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August 18, 2000 |
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I'm a software engineer for a fairly large product group. There are
always bugs, and to a definite degree, there are always important
bugs. I don't mind working investigating and fixing bugs, but there's a
fine line to everything. Having been both a design engineer and a test
engineer I'm occasionally asked which I prefer. The simple truth is that
there are pro's and con's to each. Design work is arguably more rewarding
since you know that there are people out there running
your software. Realistically, test work can be equally as rewarding. You
can program sophisticated software in both, the biggest difference in this
respect is that design engineers have to deal with fire drills more
frequently.
I can remember a time when I was debugging the last bug in our product, and
there were literally three people looking over my shoulder as I
debugged this problem. No stress… no stress at all. Today, would be
similar.
I came in to work to find that there was a high priority bug assigned to me,
and the e-mail form had suggested that I get this resolved immediately and
went as far as to suggest that I do not go to the bathroom.
[Sigh!] My personal opinion is that a couple of these folks are
bit little highstrung.
I started to do a bit of digging into the bug and came to the conclusion
that there was no way it could be occuring from my components. That wasn't
good enough however, since it doesn't prevent people from screaming at you
from the top of their lungs. I had to find whose fault it was, so I
continued to dig. I found that there were two components that possibly
were the guilty culprits, one of them I knew who to talk to… a couple
of people actually. I sent of some mail and we started a discussion. I
also had to warn a few people that I could not attend to my regular duties
because of this little fire drill. All in all, this was complicating about
four people's day.
Having followed the paper trail I had found out that this bug was
assigned to me and made high priority because, someone had "gotten tired of
looking at it". He was not referring to the symptoms of the bugs, he was
referring to the bug report itself, so he took it upon himself to raise the
priority of this bug. I don't like it when people waste my time. I like
it even less when I waste other's time. Not to say that this is not an
important issue, but it's not important enough to have four engineers
immediately drop everything they were doing to attend to this simply
because someone had grown tired of looking at it. Call me
old-fashioned.
I should really assign it to another engineer, but felt very guilty about
it. It was Friday evening. I don't like handing someone a hot potato,
especially not like this, but then again, someone handed it to me. I
would've re-assigned it too, if the database wasn't down for maintenance.
While chatting to Dugan about the above problem, I got a page. My pager is the one thing I never leave behind. I have a number of electronic gadgets which I may carry back and forth wherever I may go. I generally put them down in my office or at home and proceed to do my work. In other words, I don't take my cell phone or Pocket PC to meetings, the one thing I always have with me is my pager. The pager is always on my belt and it is always on my jeans. The only time I don't have the pager on me is when I'm naked, and trust me on this one, if I were naked I wouldn't be answering your page anyway.
Okay, I lied, I don't take my pager to the gym either.
The page was from Pam. She left me a message that she would be riding the bus to Bellevue from Seattle and that I should meet her. Uhmm… riding the bus?! She was going to be moving to this side of the pond in a couple of weeks; still, we had talked about doing this bus ride together. She's a big girl and knew what she was doing, but I did make it a point to pick her up at the bus stop. It would be arriving at 7:20pm.
It was 6:40pm. I briefly toyed with the idea of going home and either taking a quick shower, or packing my clothes for this weekend. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that I didn't have enough time, not if I was going to be there before she arrived. I just drove to the bus stop to meet her.
I arrived early, or so it seemed. I parked my car and stayed there while I watched the buses drive by. One bus by the same number passed though it was going the opposing direction. It should only be a few more minutes before her bus arrives. It did arrive on time, and I saw Pam sitting in the bus quietly… a little too quietly. I wondered if she knew that she is supposed to be getting out. She did get out at the right exit and I picked her up.
Her take on the bus ride? It was much easier than she thought it would be. It was just over a twenty minute ride from Downtown Seattle, her current bus ride is only a handful of minutes shorter. The only other factor is the distance from her office to each bus stop. She was both relieved and delighted. It was a good start to a Friday night.
Since she was on this side of town, I stipulated that she must get a computer game. Often times, she has wondered what the fascination is, though she had never played one. I kept trying to explain how they were addictive and that they were a good diversion, but to no avail. I, for one, happen to think that there is a computer game out there for everyone; it is simply a matter of picking the right one. To prove my point, I suggested that she pick up a game; we went to CompUSA.
We probably spent too much time at CompUSA, I looked at some games and probably more gadgets. She looked at notebooks, mice, printers, and yes… even games. She wanted to get a notebook similar to my Portégé, which is less than three pounds. They make a number of them, most notably some of the purple ones made by Sony. The reason I didn't pick one of them? The mouse, the little touchpad is one that I happen to find very irritating.
She did pick up a game; she picked Roller Coaster Tycoon. She found the premise of creating her own amusement park very entertaining. She also marvelled at the idea of simulating your own city. I was surprised to hear that she had not heard of SimCity before. The game has been around for ages. It has been redone nearly half a dozen times and has had similar number of spin-offs. Still, what do you expect from someone who is not into games?
We went to Houlihan's for dinner. Her one prerequisite for dinner place was that they serve a lemon drop. Houlihan's certainly qualified. We could've still gone to a number of places, but I was in the mood for one of their stuffed breasts… chicken - that is. Get your mind out of the gutter.
I ordered the chicken, and she ordered the soup, since she wasn't very hungry. We continued chatting about her bus trip, how things would be different once she lived in this side of town, and the typical stuff you might imagine. The chicken was as good as I remembered, not too dry despite the fact that it was white meat chicken. It's a little debate that Pam and I get into. We continued through dinner, and she enumerated the number of things she had to do. Still, she seemed in such good spirits.
We did share dessert. It was their caramel nut cruch pie or something like that, it would've been good, had they considered thawing it to the point where you might eat it with flatware instead of construction equipment. They made this same mistake at the other Houlihans. It was okay by the time we were halfway through it though. We did end up splitting the check again.
We wondered upstairs to the movie theater to see if we found a movie that was appealing. There were a couple of movies I thought would be interesting. She immediately vetoed Coyote Ugly. She didn't even know what X-Men was about. She wanted to see Autumn in New York, but it wasn't playing for another hour. I quietly pointed out that Coyote Ugly was playing in about twenty minutes, but she said, "I'm not seeing that movie!" You think that maybe she doesn't like the movie?
Tonight I would eventually have to get back to work, and I still had not packed my clothes. This meant that it would've been much easier for me not to spend the night at her place. I would still drive her back to her place, of course.
Once we got back to Pam's place and showered, we became a bit more… uhm, distracted than usual. Again, I won't go into any details, but let's just say that we were both feeling a bit adventurous.
I did eventually go back to work where I remained for a few hours. I returned home to spend a few additional hours on my computer. My contact lenses were really starting to bother me so I decided to take them off and wear my glasses, which were, naturally, in the car. [Sigh!] Once I got in the car I decided that getting some McDonald's breakfast sounded good. So that's what I did. It must've been close to 9am.
I went to sleep shortly after that.
August 18, 2000