Sleepypete's Pillow

I haven’t seen Bolt yet, but I intend to.

Software testing sounds like it might be fun until I think about every little thing – and there are a lot of little things. I used to program way back in the stone-age and I know how elusive bugs can be – but today I am a happy, content and usually satisfied end-user.

Tanya sent me.

I’m settling down at the moment after a couple of days away …

Two part post here 🙂 First bit is about the latest wonderful Pixar film, Bolt. Second bit is what I’ve been up to for the past few days …

Testing finished a little earlier than it may have, so I was able to sneak back for Pizza & Film 🙂 The entertainment was Bolt, the story of a puppy with superpowers. Amazing film, will definitely be wearing out the dvd of this one 🙂 It’s not often a film brings out a tear or two and this one came extremely close several times. As a dog person, they do a fantastic job of getting the character Bolt on screen.

Lots of laughs here too amongst the story. Well worth watching.

Film also means pizza 🙂 Was wondering for a while as to whether our waitress used the pen that she had wedged into the hairband that was keeping her hair in a ponytail. Rather imaginative place to keep a pen, although I dread to think how many penmarks she has on the back of a very pretty head.

Part 2 !

My work occasionally involves witnessing requirements testing. We do that at our contractors’ sites, as it doesn’t make much sense to bring the equipment to the witnesses when the witnesses can go to the equipment. What it means is a trip up and down the M4 and a day or two in a hotel room. I’m fairly used to knowing what to expect now, so I arrange things to keep the boredom away. It’s a bit of a disconnected experience, as I’m not too interested in spending £10 on wifi access for a day or £20 for a week. Maybe if I was away for a week but not for a couple of days 🙂

What do these sessions usually involve ?

I like to keep the variables down to a minimum, which means not depending on the train (counter intuitive that isn’t it ?) and using my own car instead of hire cars. There’s a couple of problems with hire cars with work, one is the insurance conditions and the other comes through the whole hire thing … One colleague this week arrived late due to a problem with his hire car, the other had to find it … as it hadn’t been dropped off at his house. So taking my own car means cutting out a big variable. I’m not the best Morning Person, so I try to arrange things so I don’t have to think when going out the door. If I pack on the morning, I’ll forget something critical – guaranteed 🙂

Why do I dislike trains ? Cost for one, reliability is another … The trip there and back by car will cost my employer about £65, going by train would at least triple that, plus taxi fares for hotel<->office. Plus there’s usually about 3 changes needed with the associated chance of missing one and getting stranded. The train companies could do with looking at themselves and thinking why people ignore them. (However, I would use the Underground in London!) Oh – Car also means IpodFM 🙂

The testing itself involves sitting in a lab with lots of computer equipment, watching the testers run through a script that is intended to test the functionality of the software. It’s pretty painstaking stuff and the tests are pretty detailed. Things like a test that is scheduled to take 6 hours to check whether a system can display a map properly or seeing if all the options on your word processor work properly.

That’s kinda what we do in this testing, making sure the software “Works As Intended”. That’s an absolutely magic phrase I’ve nabbed from World of Warcraft, which gets used to describe all those little bugs where things don’t work quite like the user wanted but it is working as written in the system. Computers are very literal beasties, they have no self-determination, so every one of those bugs/features that crop up have been put in by a programmer.

It can get a bit boring though, so to stay focused we do a few things to keep the brain working. One I do is to check off all the requirement statements as we go, which is going beyond what I really need to do. These events aren’t really presenting the kit to my organisation, it’s a relationship of Customer -> Contractor -> Subcontractor. I’m representing the end customer but the real acceptance is Contractor accepting from Subcontractor, so I’m one step above that. Which means I only sign off a subset of the total requirements being tested.

That’s one of the methods … The other is :

Biscuits & Coffee !

Of the strong black variety. And chocolate on the biscuits if you get into the selection box early enough. (There’s a few notorious chocolate biscuit fiends involved 🙂

Evenings can be a little strange. I tend to avoid dinner in the hotel as I object to paying too much for food. Even though I’d get it back on expenses, I still get the objection to being ripped off. I’m chubby enough to be able to miss a dinner or two, plus the cookies I raided helped 🙂 But I was glad to have the pizza earlier. My evenings were chilled out with the cricket on the telly, plus about 250 pages of Matter by Iain M Banks. Bit of a struggle that one as there’s not as much of The Culture as in most of his Culture novels.

So now I’m back and it’s time for the detox … 3 days worth of strong coffee plus horribly unbalanced diet means dehydration and unbalanced metabolism, so I’m now trying to still the shaking hands (kidding!) and chilling out to iTunes music. Plus a bit of Blog too 🙂

Early night probably tonight – haven’t turned my main PC back on yet so I doubt whether I’ll be exploring any more of the story of Commander Shepherd in the game Mass Effect.

