Trouble Ahead- Trouble Behind
Well this marks roughly the one year anniversary of my blogging efforts, hence the eponymous post. This happens to roughly coincide with the beginning of a long awaited vacation, and that portion of the annual review process where you review the events of the previous year. Finally of course, like the protagonist in the Grateful Dead song from which I derived my blog's name, I often seem to find myself to be an engineer staring disaster in the face [although unlike the song, nothing stronger than coffee- seriously].
Trouble Behind
I'll check the rear-view mirror first. What a time- several months trying to do all the test engineering duties for two KMDF versions while we tried to hire more people [I was never entirely alone, of course- but it sometimes felt like it]. Merging the disparate and differing approaches to test automation of the KMDF and UMDF teams into a single body- we have reached the point where we have a single automated setup mechanism that I believe has struck a good balance of flexibility, ease of maintenance and use, and is easily adapted to the ever changing situations we face in an environment where nothing stays the same for very long. Endless hours of bug fixing in test code, and even longer hours triaging lab failures- finding [not always for the first time, of course] bugs not only in our own product [and unfortunately especially in the test code- one of the few things I feel OK posting about], but in tools and other parts of the Windows OS. Interview loops with their attendant joys and disappointments. A few new bits of test code [but I didn't do as well there as I could have hoped- something had to give, and at this point regression is as big a concern to me as is the presence of new defects].
As for the blog, I'd originally hoped to be a lot more technical than I have been. I find my opus to be featured on several pages across the Microsoft site, and it somewhat embarrasses me that I'm not really being all that useful. But so much of what I do know can't be discussed, and a lot of the rest is half-remembered and laden with guesswork, just due to the nature of my approaches to investigating problems. But I know that people do read it [a few dozen a week, although many more skip right past it as it isn't what they're looking for]. So if you're one of those readers, thank you for taking the time, and I'll try to provide better value in the future.
A secondary purpose was the general one of just showing what it's like to be here- I've probably done a bit better at that, perhaps...
Up to Your Neck In Alligators
Trouble all around- that's where things are today, although it's not all trouble. Our team is functioning again, and improving markedly as it does. Test holes are being filled. I've finally begun to work on some of the thorniest maintenance problems I'd been avoiding- for instance, I'm reworking an old set of tests [driver and associated scripts] so they don't leak resources all over the place, and they use simulated hardware to greater advantage, and so that they can be safely run in parallel [we can get tremendous execution speed improvements on these just by being able to do that]. I've got a few new things planned for WdfVerifier that really should be ready when Windows 7 WDK hits Beta- can't talk about them yet, but the time for that is at least within sight. I've been able to still help out in triage occasionally [but the rest of the team keeps getting better at that, which both improves their skills and leaves me free to work on some of these other tasks].
Trouble Ahead
This is always the hardest part- they say no plan of battle survives the initial contact with the enemy. It's also not much to discuss as future plans fall into that area one doesn't disclose at will. I'm sure that I will have to adjust my work-life balance later this year, given the arrival of Halo Wars, Fable II, and Gears of War II, at the very least!
Well, I leave for vacation very soon, and Alex will be gone when I return, so I intend to use a bit more of these early morning hours [it's about 2:30 AM here in Redmond, and my office is a trifle on the overwarm side as the air conditioning isn't at full force at night] to harness my remaining Russian skills to write him a farewell message. If I told you how good a job he's done for us, everybody would try to hire him, so I'll just leave on that teasing note... For those of you in the Northern Hemisphere, anyway- enjoy the rest of your summer! I'll be doing the same with my family...
Deliberately cued up "Sea of Miracles", sung by Saaya Makamoto, composed by Yoko Kanno- opening song to the original Record of Lodoss War anime [basically out of print as far as I can tell]- just so I could exit without a Dead song- but I'll probably be sneaking in a Jack Straw or Let It Grow soon enough... (BTW, this song used to make me cry, too- both Yoko Kanno [with Sea of Miracles] and Yuki Kajiura [with Emerald Green] managed to pull that one off]. My reward for this skullduggery [including the links]- shuffle picked the Weather Report Suite from Wake of The Flood all on its own! Plenty there to stir the passions as well...
L8r, as always!
