Now that I'm working again, I have come to certain realizations.
The first of which is that I made some mistakes when looking for jobs this past spring. I was more interested in finding a job than in finding the right job. Granted, having a job with income is going to be better for me than the semi-employment of teaching computer programming classes. But it wasn't the path to long-term success. I really should have looked for a job that I wanted rather than taking the best offer that I received before leaving school.
This has led me to wonder whether I wouldn't have been better off just staying in Pittsburgh, where the cost of living was relatively low, and the expectations are likewise low for the people there. Doing a few classes a year probably would have gotten me by, and I could have had the same low-key semi-unhappy lifestyle that I had before, but at least I would have had a lot of free time.
So the mistake here was taking a QA job. QA people tend to have an inferiority complex, and I'm no exception. There is a lot of angst about QAers about whether they are good enough to be developers, and the general consensus seems to be that we're not. If we had been good enough to be developers, we would have been hired as developers instead of just QA. The attitude of most developers reflects this perceived inferiority, in that they rarely care what QA thinks, and definitely do little development with QA in mind. QA will always take longer than development, and yet it's given the shortest shrift in the development cycle. All of this leads to relatively unhappy and burnt-out QA people. Plus one.
The second realization is that this is a problem not limited to me. This is a general QA person complex. It also leads to a few general issues with QA departments. One is that it tends to create a self-fulfilling prophecy: QA people feel they must not be good enough for development, they become unproductive, and their work suffers (QA quality or development quality is irrelevant). Another is that QA people become less aggressive with the developers over time because the developers essentially "teach" them that the developers are not going to be that helpful to the QA people.
The third realization is that in general, of course it's going to be harder to get good QA people, too, because most of the people are who would be good QA people would rather be developers, and people who are confident about their abilities are not going to take the QA job unless they're really into QA. Which, I don't think, most QA people are (really into QA, I mean). And I don't mean to say that there aren't really good QA people who really like QA.
I don't really know what all this ends up meaning at the end of the day, other than I gotta figure out how to get out of here.
Friday, August 11, 2006
Friday, June 02, 2006
I blog, therefore I am.
Yes, I am still alive. I'd like to blame my lack of posting on being too busy for it, but we all know that's not entirely true.
But to keep you up to date, I have moved to California and started a tech job out here 3 weeks ago. So much for putting my law degree to work. I did buy patent bar review materials, so I do plan to take the patent bar. I should probably get to work on that a little bit.
I bought a car and drove out here 4 weeks ago. Work is interesting, and I like the people I work with (and there aren't many who read this, so I'm not lying).
There's a woman at work who told me a great story the other day which I thought I'd share. She recently bought a house, and when she went to sign the mortgage paperwork, the banker told her, "Here's a payment coupon for your first month's payment." She said, "Sweet! A coupon...and I was thinking that it was just going to be like 20% or something, but it was for the whole amount!" Then of course, she realized that it was not a coupon in the supermarket sense of the word, but in the remittance sense. Pretty funny stuff.
I could probably put some stuff here bitching about having a roommate again, but there's really no point. Up until a few days ago, he worked at Best Buy full time. He went to college to be a computer animator, but has yet to get a job doing that. But last week he got an offer to do a "test" for a company in Seattle, which essentially means that they sent him some work for him to do for free to see if they should hire him. He submitted the first part of the test, then they gave him some more work. So I guess he's working on that, but I'm not really sure. I thought I didn't like coming home when he wasn't here all the time...now it's even worse.
It's interesting to me that I still know a fair number of people who have roommates (and that number has only increased since getting to the uber-expensive Bay Area) years after college is over. Financially I can understand it, but on an emotional level, I can't. Other than Sarah, I really haven't had a roommate since 1998, and I can't imagine going back to having a roommate full-time. This 2 month period is gonna kill me, as I'm only 3 weeks in and I hate it so much already. Have I just grown out of it, or have I become spoiled? Even if Sarah were not going to move out here in July, I think I would have to rent a place on my own, just to feel independent again. Silly, maybe.
Ok, I'm rambling, I'm too tired to write more, time for bed.
But to keep you up to date, I have moved to California and started a tech job out here 3 weeks ago. So much for putting my law degree to work. I did buy patent bar review materials, so I do plan to take the patent bar. I should probably get to work on that a little bit.
I bought a car and drove out here 4 weeks ago. Work is interesting, and I like the people I work with (and there aren't many who read this, so I'm not lying).
There's a woman at work who told me a great story the other day which I thought I'd share. She recently bought a house, and when she went to sign the mortgage paperwork, the banker told her, "Here's a payment coupon for your first month's payment." She said, "Sweet! A coupon...and I was thinking that it was just going to be like 20% or something, but it was for the whole amount!" Then of course, she realized that it was not a coupon in the supermarket sense of the word, but in the remittance sense. Pretty funny stuff.
I could probably put some stuff here bitching about having a roommate again, but there's really no point. Up until a few days ago, he worked at Best Buy full time. He went to college to be a computer animator, but has yet to get a job doing that. But last week he got an offer to do a "test" for a company in Seattle, which essentially means that they sent him some work for him to do for free to see if they should hire him. He submitted the first part of the test, then they gave him some more work. So I guess he's working on that, but I'm not really sure. I thought I didn't like coming home when he wasn't here all the time...now it's even worse.
It's interesting to me that I still know a fair number of people who have roommates (and that number has only increased since getting to the uber-expensive Bay Area) years after college is over. Financially I can understand it, but on an emotional level, I can't. Other than Sarah, I really haven't had a roommate since 1998, and I can't imagine going back to having a roommate full-time. This 2 month period is gonna kill me, as I'm only 3 weeks in and I hate it so much already. Have I just grown out of it, or have I become spoiled? Even if Sarah were not going to move out here in July, I think I would have to rent a place on my own, just to feel independent again. Silly, maybe.
