The week I’m writing this, I am the only tester on my team who is in the office. The other two are away on multi-week vacations, coincidentally overlapping during what could be described as the busiest period of the summer so far. I’m sure neither one of them did this on purpose. It’s not like any of us knew this week was going to be busy until Thursday of last week and it was far too late to do anything about it then. So, to make up for the lack of other testers and the large amount of work that needs doing every day, I’ve been strictly managing my time at work and bouncing between a large variety of tasks. It is incredibly exhausting, I’ll be honest, and I’m pretty sure I’m going to be have gotten less done than if I’d been able to just do my own thing rather than constantly need to reprioritize as something new crops up. Still, I’ve managed to keep on top of everything so far, for three days in a row, other than the testing intern. He’s supposed to be running some tests the senior tester gave him before he left, but I think he’s not actually doing that, given the lack of questions and how the two times I’ve gone to check on him, he’s had to wake up his computer and log back in to show me what he’s supposedly been working on. Since the first time that’s happened, I’ve been keeping on eye on him from the lab or my office, wherever I’m working, and noticing how little time he’s spending looking at his monitors and how much time he’s spending looking at his tablet. I’m not one to bust anyone for taking a break or not looking busy, and I can understand that he probably doesn’t want to have this job but is kind of getting forced into it since his relatives work here (they’re high up in the company, too, so there’s quite a lot of nepotism going on here since he’s been given the most nothing job assignment), but this work needs doing and all of us testers are counting on it getting done, so I’m going to need to figure something out for his last handful of weeks.
Continue readingSweat
Sweating The Summer Heat
Thankfully, all of the weather prediction services were more-or-less right about the end of last week’s heatwave. Unfortunately, as I mused at the time, the official end of the heatwave took only it’s obscenely high temperatures. The otherwise toasty high temperatures and still kinda high low temperatures have stuck around, always overshooting the day-to-day forecasts so that every single day winds up hotter, more humid, and much less comfortable than expected. It has made occupying space in my apartment a bit more tricky than usual because even something as innocuous as making dinner can put a lot of heat in my apartment that my AC unit just can’t handle on top of the day-to-day heat of summer and sunshine. I don’t remember my AC unit struggling this much in the past, but it’s certainly possible that it is genuinely working less well now than it used to. I’ve had old AC units die on me in apartments before and I know that the more heavily they’re used, the faster they wear out and the layout of my current apartment demands heavy use if I’m going to actually control the temperature in any space other than right next to my AC unit. All of which amounts to me starting to sweat most days when I’m in my office, playing games on my computer. Maybe I should spend less time in my office where there’s no good airflow and two large heat generators in a small space (me and my computer), but it’s difficult to imagine that my upstairs room where all my entertainment stuff is located will be much better when I can feel the heat swamp me every time I move around that room.
Continue readingSlow-Cooked Considerations
After what has turned into three horrible, sweaty days, the heat wave is ending. It has not ended yet, but the wisdom of the remaining pieces of the US national weather prediction aparatus have declared that, by the time I’ve gotten my necessary groceries and made my way home, it will be over. My two sleepless, restless nights will not be joined by a third and the ruddy, glistening sheen of sweat I’ve taken to wearing in the place of my normal mistless pallor will finally take its leave. Even now, as I type this, all my weather apps and services cry out that the worst has passed. “All will be well,” they say, “With a fifty percent chance of severe thunderstorms and a constant overnight temperature not much lower than last night’s.” My office is muggy, made so by the water I’m constantly drinking to feed the stirring air that whicks all perspiration from my skin to compliment the moisture that made making its way through the heavy filters and cooling processes of the building’s HVAC system that leaves this place a dry husk devoid of comfort in the winter and my little thermometer’s delcaration that it is only seventy-six degrees in my litle rectangle does little to comfort me as a result. After all, what does the number mean to me when the only way for me to stop sweating is to sit in my chair and refrain from any kind of movement? What’s the point of knowing the temperature when even the movement of standing up to examine the digital readout is enough to pop tiny beads of just-drunk water on my forehead, upper lip, and forearms? It is hot, it cannot be denied, and I do not need a thermometer to tell me that.
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