Tag: Spring

From Learning—to Showing—the Ropes!

So, another day, another WFH (working from home) adventure. Once upon a time, WFH was an exciting privilege, where you got to sip the tea that you leisurely made, ate oatmeal that DIDN’T come out of a microwave, and quietly did your work; meanwhile escaping all the chaos, gossip, and annoyance of the office. Now, it’s taken on a whole new meaning since EVERYONE is working from home, minus a few hundred at my company (“Can you hear me? You’re breaking up! I can’t see your screen. Is so-and-so joining the meeting? What was that again?”).

We have a new guy starting next week, and I’m going to have to help him get aclimated, which is going to be positively weird to do via remote control. Granted, the guy is in another state, so I would have had to work with him remotely anyway, but it’s the principle of the thing. Despite my grumbling, the exciting thing is that I’ve hit some sort of a new level in my development job. I’m actually being trusted to show a new developer the ropes! We sincerely hope I can remember how to get Guidewire Studio up and running for a brand-new person, not to mention Spring for our integration work (Java).

I’m also now being asked to do code reviews! I really didn’t think anyone would trust with that until at least my 1-year mark, but I’ve done quite a few now. It’s actually a good way to check someone else’s code and learn from it…as opposed to spending and entire DAY trying to figure out a defect found in QA (which is how I spent my entire day yesterday).

And, of course, I’ve been doing copious amounts of knitting and crocheting in our time of quarantine. I confess, the WIPs are hopelessly out of control. I’m working on:

An Annie’s Attic Crochet Striped Afghan Club project

A knitted mask, with an i-Cord from hell

A baby blanket ( you just KNOW someone is going to end this quarantine pregnant)

A Sophie’s Universe Crochet afghan (I’ll be working on this one until they put me 6-feet under)

A Mary Maxim Woodlands Striped crochet afghan

I know there’s another one, but I can’t remember it right now…

On that note, must get back to the old backlog, to see what my next adventure is!

For some lucky recipient!

It’s been a while…

I apologize for the VERY long time between posts! The fact of the matter is I had no inkling of just how tough it was going to be to do a remote Java/Spring class in the middle of the bedlam that is our Covid-19 crisis, while also attempting to do regular work when emergencies arose. I spent one ENTIRE weekend I’m never getting back attempting to solve and fix some ghastly error I’d made in one of my user stories. Oddly enough, far from this being an issue, I actually got a kudos for being willing to work above and beyond to fix the problem. I sort of think that it might have been better had I NOT made the mistake in the first place, but I’m not going to argue!

The class was a big help in enabling me to better understand Java and Spring. It actually wasn’t as bad to do an online class as I thought it would be. If anything, it was good because I wasn’t having to drive home through traffic, set up everything again at home, and slog through homework for ages. I was able to get any homework done much sooner, as I was already in front of a screen.

At present, we are all still working from home. I can’t complain, as really, we have friends who have either a) lost their jobs, b) had a pay-cut, or c) have to keep working with the public, as they are essential. Our essential friend is now facing uncertainty, as one of her coworkers has tested positive. We have two friends now who have had the virus, but thankfully have beat it–it took three agonizing weeks, though. So, my paltry issues surrounding connectivity (a can of compressed air blown into the ethernet slots solved the issue), misunderstandings (“What did you say? Your headphones are cutting out again!”), figuring out the mask situation (mine homemade one was an epic FAIL), and ailing vehicles (fun fact: a 16-year-old car with a 7-year-old battery is going to crap out if you don’t drive it for ages on end) — all of this pales in comparison with everyone else’s struggles. That’s why I’m so ANNOYED at that insipid “We’re all in this together!” slogan. We’re just not, really.

But enough belly-aching. For the sake of my sanity, I’m going to try to blog on a more frequent basis. And hopefully come up with a better mask.

I’m a much better knitter than sewer!