Ok, I'm rambling, I'm too tired to write more, time for bed.
Sunday, April 23, 2006
I'm a litterbug
On Friday, I littered for what I consider to the be the first time. I say that I consider that to be the first time because I can't recall every having littered anything other than bubble gum or other organics (banana peels, apple cores, etc). I don't count the organics because they end up getting eaten by other things and aren't something that someone will be able to pick up in 2 weeks during a trash sweep.
Sarah got some lotion, manufactured for Kohl's, from someone at school (I think). It was some sort of Ginseng & Soy Protein thing, but whenever she put it on, it made me sneeze like crazy. She usually puts it on while driving to school, so it stays in the car.
Friday I drove her to school, and she put some of this lotion on her legs. This used a rather larger portion than normal of the lotion, and made me sneeze correspondingly more. Not only did I sneeze in the car, but I sneezed and had a runny nose all morning. Obviously I'm allergic to something in the lotion. So after my final and errands over on campus, I got back in the car, and whatever diminishment had occurred over the course of the morning, the lotion had its full effect when I returned to the car.
So while driving past the cemetary on my way home, I made the decision that this lotion needed to be thrown away. Immediately. It needed to be thrown away so that it could never come back. If I were to throw it away at home, she could dig through the trash to retrieve it. Or worse, make me dig through the trash to retrieve it. Yes, she likes (liked) the lotion enough to do this. So out the window it went.
She wasn't that upset when I told her it was gone, though she was surprised at the manner of disposal. I told her I would buy any other lotion she likes to make up ofr it.
What a great way to celebrate the day before Earth Day.
Sarah got some lotion, manufactured for Kohl's, from someone at school (I think). It was some sort of Ginseng & Soy Protein thing, but whenever she put it on, it made me sneeze like crazy. She usually puts it on while driving to school, so it stays in the car.
Friday I drove her to school, and she put some of this lotion on her legs. This used a rather larger portion than normal of the lotion, and made me sneeze correspondingly more. Not only did I sneeze in the car, but I sneezed and had a runny nose all morning. Obviously I'm allergic to something in the lotion. So after my final and errands over on campus, I got back in the car, and whatever diminishment had occurred over the course of the morning, the lotion had its full effect when I returned to the car.
So while driving past the cemetary on my way home, I made the decision that this lotion needed to be thrown away. Immediately. It needed to be thrown away so that it could never come back. If I were to throw it away at home, she could dig through the trash to retrieve it. Or worse, make me dig through the trash to retrieve it. Yes, she likes (liked) the lotion enough to do this. So out the window it went.
She wasn't that upset when I told her it was gone, though she was surprised at the manner of disposal. I told her I would buy any other lotion she likes to make up ofr it.
What a great way to celebrate the day before Earth Day.
Tuesday, February 07, 2006
8:34
I'm sure I'm not the only person who still thinks he's (or she's) 17. I have to think about it for a second to realize that I'm 28 years old and that my siblings have also aged and are no longer little kids.
I called my brother tonight, most likely the last time I will talk to him for at least a year in a form other than email. He flies out tomorrow for the sunny skies and green (poppy) fields of Afghanistan. I've known that this will happen for a while. Initially it was to be Iraq, and eventually it was changed to Afghanistan.
He's excited about going; he wants his first confirmed kill. The last few years have all been foreplay to his big trip east, his trip to "The Show". He's not a grunt, he's some form of lieutenant, he'll be the only one with his job at the base where he will be stationed. This should keep him safe, though he is still on some level expendable.
I called my brother tonight and told him to come back safely; not to do anything that's likely to get his ass shot off. I don't know what else to tell him. The sum of my experiences is not likely to help him in whatever encounters he has over there. I can only tell him to come back alive and hope that it's not the last time that I talk to him.
I called my brother to tell him that I'm sorry for beating him up as a kid—there are some fights that I'm really not proud of, where I was far too violent with him. I called him to let him know that whatever happened earlier in our lives, though we're not terribly close, I'm still here for him.
But alas, we're both Lees. We don't voice feelings to others in our family. They don't know how to receive it, and we don't know how to say it. So the long phone call where we talk about everything—isn't.
Instead, it lasts just 8 minutes, 34 seconds.
I called my brother tonight, most likely the last time I will talk to him for at least a year in a form other than email. He flies out tomorrow for the sunny skies and green (poppy) fields of Afghanistan. I've known that this will happen for a while. Initially it was to be Iraq, and eventually it was changed to Afghanistan.
He's excited about going; he wants his first confirmed kill. The last few years have all been foreplay to his big trip east, his trip to "The Show". He's not a grunt, he's some form of lieutenant, he'll be the only one with his job at the base where he will be stationed. This should keep him safe, though he is still on some level expendable.
I called my brother tonight and told him to come back safely; not to do anything that's likely to get his ass shot off. I don't know what else to tell him. The sum of my experiences is not likely to help him in whatever encounters he has over there. I can only tell him to come back alive and hope that it's not the last time that I talk to him.
I called my brother to tell him that I'm sorry for beating him up as a kid—there are some fights that I'm really not proud of, where I was far too violent with him. I called him to let him know that whatever happened earlier in our lives, though we're not terribly close, I'm still here for him.
But alas, we're both Lees. We don't voice feelings to others in our family. They don't know how to receive it, and we don't know how to say it. So the long phone call where we talk about everything—isn't.
Instead, it lasts just 8 minutes, 34 seconds.
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