I just announced to a packed lunch room that the QA resources were now going to be bid on by the various Agile teams, using "money" they'd each get based upon the value they'd been able to return to the business. Teams could sweeten the pot with offers of cookies, better working hours, camaraderie, etc. This would also apply to the DB team members, who are also in short supply.

Amusingly, it was the person who worked for me who fell for it.

Me: "So my nose came home, and it was running ..."
(pause)
shadowdaddy: "What?"

One nice thing about not really having an internet connection is that I'm doing stuff at home like reading and talking and ... sitting in silence. And, well, unpacking boxes, because that needs to be done.

And I've been really tired every day at work this week. I mean, I don't know, packing, unpacking, you think I've been doing much? To top it off it's been bitterly stressful at work, the reorg has got everything turned topsy turvy and no one is really interested in listening to the voice of experience if she has anything negative to say. So I have to sit there listening to this airy fairy pie in the sky shit while basically trying to force my soul to leave my body and go to some other place where I don't want to start yelling at people and pounding some sense into their heads, and it's making me feel a bit stressed out, plus the build I'm testing is a piece of shit and a poor bellwether for what's to come.

So I really should go to bed just a little bit earlier tonight.

Well, shadowdaddy's play is behind schedule, so it looks like I'm spending tonight by myself, eating Roast Duck for One. I was just not going to bother but I didn't want to freeze it and it needs to be cooked, so ... it's in the oven. I suppose I can just take it out and put it in the fridge afterwards. Maybe I will and then have the sausage and cream pasta thing I actually wanted to make last night before I came across the duck.

Are any of you going to see his show? Official opening night is tomorrow. Lots of people are attending the preview tonight, apparently about 70 folks.

I guess I get to spend tonight finally catch up on all of the reviews I haven't written yet, though I expect I'm going to be spending rather a lot of time with the new Robin McKinley book (Chalice, I am loving it to death) and also Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell.

I spent most of today being trained in using Agile, the Scrum variant. Guess what? It's stuff I've already been trained in. I got into a long argument with the trainer today about how to handle people dropping all of the stuff on QA at the end of the cycle, and his solution ultimately was that everybody needs to be a generalist and know how to do everyone's job, and he even recommended QA people sit there and watch people code. Wow, that sounds like a GREAT way to make sure the team very quickly consists of nothing but developers - because I would quit. It is no more fun for me to watch people code than it is to watch them wash dishes or do math. Hopefully I didn't make too much of a scene as I energetically disagreed with him.

Wow, it's cold in here. I wonder how you turn on the fireplace?

Oh yeah, and this looks like the big chance for me to do my Sekrit Christmas Present Shopping. Better get on it ...

Today was one of those days that justifies me keeping a diary. Why? Because it was so damned boring that by tomorrow I'll be lucky if I can remember any of it.

Lowlights: two long meetings, possibly only an hour and a half each but ... I don't know, it was like the scene in Poltergeist, where the hall keeps getting longer and longer. I learned my company is the Number One BLAH BLAH site in the UK. And some other stuff, most of which got dumped in the bit bucket before it even made it to my ears.

To relieve my boredom (and hey, it's the time of the year when jobs get boring, since everything is slowing down ... unless you work in retail), I headed over to Great Russell Street (or whatever street the British Museum is on, I'm too tired to remember) to do a bit of Christmas shopping. Purchased: mug for uncle, a game that I should seriously just mail to my brother's inlaws (especially since I got the super cute travel version, which is the size of a CD case and only cost 5 pounds) but will probably keep, a Mystery Thing, and another Mystery Thing. I also saw a game I really needed to buy for myself, as it is So Perfect For Me, but with luck someone else will get it for me and I won't have to buy myself by decending into "one for you and one for me" on my very first Christmas shopping expedition.

I also stopped by the nice butcher on Theobald's Road and got some lamb chops for dinner. I was unable to resist the 2.50 pre-marinated lamb shanks (I just bought one) even though I knew I couldn't eat it tonight, but it's in the oven marinating in the cookwitch sauce (or a variant thereof). Later (ever so much later as the freaking second meeting of the day kept me until 5, leaving me high and dry and not finishing up until an hour later), I picked up some pesto from the extremely upscale organic grocer down the way on Lamb's Conduit (Kennard's Good Foods I think), where I was praised effusively for having brought my own container. This later joined up with some fresh nobbly pasta and sauteed bell peppers/chopped carrot and swede/grated zucchini to make a most fine accompaniment to the chops.

Yes, dinner, the likely highlight of my day. It's already nine now? Great, I want to go to bed and dream of going to Cape Verde, where I'd likely stay in a dirtbag hotel, but at least I'd be warm.

PS: this Dilbert cartoon reminded me all too sharply of my bad days at $howboat - a bit frightening since I kept hearing the C something O today say we're going to try to do things "a bit more Agile-ly" today.

this is a prototype of a 40 cm balloon

Yesterday afternoon I left work a little early to go to a talk on "Why Agile Teams Fail." I went with four of my coworkers who are on the Agile project we're having shoved down our throats at work and met wechsler there. The talk was good: as I thought, what we're doing at work has little to do with Agile per se and a whole lot to do with "using catch-phrases that let us ignore the spirit of the whole thing." So we're being graded on whether or not we have white boards to put our issues on and whether or not QA is running meetings to measure "quality" but ignoring the important stuff like "let developers drive what is happening" and "be flexible." On the other hand, I got the great idea of having lava lamps sitting in my team's area to show whether or not we have a working build in QA: a blue lava lamp for yes, a red lava lamp for no. And my efforts to keep team morale high may be far more important than I've ever suspected.

Unfortunately the talk did go for two entire hours, and as I hadn't had anything to eat (no money in my wallet, very bad), I was near dead from hunger long before the talk wrapped up and had little option but to go get some food immediately afterwards. This meant another trip to the Japanese restaurant shadowdaddy and I went to Friday night, and this time wechsler got the five-kinds-of-sushi-don and I got entirely new things, such as mini-chicken teriyaki, pork belly skewers, duck skewers, and quail egg skewers. It was so lovely and homey; all I wanted to do is order more plum wine and sit there and chat all night long.

Well, the bad part is that I didn't get back to the flat until WAY too late, and it took me a while to chill out, and even though I tried to get into bed in short order, I was too cold, it was too noisy, EVERYTHING worked against me and I think I've had about six hours of sleep (I know I slept because I was dreaming about Dawn dolls and Chicago and horseback riding). It's not a good way to start the day at the office that's devoted to report writing, and not a good way to set myself up for a night at the ballet, but ... what am I supposed to do. At least I feel empowered to send an email out about the talk last night that's going to be a big stick right up the ass of Mr. Pink Cuffs.