early because the appointment wasn't until 1:40, and I wanted to be able to have my coffee before noon.) I appear to be in pretty good health; my blood pressure was 129/75; which is decent.

The training Friday was a workshop on Scrum. Tl;dr: we've been doing it wrong. Which is not unusual. My impression has always been that it works best for things that can be built incrementally -- the idea is to break things down into "features" (corresponding to "user stories") that can be built in one sprint -- typically two weeks -- and end up done, in production, and demonstrated to the customer at the end of that. The theory is that the team gets more and more familiar with their product and their process, so they get better at estimating. And there's an expectation that developers are mostly fungible -- anyone can pick up any of the tasks and finish it in a couple of days. (Specialists like QA, tech writer (we should be so lucky!), and maybe a web developer, don't count.)

So let's look at the project I'm currently on: We have four developers. One is building a new service, one is working on the web front end (and just came on board), and two are working in different, pre-existing services that they've never worked on before. The work being done in the latter case is such that a sizeable number of pieces have to be in place in order for anything to work. Meanwhile, other teams are working on other parts of the same services, with somewhat different requirements. Theoretically, each of the three main developers could work on any of the tasks, but in practice there's a lot of context in each of those sub-projects that it would take a long time for anyone else to ramp up on.

It doesn't help that the manager and web developer are in Vancouver, and that most of the design was done almost a year before the work started, under a different manager, by three developers one of whom got pulled off to work on a totally unrelated project. This leaves only two of us with any real context.

On the other hand, I've been having fun with configuration files and makefiles. The latest hack was adding color-coded labels to the workspaces in my xmonad setup. You say "ws 2 to.do", for example, and you get a color-coded label at the top of the screen in workspace 2. The labels use standard resistor color codes, and include a clock (because the quick thing was to base them on xclock). Here. (Need to get this onto github soon.)

Writing: met my minimum goal of 500 words two days a week, but just barely. Both were in PJ (short for Private Journal), so not on DW or the website where you can see them. Sorry about that.

Notes & links:

0724Su
  * up 6:20; W=201; dishes
  * finally got the second LED bulb installed in the middle bedroom upstairs.  I could
    just barely reach, but it was enough -- holding the dome with my fingers and turning
    the nearest screw with my thumb.  Would have been bad if it had slipped.
  % Thought for a few minutes that I'd managed to lose the working directories for my
    albums.  No, I'd just forgotten where I put them.  Neither has a Rips directory, but
    as it turns out Tools/music/* was almost adequate -- make -n bleeding.rips gave me
    the right commands (along with other stuff that probably would have been a problem if
    I'd run it.)
      make bleeding.names; mkdir bleeding.rips
      /vv/users/steve/Tools/TrackInfo.pl format=symlinks dir=bleeding.rips @bleeding.names
    Had to do it that way because make would have remade Master and all the existing ogg
    and mp3 files.  Then just:
      mkdir /vv/mm/audio/Steve_Savitzky/About_Bleeding_Time
      cp bleeding.rips/* /vv/mm/audio/Steve_Savitzky/About_Bleeding_Time
    -> Obviously record.make needs some work; probably mostly just making the contents of
       Master order-only prerequisites so that they don't get remade.
  * More ripping.  Scorpio 5 disk 2 appears to be badly damaged, but icedax seems to be
    handling it.  Slowly.  Unfortunately my session on snowflake crashed while it was
    about halfway through track 18 (of 19), so it will be a while longer.  The problems
    started around track 14, though, so there's hope.  Should have nohup'ed it, though.
    -> done.  No idea what the quality is, though.
  * added chords to I Am Not a Stranger to the Rain; checked it in (from Cygnus, because
    that's where I started).  The source had the chords inline with CSS markup, so all I
    had to do for the most part was put in brackets.  Some were out of place.
  & Saw A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder with N because G wasn't feeling well.
    Wonderful show.
  @ A Gentleman's Guide to Love and Murder - Wikipedia

0725Mo
  * Up 6:30; W=199.6; laundry, dishes
  * Fun with xmonad - finally made a script that puts up color-coded workspace labels.
    Resistor color codes, of course.

0726Tu
  * up 6:15; W=201.0; laundry
  * Productive day at work.  Just about where I wanted to be, with the last bit of
    debugging done on $SUBPROJECT.  Gives me 3 days to refactor the CRs into something
    comprehensible.  Well, 2, because there's an all-day training session Friday.  Which
    caused the sprint demo to get moved to Tuesday, so I _still_ have some time.
  % ... and my left eye's been itching for days.  Presumably a return of my blepharitis.

0727We
  * Up 6ish; W=200.2; laundry, dishes
  @ Irregular Webcomic! #1420 - Maxwell's Equations
    There's probably a filk lurking in there.  In fact, I think I remember hearing it;
    something about Maxwell's Wave Equation.
    -> bingo.  www.cyphertext.net/escapekey/Maxwell.txt By Vixy.
  @ The Window: On Writing, Cancer, Emotional Labor, and Time — Medium
  * read through Assigned Male
  * humira
  % Awake until nearly 4am.  Finally got up, sat in the recliner for a bit, then went back
    to bed and managed to get to sleep.  Part of what kept me awake were cuddles from
    Colleen and Ticia.  
  
