Tuesday, May 26, 2009

Work work work

I have been too busy with work.

My new tasks at work would be to less prioritize the first project because of other plans and right now I am going to evaluate a software done by my Thai officemate. I only had little knowledge on the software. In fact, the time that I had an encounter with the software was when I designed and did some reverse engineering on the way Visual Studio would build a .Net project. I created a simple console application for resource conversion. What's ironic was I did it using C#. I liked C# because it's similar to Java. Pangd! I wish they are going to give me a Java project or at least assign me into a Java project.

Anyway, after designing and coding the resource generation, I integrated my application into our continuous build integration tool which was written in Java. And speaking of builds, it was in Ant with Arpege. Thanks to my previous companies where I was able to learn Apache Ant. I usually explore mostly software stuff at work and not at home. Not unless the software is really intruiging or I am really happy when I do something with it, it's also because I feel that I had to do other things, other than programming like chat anything and everything with my close friends, read a lot of things online or a good book . I am guilty about this book thing because I failed myself from my promise which was like I need to go back to reading books I have purchased. I actually brought books from the Philippines and in fact I weighed like 7 kilos so I was like in excess baggage when I arrived in Singapore. Good thing my company sponsored everything for me. But I know, I will get back to my reading habit.

By the way last Friday, I was able to discover what was wrong with the first product version. It took me like many days to realize what to do. My project lead maybe did not have any other interest of the project or I just don't know. It's because I asked him of all the documentation like the design and all but our French counterpart informed us that they don't have it. So anyway I don't really know. He just told me that we don't have it and he said that I have to read the code. My eyes looked startled but I knew from the very beginning that they don't have it, it's just that I wanted my project lead to know more information about the project. So I did not have any choice and decided to just give it a shot. Like draw up all the software internals by reading the code. How I wish I was reading one of Paulo Coehlo's novel but nope, I was actually a forensic , pathologist. As I have said I gave it a try and finally, that was it, I found a why in regards to what was wrong with the product. So this week's Monday, in our meeting, he told me that I need to less prioritize my current unprogressive task and focus this week with evaluating the software to be released this Friday. Like this morning, I had to setup the test environment in one of our virtual machines and my deadline will be later as it is 1:52 AM already. Anyway, as mentioned I have less understanding of the software so good thing, my Thai officemate was not that busy and I grabbed her (not literally wahahhah) and let her explain the new features which will be part of the release and some icons and buttons which were there. I started the testing like in the morning and continued after lunch and stopped at 4PM because I had to attend a software proposal review. It took us almost 2 hours to discuss thing for one thing I had only like few inputs because all of the questions were coming from our technical manager. Anyway, our technical manager left us because he had to attend something and the meeting went a bit relaxed. The questions were coming from our project lead and worse I was like getting bored and was really sleepy. At the back of my head I kept reminding myself to just listen and stay awake. Anyway, I was not able to control myself and I yawned. It was a bit embarrassing but I noticed they did not bother to notice so it was a bit of relief. I actually know what my team mate was talking about but then, I just chose to let my bosses asked things. I had few questions though but not much because it seems that my teammate was like really trying to explain things and I can seem to hear all the breathing and all that sound so I thought he was a bit tensed already.... Good thing when our manager left he just assured our teammate that it was very good.

Anyway, after the meeting I had to go to the lavatory. I was like bringing lots of printed docs which were a bit wasted. I went to my place and continued my evaluation tasks. I was surprised that all the things that my teammate discussed to me went away from my head. It sort of just disappeared and I can only recall like 40% of it. So I had to ask her again... I was so lazy which I think I am sometimes. Anyway, I managed to finish three features and there were 3 left. I also managed to see two other bugs and I need to do test cases for that. We actually do not have any template for the test validation so I had to make my own documentation. Hope they will agree with my sort of template. After this test evaluation, I will also be evaluating the task from my Indonesian teammate... I actually find it hard sometimes understand some of my teammates because of the accent but it's manageable most of the time. I think they also want to express themselves better so I do not bother myself correcting or anything with the way they pronounce or anything related to intonation and stuff. But sometimes, I get confused with the tenses :(

I actually want to finish the other project and in fact I have started another code to call an exposed function from the DLL. C#'s implementation is much cleaner than C/C++ or Visual Basic, so this test program is another console application using the aforementioned language. I think I have so many things in my head running around and I am becoming less focused on some things and I am so not motivated with some of my tasks. Can I program something that's close to human nature or anything close to live organisms?

Anyway, it's really work-work-work for this week. Hope things get better for my work as it's my only ticket right now to support my family and personal needs and wants. So good luck and God bless to me.

Isn't this entry boring? Okay, maybe two weeks from now, I will write something that's really fun and exciting. Ciao as in good morning for now?

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