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I havenāt had to worry about insurance for a couple years now, my current employer had the best plan Iāve ever seen. Found out this week my company is being āmergedā with another (aka, weāre being acquired) and our insurance costs are going to sky rocket. š±š¤š #Screwed #FirstWorldProblems
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Ah, nothing like getting the rug pulled out from under you during the Holiday season @ work.
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Burning the midnight oil, trying to hammer out a few more unit tests. š„±
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A faulty software update from cybersecurity vendor Crowdstrike crippled countless Microsoft Windows computers across the globe today, disrupting everything from airline travel and financial institutions to hospitals and businesses online.
The Crowdstrike issue is striking everywhere, two people on my Team canāt use their computers todayā¦and Iām one of them. šš¤
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Friend of mine encouraged me to see if work offered bereavement leaveā¦and they do, three days for a Grandparent. Rather lucky to have stumbled into working for this kind of company. šš„ŗ #MixedEmotions
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Went to the office yesterday, in person, for the first time in over a year. No wonder Iām so exhausted today⦠𤣠#WorkFromHome
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I have a lovely cold and in the Daily Stand-Up today, the Product Owner suggested I sing āSmelly Catā after the meeting. š¤£
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Remote / Lunch
As my position with my new employer is fully remote, I havenāt met the bulk of my co-workers in person. Truth be told, Iāve only met five other developers, along with one project ownerā¦and to be completely honest, I knew three of them previously. š Still, even with remote work, itās good to get out of the house to be social with oneās coworker and thatās what I did today; we went for lunch at a local pub.
Veggie Wrap (with fish) + Fries
Of course, I say new but Iāve been with them since the end of Juneā¦but then, time is said to be in the eye of the beholderā¦ š¤·š¼
Side note, if you look up in the upper left corner of the photo, youāll see that my co-worker has Pokemon Go on his phoneā¦the owner of said phone is rather obsessed with that game. š
Note: This post is from my old site and was ported over into Micro.Blog when I consolidated from two sites into one. All of the migrated posts can be found here.
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Still Here
Being rather lazy on a Saturday, snuggling with the puppy, watching The Nanny, and finagling with my new/old computer (a log story for another time)ā¦and realized itās been a rather long time since I posted anything hereā¦
Itās been an interesting six months since my last last post:
- Turned in my notice to my new-ish position (the one I left my old position for, I lasted just ten months; there is a gigantic backstory thereā¦
- Celebrated my Grandmaās 100th birthday (that womenās memory is truly impressive, she was regaling all of us with stories from her early childhood)
- Started a new position with a consulting firm (Iāve been there for a little over a month and itās been a fantastic experience thus far)
- Went on vacation to Michigan
- My partner tested positive for Covid-19ā¦and thus we spent a week and a half isolating at home, wearing masks as often as able
- Started with a new client and an a truly massive amount of computer issues (they ended up sending me a second computer, the Help Desk techs couldnāt even remote into the first one)
Of course, each of these could be their own post / entry / pageā¦and perhaps they will be some dayā¦
Side-note: The Nanny was one of my favorite television shows as a child. In factā¦and I might be dating myself hereā¦but I would watch Fran in the afternoon whenever I stayed home sick from school. š
The Nanny
Itās still is one of my favorite shows. š
Note: This post is from my old site and was ported over into Micro.Blog when I consolidated from two sites into one. All of the migrated posts can be found here.
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Battery Backup
It isnāt often youāre able to test redundancy in your home set up but today, my power went out. I was in the middle of a meeting, sharing application support information with my current development team, when suddenly the lights went out in the basement (my home office is in the basement). At first, I was completely confusedā¦all the lights had gone out, but my monitor was still onā¦? I stopped the meeting, interrupting our business analyst, in compete shock and bewilderment, asking if they could still hear me.
It was only then I realized I had batteries for most of my computersā¦which is when my power supply started beeping at me.
A long time ago (Iām not going to say when because a lady never tells his age), I bought a battery on a lark from newegg.com and used it solely for my modem and router. Back then, the apartment I lived in suffered semi-frequent power outages (the building was over 100 years old) and didnāt want to be slaughtered in the middle of a raid (we can talk about my World of Warcraft addiction another time, dear reader). The battery turned out to be a smashing success and life / gaming went on.
A few years down the road from the first purchase I bought a new battery; I needed a bit more oomph, as Iād acquired more gear and equipment. The old one was still holding up but starting to show its age: where once it could keep the internet connection alive for a couple hours, by then I was lucky to get 45 minutes out of it. So, I bought a new one and put almost all my equipment on it (including the new server Iād acquiredā¦but that is a story for another time). The original battery was kept for my work set up: computer, monitor, etc.
Back to the presentā¦it turns out the local power company was outside my house, switching out my meter. With no notice and just one knock at the door, they took out the old one and put in a new one. I really would have appreciated some advance notice but why would a monopoly care about its customers? Still, itās nice to know my batteries are still working!
So, the moral of the story: make sure you have your internet equipment and computers on a battery backupā¦especially if youāre in constant meetings during the last two weeks of your employment.
Note: This post is from my old site and was ported over into Micro.Blog when I consolidated from two sites into one. All of the migrated posts can be found here.
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Two Weeks' Notice
All good things must come to an endā¦and thus, Iāve just turned in my two weeks' notice to my current employer. Iāve grown so much as both a person and a developerā¦and Iāve met some incredible people but itās time to move on. Itās a rather bittersweet feeling, leaving a place where youāve spent so much time and energy but as I said, all good things must come to an end.
Note: This post is from my old site and was ported over into Micro.Blog when I consolidated from two sites into one. All of the migrated posts can be found here.
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Entry Level Mistake
We (my employer) recently parted ways with a development vendor and yesterday I was combing through various repositories, cleaning up the nightmare that was their branching strategy (or lack thereof) when I stumbled across this little gem:
Bad Code: Hard-coded passwords and a comment acknowledging the problem
Two thought immediately popped into my head:
- Why would you hard-code credentials into your application?
- Why wouldnāt you have stronger credentials right off the bat?
I have to take some of the accountability here; as the Lead at my company, code quality falls within my realm of responsibility. Thankfully, this commit never made it out of the Development branchā¦but itās all to easy to imagine this sort of problem making itās way up the chain, into Production. Honestly, I never thought Iād have to add ādo NOT hard-code credentialsā into our guidelines for new developers but then, Iāve been wrong about a lot of things in my career⦠š
On a lark, I took my Mac down the hall to our cyber security expert and asked her to spot the problem. It took her all of ten seconds to start laughing. Once she was able to stop giggling, she offered two bits of advice:
- Stash this sort of issue in your āthis is bad codeā file to show to junior developers as a teachable moment.
- Look into something called SonarQube to help automate the detection of potential security issues in source code.
Itās an old, tired stereotype that developers hate interacting with security folks but every time I talk with our cyber security expert, I get homeworkā¦and thatās an absolutely wonderful thing; when we stop learning, we start to degrade.
Note: This post is from my old site and was ported over into Micro.Blog when I consolidated from two sites into one. All of the migrated posts can be found here.