0728Th
  * Up 6:15ish; W=201.2; dishes
  @ Anonymous publishing with Riffle [LWN.net]
  * Moderately productive.  Refactoring done, more or less.  At least to the point where
    the first CRs can be shoved out and looked at while I split out the last three or four
    and write the missing unit tests.
  : On the way home encountered two drivers stopped in the crosswalk: Avalon and
    Fauntleroy.   Actually, two at Fauntleroy.  The one at Avalon was riskier, though -- I
    could tell she was on her phone and not looking in my direction.  In a BMW, of course
  : Colleen and Kat made potstickers.  From scratch.  Yum.
  * Writing: 501 words in PJ.  (So a little under, since that includes tags.)
  
0729Fr
  % woke up 4:30; felt awake enough not to bother going back to sleep.
    Nice dream - a chase through a maze-like warehouse with some relationship to Oz. Then,
    after some kind of minor victory, came downstairs to the basement of what was now a
    house; found a woman (who I knew, but I don't think it was anyone I know IRL) in a
    bathtub.  "Would you consider that unsafe?" - "No, I don't consider that unsafe.  I
    think I'm meant to consider that an invitation."  "That" clearly referred to a
    relationship, not just getting into the tub with her.  Woke up at that point.
  * up 5ish; W=201.2; laundry, dishes
  & HSX:  Ordered Presonus 2-channel USB audio interface from MF - $80 after 20% off for
    the stupid deal of the day.  This is largely based on Dara's posts about the larger
    one that she has -- 1818?  Anyway; all I need is 2 channels for studio recording, and
    I'd use the mixer for live.
  * Scrum workshop -- all day, at work.  
  @ What Happened When I Got Rid Of Everything In My House That Doesn’t Spark Joy 
  * Writing: 499 words in PJ

0730Sa
  * Up 5ish; W=201.2; laundry, dishes
  % Apparently waking up between 4:30 and 5am is no longer unusual for me.  Not
    complaining, though I'm not being as productive then as I could be.
  * The scanner on the WF-600 works.  Both in Windows, and over the net in xsane.  It's
    too bad the printer's nozzles are clogged, so it's no good as a copier.  But it scans.
  * 1:40 Dr. Chopra - went early so I could get my labs done and have some coffee.  I
    appear to be in good health.  Got refills on HCTZ and Methocarbamol.  Went to Home
    Depot, Office Max, and Costco.  Got in an hour or so of coding (unit tests) while
    waiting in between.
  & Colleen and I ordered Chinese for dinner.
  * reorder drugs
  * 7:30ish called Mom.  Finally got a good connection this time, and did a lot of good
    catching up.
  & Quora is addictive.  This Nora Rivkis person is a _really_ good writer on it.  I really
    don't have time for it.

Comments

[alatefeline]

I'm glad to hear that you have workable physical health and some productive streaks going for you!

Congratulations on writing! No need to apologize for writing private stuff.

You made color-coding for computer-y things? You PROGRAMMED it? You are SO COOL. I color-code everything physical and would LOVE to have an easy fun way to do that for the things I personally do on a computer ... in fact, I do do that within programs where I know how to do it, any long nonfiction piece I write for myself or spreadsheet of data will have a rainbow of meaningful colors.

>> And there's an expectation that developers are mostly fungible -- anyone can pick up any of the tasks and finish it in a couple of days. ... So let's look at the project I'm currently on: We have four developers. One is building a new service, one is working on the web front end (and just came on board), and two are working in different, pre-existing services that they've never worked on before. The work being done in the latter case is such that a sizeable number of pieces have to be in place in order for anything to work. ... Theoretically, each of the three main developers could work on any of the tasks, but in practice there's a lot of context in each of those sub-projects that it would take a long time for anyone else to ramp up on.... It doesn't help that the manager and web developer are in Vancouver... This leaves only two of us with any real context. <<

Ah ha ha ha ha. Without ever having been anywhere near programming or tech development projects, this is ENTIRELY familiar. Treating employees as interchangeable and then blaming them for 'doing it wrong' when they aren't 100% up to speed and highly effective on the project, activities, work culture, and employer-preferred strategy initiatives they're handed - rather than examining the actual demands of the project/activities and the fit or lack thereof of the initiatives - is a completely standard tactic across a range of professions. For bonus points, it can be replicated indefinitely at every level of a hierarchy, such that entry level employees are getting it from trainers, experienced folk are getting it from leaders and managers, managers and specialists are getting it from higher-ups, etc. It makes me want to Hulk Smash capitalism, except that this effect is 100% transferable to non-commercial organizations. The only real fix I've seen is long-term conscious community building, plus direct accountability of people higher in the hierarchy to people further down, often by way of people rejecting hierarchical roles, and those things are ... unusual. Gah, people.

I hope that you and Mama C and everyone at your house including the kitties has an unexpectedly very nice day soon. *purrs, offers catform-cuddles or hoomin-hug*

[mdlbear]

*hugs, cuddles, and purrs*

I take advantage of the fact that a lot of programs on Linux take -fg and -bg options for foreground and background colors, and translate the workspace numbers into the same color codes used in electronics, which makes them easy for me to remember.

Actually, our group is doing things more-or-less right at the moment, with each developer working on a different part of the project. I'm just afraid that we'll try to implement the methodology we were just trained on, which would probably be disastrous.

[alatefeline]

*purrrrrrrrrrr*

Good luck.

[amaebi.livejournal.com]

Yay! And you sound as if you have momentum-- I hope so.