Yey 🙂 Me back. Not caught up yet but getting there 🙂

Yeah – there’s two major round the world races – the Vendee and the Volvo. The Volvo’s a little different – it’s run over a series of legs with boats that have full crews. I think there’s a bit of “stick together as a team” aspect in the Volvo which means you get a bit shielded from the personalities involved …

It’s good to know that with all the carnage at the start (big storm in the Bay of Biscay !) and the various broken bits of sailor and boat in this race, they’ve all come through ok. I think the fella with the broken leg was at the finish line to welcome Sam Davies back in.

Next one in 3 years 9 months time 🙂

Fascinating! I was not familiar with this race…I cannot imagine what it takes to actually do this Race! The strength and skill and fortitude….My My! I went to the link and saw that there are 30 people involved…or were. But their Bios don’t seem to be available.
Thanks for writing about this—I am going to tell my brother o take a look at the link. He is a Sailor. In fact he may know about it already.

Hey Pete – hope you’ve been enjoying your few days away and looking forward to seeing you and ck tomorrow night.

I’ve not been following the race, except what’s been on the news. But it is encouraging to know that the characters are still showing through the hardship.

cq

Visiting because NetChick sent me..

Dorothy from grammology
grammology.com

It’s one of my daily reads too 🙂 Will soon need to find another for the 3.5 years until the next one 🙂

Not sure why – but the Volvo round the world Ocean race doesn’t hold my interest the same way. Maybe the Vendee single handed race is a lot more intimate with the skippers.

Today’s cricket has been more relaxing than yesterday’s rugby 🙂 We had 16 Welsh vs 15 English in the rugby, definite change of result caused by frustrating referee.

I’ve long been fascinated by the strength of character needed to take on an around-the-world trip in a sailboat. I know I’d never have anywhere near the courage that these intrepid adventurers have, which makes my appreciation of them that much more profound.

Thank you for sharing the link to the race. I now have a new daily read!

Popped by from Tanya’s today. Hope your weekend’s been a relaxing one so far.

One of the things I’ve been following over the past few months has been the Vendee Globe around the world single handed yacht race.

30 sailors started and the first 3 are now back in. They’re not quite beating Jules Verne’s time of 80 days, the winner Michel Desjoyeaux achieved a record time of 84 days, 3 hours, 9 minutes travelling a total of 28303.2 nautical miles.

Valentines day yesterday was special in particular for one of the people involved in this race – our girl Sam Davies finished at 41 minutes past midnight on the 14th. Sam’s been the sailor I’ve been most interested in seeing info from over the past 3 months of the race, there’s always heaps of personality bursting through the news coming from the pink Roxy boat. Lots of grins, laughs and inspiration from how Sam’s tackled the special challenges of this race.

Not quite sure if Sam will get a 3rd place, as there’s still a little bit of time left for Marc Guillemot to maybe sneak in ahead. When Yann Eliès broke his leg on Generali in the Southern Ocean, Sam Davies and Marc Guillemot both received some credit time for going to the aid of the stricken sailor. Sam got 50 hours less credit (went less out of the way), so there’s still chance for Marc Guillemot to finish ahead.

It’s been an eventful race, with a lot of the boats suffering dismasting and other critical damage. Three boats lost their keels (the heavy thing sticking out the bottom that balances the mast to keep them upright). One of those capsized, with the rescue leading to another boat retiring due to losing its mast. The second retired at the Azores (so close to finishing!) The third boat to lose its keel is Marc Guillemot’s Safran and it’s a huge credit to his skill as a sailor that he’s been able to nurse his boat home with that loss of stability.

The other Brit skippers are coming in hard too – Dee Caffari’s had a tough race as well, as she’s had to take great care with the mainsail on her boat.

I’m going to miss keeping up with the Vendee Globe, looking forward to the next one coming around in 4 years so I can follow the adventures of my (second? 😉 favourite British sailor 🙂

Here’s a link to the page where you can read more about this great race.

Currently watching the West Indies vs England Test Match coming from the old Antigua Recreation Ground. The original 2nd Test got cancelled due to the ground not being up to the job. They moved it to the old international ground in Antigua and it’s looking like a good decision so far. Even with an almost total lack of prepartion, it’s looking like a very good pitch. England are batting and doing extremely well, looking to put a huge total on the board. There’s been a few signs of the pitch misbehaving so far (odd balls keeping low) but it’s promising to be a decent game.

The message he is preaching is illegal in both this country and his. he is currently awaiting trial there, and would have to be arrested here if he came in & incited racial hatred, so it's a bit pointless letting him in. The EU does not allow freedom of movement to criminals!