Old Boar's blog (Old Boars blog)

Well... the systems is system test (has been for a while). I'm looking after the Analysis support for a couple of areas which have been given a low-ish priority. That means that at the moment they haven't had intense testing. While I wait for the inevitable bugs, I'm tidying up the list of outstanding change requests and have just started trawling throught function myself to see if I can pre-empt any of the bugs. All that is very important, but not too inspiring.
In the meanwhile, I've downloaded a couple of lectures (if that is the right word) from www.longnow.org to listen to in the flat this evening.
I'm also starting to look seriously at the outline of a (non-fiction) book I'm planning. At the moment it is in the form of a huge mind-map constructed from post-its stuck on a couple of A0 pages. I think it has nearly gelled. I think that once I'm satisfied with the mind-map, I write it up as a sort-of powerpoint presentation. I've a fairly visual person, and the slides give me an opportunity to sketch outlines for illustrations, put down bullet points and store text snippets in the "presenter's notes". It is going to take a little while, but I'm going to get there.
Now, back to the grindstone!

At last I finished the latest draft of the report. I've been putting it off, but I finished it last night. Now it's done and sent for review. I celebrated by dining with my friend Mister Ali (whose cooking is a great deal better than mine).

It's a beautiful day, and apart with being stuck in work, everything's going fine. Now to get on and finish a few things!

I spent a pleasant weekend (well, in practical terms, only Saturday) at home in North Cork (Eire). That's a awful lot of travelling for just one day at home. Work prevents me from spending as much time there as I would like.
I managed to trim two-thirds of the hedge around the back garden. The remaining third will have to wait, N will can do it if she finds time. Mind you, I don't know how she manages to fit in as much as she does anyway.
N had bought a new, smaller and lighter petrol hedge trimmer. We had grown ashamed of borrowing from the neighbours, and the task is really too much to attempt with had shears!
As always with starting small engines (particularly 2 strokes?), there seems to be
a "knack" with this one. After several attempts, I think I've got it now. The instructions N was given by the man who sold it to her were much clearer than the instructions in the manual, but isn't that often the way with instruction manuals.
Having so much fun will encourage me to keep looking for something suitable in Ireland.
I'd really like something in Duhallow, but realistically I suppose it will have to be Cork or Limerick.
Never mind, something will turn up!

The good news is, I've got less to do than I thought, the bad news is, I've just wasted the morning.
I got given a pile of eMails to check through. Unfortunately I imported the wrong file (I was sent 2 files with the same name, but quite different contents). Oh dear, just get on with it I suppose.
And someone has just asked me "Did I send you an eMail asking you to organise customer acceptance of...?". Naturally, they'd forgotten and so got a blank look from me.
Oh well, these things happen.

Wednesday up till lunch time has also been quiet. I've finished the backlog of updates and I'm now moving on to some new changes. I'll see if I can slip in some process improvements at the same time.

By way of a diversion, I had to field some problems relating to the definition of "Access Roles", for which I have become the local expert (mainly because everyone else avoids the problem).

In this case the difficulties are: the readership and purpose of one of the key documents wasn't considered (and it is being used in an inappropriate way), and migration wasn't considered when the changes from one release to another were specified.

In this particular case I have had doubts about the way this document has been used for some time. It's difficult to put succinctly, but the "purpose" of the document does not seem to be clear, and the emphasis seems to be solely on "control", rather than producing anything.

Monday and Tuesday have been a little pedestrian. I have inherited from a colleague the task of making some documentation updates. Unfortunately, rather than logging the individual "defects" in the appropriate database, they've been logged in a spreadsheet. In fact they've been logged in several spreadsheets, some of which really should be subsets of other, master, spreadsheets.
Of course, the changes themselves involve more than one file. The result is that, rather than making one change and then updating one log record, I finish up updating between 1 and 3 files and updating log records in 3 places.
Hmm, I think we would have been better to think a little longer about how
this was going to be managed. However, there are relatively few updates, so I'm going to fix things as they are, and then try and introduce a better way later.
At least I made a start on the report.

The weekend was pleasant. There was the usual mixture of success and otherwise. Refurbishment of "the office" is running on schedule. The air conditioning has been fixed, thanks to DG Refrigeration. There will be a short delay with some of the finance for the refurbishment. It won't delay the work, and it's my own fault for not reading the small print. The bad news is that I'm still putting off writing the report. I'm really going to have to buckle down and do that (however nice the weather is!)

In the beginning was the word...