Checksum Arcanius

Google thinks that my skills would make me a good candidate for a Software Developer in Test. I have to say that the assessment bummed me out a little. My initial reaction was that I’ve done test; I was hoping to move on to a development job. Specifically a development job in a group with the TA who started the whole Google ball rolling for me.

I tried to start feeling good about it. I read some posts from the Google Testing Blog where it was clear that development is a big part of what their testers do. The main part, really. The recruiter set up a phone chat between myself and a Google testing manager. We talked about a variety of topics: the high Dev to Tester ratio; how the job stays interesting, how it really is a development position; how the job can give me a chance to be involved in a product at many more levels than as a normal developer; and about some of the specific meaty problems that the SDTs at Google have solved. It was a good conversation, but something was still bugging me. I didn’t know what it was at the time, but now I think I’ve figured it out.

Even if Google testers are different, even if they are “revered” as the recruiter put it, making sure something works right simply isn’t the same as making something that does work right. I’ll say it again, because I think it bears repeating:

Making sure something works right simply isn’t the same as making something that does work right

The accomplishments that I am most proud of at Microvision are not the many bugs I have caught or the test procedures I have successfully run. My pride is in what I have created. It is Flic firmware version X.37. It is the Automated Testing Fixture software. I know that in my role as a tester, I have helped create a higher quality product. But I don’t feel ownership for that product in the same way that I do for projects that I actually wrote code for.

I imagine it is similar to the feeling of ownership that I have over the recently completed 3D VGA card project I did with a partner in CSE 467, Advanced Digital Design, compared to the feeling of ownership that the excellent TA feels over our project: He certainly helped eliminate bugs, but it isn’t his creation. I fear that as a Software Developer in Test, I will miss that ownership, and the passion that goes with it.

In the end I want to be able to point to something important and say “I made that.”

Even when I’m not using it, Microsoft Internet Explorer 7 appears to be trying very hard to make sure that I can’t ignore it. Recently installed after Microsoft decided to push out IE7 to users who, like me, refused to install Windows Genuine disAdvantage, I thought that it would be relatively harmless. Although I wasn’t planning on using it much anyway (at least not outside of the IEtab plugin), IE6 certainly needed an update and I thought it couldn’t hurt. Well, I was wrong.

First, the backstory. On Kaleidoscope, my venerable 2004-era desktop computer, I have a 4-disk RAID 0 stripe. At the time, this choice made a lot of sense, because I used the computer primarily for video editing and playing video games. Speed, not data security, was the primary concern. I kept all of my important documents on Kleinoscope, my laptop at the time, which I occasionally backed up.

However, Kleinoscope died a rather horrific death several months ago, and before the arrival of Graphitica, I ended up using Kaleidoscope for productivity considerably more than I had originally anticipated. Combined with several scary refusal-to-boot episodes, I decided that data security had to become a higher priority. So I headed to Fry’s and created Nexus, a file server with a couple of 750 gigabyte hard drives. I decided to transfer all of the documents I had been storing on Kaleidoscope to Nexus and just set that up as my default Documents storage location. Over a gigabit connection, response was snappy and everything worked great. Until I let IE7 install itself.

At that point, whenever I clicked on my Documents folder, I first received a pop-up warning dialog:

This page has an unspecified potential security risk. Do you want to continue?

Well of course I wanted to continue. I wanted to access my documents, and there was of course no potential security hazard, specified or not, in my doing so. I didn’t specifically link the appearance of this dialog to the installation of IE7 at the time, but I did find it annoying. Today, I was feeling a bit petulant and decided to see what would happen if I clicked “No” to the dialog’s inane question instead of my customary “Yes.” Well, I didn’t get to see my files, and my desktop decided that it was busy for the rest of time. Although performance appeared to be unaffected, whenever I hovered my mouse over the desktop, I was treated to an hourglass icon. A good 30 minutes later, the icon is still persistent. Well, this travesty motivated me to fix the problem once and for all. So I did the most anti-Microsoft thing imaginable: I Googled it. And true-to-form, Google delivered some excellent results.

The solution, found here, is simple:

Open Control Panels > Internet Options
Select the Security tab
Select the Local Intranet icon
Click the Sites button
Click the Advanced button
Type the name of the file server into the text box and click Add
Select Close and OK to exit all of the dialog boxes

Viola! Windows no longer complains about unspecified potential security risks that are not actually risks.

On Thursday I promised my physical therapist that I would make it into the gym before our next visit. So, while taking a brief break from The Project on Sunday, I headed to the IMA for a little bit of a workout. I was pleasantly surprised with how far I’ve come in just the couple of weeks.

Not long ago, my hamstrings could barely lift my own lower leg at all. A week ago, I couldn’t curl even 25 pounds. Sunday, 25 pounds was difficult, but I was able to curl it 10 times for three sets without overexerting myself. Now, two days later, I’m feeling the first “good pain” that my legs have felt in a long time — the achy muscle pains of gaining back muscle tone and strength to my atrophied right leg.

It has been a good start to the week in other ways as well. My CSE partner Remington’s work last night and this morning secured a 4.0 for us in our CSE class, and my physical therapist cleared me for riding my bike today. So for the first time in a long time, I rode my bike to school. It felt good, but next time I’m wearing my long fingered gloves :-).

For anyone wondering where I was, I was underground:

Friday 4:30-12:30
Saturday 6:00-1:00
Sunday 11:00-12:30
Monday 10:30-7:00

Result: 36 hours, 3.4 –> 3.9 in CSE 467

My good friend Shai is back online in style over at DonutEnigma. Welcome back to the blogosphere buddy!

After autumn quarter’s travesty of a schedule, this is looking mighty delectable!

Probably I will go into work Tuesday-Thursday afternoons.

:-)