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[personal profile] livingdeb
When you're testing an update to a system, there are three things that can happen:

1) You look at the same stuff you always look at, and it looks just the same as it always does. This is sleep-inducing. And although I like sleeping, I feel pretty certain that my employer does not want to pay me to sleep, even though I don't remember seeing anything specifically prohibiting this in all the "compliance" modules we've had to do lately.

2) You can find a problem. This means that something that used to work no longer works. This is depressing.

3) You can find something you don't understand which is due to your not having understood how the system was supposed to work to begin with. This is frustrating.

Or some combination of course. Today I experienced #1 until 4:00 when I experienced #2. I really hate reporting problems at the end of the day.

Notice how while I am testing, I am not getting any real work done. By real work, I mean doing the actual work which is the whole point of having a system.

**

Today I wandered around in the store across the street from my work building labeled "Coop for Women." It turns out it's also the Coop art store. In this store I found a thing called a "darkroom thermometer." This reminded me that I would like to have a room thermometer so I can see just how cold my office is and so I can see how the temperature varies within my house. It's not so easy to find this kind of thermometer, although I have seen large decorative ones intended for gardens.

The darkroom thermometers I found are about 6 inches long and an inch wide and look like the usual mercury-type thermometers with the liquid colored red. I recorded the price ($6.45) and the location (next to the picture frames) on my new list of stuff I want.

**

I also did some research on front-loading washers. I don't plan to buy one until ours breaks or until I feel less poor or both. But I discovered that besides being more efficient and cleaning clothes more thoroughly with less wear on the clothes, there are two additional benefits of interest to me. First, you can generally fit bigger loads into them. Second, a load comes out of this kind of washer much drier than a load washed in a regular washer. Both of these advantages together mean I might not mind so much not having a drier if I had one of these washers. I wouldn't need to do so many loads, and it wouldn't take so long for each load to dry.

Front-loaders

on 2007-01-05 03:15 pm (UTC)
Posted by (Anonymous)
(sally)

I have also found that my front-loader is much quieter (to the degree that I sometimes think one of us has forgotten to start it) and requires only 1/2 as much laundry detergent (alternatively you can buy the special, more expensive detergent and use a full amount for reasons that I haven't bothered to investigate). The primary downside is that you can't just throw in that extra item you forgot once the cycle starts. (I have not tried this, but it doesn't sound promising.)

The clothes do come out a bit drier, but I don't think the difference is such that if you wished you had a dryer to soften stuff up, having a front-loader would make you no longer want one. The times I've accidentally not machine-dried underwear, etc., and have had to air-dry them, they came out comparably stiff to when I did the same thing after washing in a top-loading machine. YMMV. It's likely that the clothes do air-dry faster but I haven't noticed a difference; of course, I air-dry relatively few things, so I'm not frequently checking the dryness of the clothes in anticipation of wanting to run another load. The small difference could easily be significant if you are needing to regularly and quickly as possible rotate clothes through a dryer rack set-up.

I personally wouldn't buy a front-loader if I had a functioning machine already, but recommend one as an excellent replacement machine.

Re: Front-loaders

on 2007-01-09 01:06 am (UTC)
Posted by [identity profile] livingdeb.livejournal.com
Thanks for that review!

I like your description of the special detergent.

Software Engineering (Testing)

on 2007-01-23 09:26 pm (UTC)
Posted by (Anonymous)
Debbie, I'm late in responding to this one, but other than just not enjoying it (which applies to about 90% of my own job, so I definitely understand), what's wrong with testing? It's definitely not "not work" - it's a giant part of the whole software process. And finding bugs is great! It should be the whole goal of testing! (All systems have bugs and it is never possible to eliminate every bug.)

OK, I'll stop my software engineering rant now :-)

Tam

Re: Software Engineering (Testing)

on 2007-01-25 02:20 am (UTC)
Posted by [identity profile] livingdeb.livejournal.com
What's wrong with testing is that I am not a software engineer. I'm just someone who uses the software. So although it's work, it's in addition to my regular work.

It's like when you download a new version of something and you have to re-learn how to do things you used to already know how to do or, worse yet, learn how to live with no longer being able to do some of those things. Yes, learning the new version is real work, or at least it looks good on your resume, but unless you are finding an awesome new feature, it's no fun.

Thanks for reminding me you can never eliminate every bug. I feel like it's my job to find every bug, but it can't really be my job. My job is really just to find the most obvious embarrassing blugs; anything else I stumble into is icing.

Now, testing my own stuff is a whole different story. Of course I want to test (and document) all my own creations.

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