So long, farewell, auf Wiedersehen, good night

So long ye folk of Blogland... at least for the next week! (this is me being coy). Did my title trick you into thinking I was leaving forever? (this is me blinking, realizing no one is reading). Sorry, cheap ploy-- although I don't think it would really matter (this is me looking for attention).

All this week I will be in Dallas, TX as the lone team member trying to 'triage' any problems that come up with our product. When you write software, you go through many stages: there is a period of 'construction' where everyone is writing code and the product is generally unstable. Then you go through 'integration' where all the pieces have to fit together and play nice with each other. Lastly, there is a period of 'quality assurance' where the code is frozen and the test team exercises the code to find bugs. So if QA finds any problems, development has to 'triage' the bug, and determine the risk/impact to the software. Then a decision has to be made whether or not the bug is serious enough to stop shipment of the product. For us, this week is our last week-- our 'general availability' (GA) date is 7/20. We have a very low number of bugs right now, and those will all be fixed with our second release candidate on Monday. So QA is still pounding on the system all this week, and my role is to support them and when something comes up, to solve it quickly and make a go/no-go recommendation. It will be a stressful, long week :-(



My two team members somehow convinced management to let them take a five week European vacation starting last thursday... don't ask me how-- it makes no fucking sense why on the eve of the biggest release of this product they would allow them to leave the country for five weeks (they are from Europe so they want to see their family, which is fine-- but not my problem, really).

So, it's just me... wish me luck guys!!! I'm feeling a bit sassy like the cute guy in this pic :-)

Much Love,
Steve