last few days

[cellio]

It's been a hectic week at work, due largely to our lack of committed, firm process for software releases -- or rather, the inability of the engineers (thus far) to prevent requests for a "quick and dirty snapshot -- just a beta" from going somewhere. We will discuss this next week. (I think I was finally able to impress on the right person, on Friday, that we are not just making accelerated progress -- we are doing stuff that we will have to undo later, and that has a cost.) The real answer here is to have frequent quasi-releases, where we go through the freeze/QA/archive process even if it never leaves the building. If we do this every month, then when someone nees the "latest and greatest" he is at most out of date by a couple weeks. Part of the problem this week was that it's been too long since the last release -- but until recently, the next release was not a priority.

Tuesday night was the D&D game. It was fun. My character is now in negotiations with an intelligent weapon, of all things. This should be fascinating. (Only two party members are even elligble to wield the weapon, due to size and class restrictions. The other one is not interested. In general, if my character, a sorceror, is in melee then something has gone horribly wrong, but if something goes horribly wrong there's something to be said for having a good weapon. But this might not be what the weapon had in mind.)

Wednesday night's West Wing was fun. I think a lot of the quality of that show is in the writing (as with B5); this show seems to be targetting more of a "thinking" crowd than many shows out there. Keep it up, guys.

I'm not sure how I feel about the "Rapture-esque" Twilight Zone this week.

Saturday night we went to a "wine and dessert" party hosted by Sharon and Eliot. It was a very pleasant evening and I got to see some people I don't see often, like Christine, Greg, and Jody. I also met some new people who were interesting to talk with. Ralph and Lori were there, too, as was my co-worker Jake (with his SO Erin -- not sure which of them is the connection to which of Sharon or Eliot). Sharon and Eliot have wide social circles.

Comments

[goljerp]

the inability of the engineers (thus far) to prevent requests for a "quick and dirty snapshot -- just a beta" from going somewhere. We will discuss this next week. (I think I was finally able to impress on the right person, on Friday, that we are not just making accelerated progress -- we are doing stuff that we will have to undo later, and that has a cost.)

This is so true. In my experience, either the "quick and dirty build" requires a lot of work which is of no lasting use, or it's so quick and dirty that it's essentially useless.

Just out of curiosity, have you given up on Enterprise?

[cellio]

I'm still watching Enterprise. I just haven't found much to say about the last few episodes. (Ok, here's one: I marvel at the lack of tactics of the klingons in "Marauders". All they had to do was transport out and then transport back in 30 feet away and start shooting. But they apparently left. But it and the most recent episode also had some good bits.)