The soul of a new dev box

The dev box isn't new, really: just adding a 256 GB SSD for the primary drive and repaving it.

I made a list of all the things I need to install to get back to a working environment. Yes, the original was backed up, but I'm moving to Windows 8.1, so it's a full remodel.

• Windows 8.1 Pro (I've avoided 8 up until now: we'll see...)
• Google Chrome
• Microsoft Security Essentials (corporate requirement)
• Virtual CloneDrive (for mounting ISOs)
• Visual Studio 2008 (yes,we still have code built with this)
• Windows SDK 7.1 (we're tied to this specific SDK at the moment)
• Visual Studio 2010
• Visual Studio 2012
• Visual Studio 2013 (some new code is being written in this, for no good reason I know)
• Windows SDK 8.1 (for WinDbg, Application Verifier, etc.)
• Office 2013 (I'm primarily working on Exchange 2013 restore at the moment)
• Subversion 1.7 (haven't switched to 1.8 yet, mostly because this is for older products)
• TortoiseSVN 1.7
• git (I get it now, and I love it: it's a floor polish *and* a salad dressing)
• Atlassian SourceTree (it's always useful to have a GUI when you go spelunking)
• Notepad++ (I do more with vi in git's bash shell these days, but I still use it for searching through huge log files)
• MarkdownPad 2 (all my personal notes are in Markdown, including the wiki on my phone)
• Dropbox (all my ebooks and other documents are here)
• Trillian (we have to use Skype, and it got even more annoying after Microsoft took over)
• Code Collaborator (mostly for old code: most code reviews these days are done by repository owners via pull requests)
• Event Log Explorer (if you have to search and filter event logs, this is a great tool)
• Foxit Reader (because I hate Adobe Reader)
• Visual Assist X (kinda like ReSharper for C++)
• JetBrains ReSharper (Best. Tool. Ever.)
• JetBrains dotPeek (instead of Reflector)
• DisplayFusion (for multiple monitors, which I now hate: I'd rather have a single 27" or 20" display)
• S3 Browser (all our support packages - log files, event logs, etc. - wind up on S3 as Zip files: this is useful for retrieving them)
• VMware vSphere Client (we have a lot of test VMs running on ESXi)
• VMware Workstation (we have a lot of test VMs running on our dev boxes too)

 

At home, I'm turning into an occasional system administrator: too many devices on what used to be *my* network alone. I'm setting up a server for media (mostly photos) and local backups and gradually thinning the herd (I'm down to only *cough* three notebooks, not including the one with the bad screen sitting under my desk, but that number will be one in a couple of weeks).

It's been a busy week

Coming back from two weeks of vacation, even with a mandatory shutdown between Christmas and New Year's Day, tasks piled up and the week was hectic. The new QA manager is floundering (she already has all her staff alienated), outsourcing our current system software to the China team continues (yes, this doesn't bode well), and the firefighting and political infighting continue. On the positive side, life outside of work is good and my autodidacticism continues as I work through ATL, WTL, and yes, even MFC (the Visual Studio 2008 vintage).

My new Studio 17 notebook was sent back to Dell because IT ordered it with a Blu-ray drive (raising the price $150) and integrated video (saving $150), yielding a lackluster 3.1 on the Windows Experience Index:

There are some things about this machine I do not like, primarily the touchpad and keyboard:

• the keyboard includes a numeric keypad, something I never use
• the and keys and the and keys are all side by side instead of stacked as they should be
• the touchpad is from Alps and it doesn't work as smoothly as a Synaptics touchpad.
• the Menu key is missing from the keyboard, and it's something I use occasionally
• the Windows key sticks when you do E to bring up Explorer, for example: the moment you type an L, you lock the machine. This doesn't happen with an external keyboard, and I'm holding out hope Dell will fix it in an update: I can live with it for now (and complain on the Dell support boards).

However, the display is big and beautiful, the system is fast (even with a 5400 RPM drive, which I'll shortly replace with a 7200 RPM drive), and there's room for a second internal hard drive (that's where the original 5400 RPM drive will go, probably to hold extra or backup VMs, other backups, and maybe a test partition for Windows 7 builds).

Since I got this thing to run Windows 7, do WPF development, and drive an external 1920x1200 monitor (and I'll be stuck with it for some time), I had IT exchange it for one with a regular DVD burner and dedicated graphics ($150). If they had bought me a refurbished MacBook Pro as I originally requested, it would have cost about the same and been faster (albeit with a smaller main screen). This all would have been simpler (and faster) if I had been given a budget and allowed to create the order myself.

In other news, my former employer in Tampa is doing gangbusters: two acquisitions in 30 days in a bad recession. I regret burning that bridge: whatever problems there were in product management pale in comparison to the insanity at my current job, but my scorpion nature wasn't quite kept in check when I was there. That, and I should never have taken the QA manager position. C'est la vie...

But hey, at least I have a job, for now. In 9 days, the country is officially under new management, and I am hopeful President Obama will make the right decisions and form the right alliances and help set this nation on a course to realizing our potential. If nothing else, he can't possibly do worse than the idiots we've had running things for the last 8 years (last 28 years, actually).

Roads to Madness

Yep, another Queensrÿche song title.

So now I'm running the scrum planning meeting, and the first point of contention - after me internally going "WTF?!" and trying not to show how pissed I was - was whether we really need to have the product manager at the meeting.

Yeah, let's leave the stakeholder out: that worked so well in the past.

Working Man

So now I'm using Rush song titles for my posts: interesting...

Work has become very, um, challenging.

The first challenge has been the resignation of my boss, the director of software development and the person most directly responsible for me taking the job. After two years of struggling to get the software department aligned with a product development process that can best be described as chaotic, after telling senior management time and again that the demands placed on the software organization exceeded our capacity by almost 200%, even with the most optimistic estimates, I guess he got tired of pushing the rock up the hill.

With his departure almost three weeks ago now, I've been drafted to assist my boss's boss, the VP of product development, as we first try to figure out where we are with all the products - all 67 of them.

Seriously. 67 products.

You have to page down three times to get to the bottom of our CruiseControl page, and that's just for the products being actively maintained. It's insane.

We then have to figure out how to take steps to continue product development while also going back and fixing all the shortcuts and bandaids and just plain screwups we made getting the products out the door as quickly as possible. This week, that involved 4 solid days of meetings - 9:00 AM to 6:00 PM - with test-driven requirements, planning poker, etc. Grueling, especially since I had to lead all the meetings and I was the one standing at the board writing down all the use cases and leading everyone through this. Ugh.

I've also been going to way too many meetings with senior management, including some with the CEO. I now believe all the stories I've heard about people leaving meetings with the CEO's spittle on their face (from him screaming at them). The CEO hasn't screamed at me (yet), but he definitely has anger management issues. I want to get back to where I don't interact with him or any of the other senior staff as quickly as possible, but that may be a while: we have yet to interview anyone for VP of software engineering.

On the positive side, we finally got some C++test licenses, and it's a very interesting tool (not cheap, though). More on C++test later...

So, at this point, I'm hating on this job. I've got a couple of things lined up, including a company in Vero Beach which looks like a great fit if they pay enough and if they'll go for a couple of days a week of telecommuting. And yes, I do get work done when I'm sitting out by the pool with the laptop, thank you very much!

I'm also looking longingly at some jobs out in Reno (gambling systems) and in Grass Valley, CA (video, much better), but that's mainly to keep me sane. We just moved into a big house in Rockledge with an awesome pool, so Barbara and the kids will probably miss me if those turn out to be viable options, but still... Grass Valley is only a couple of hours from San Francisco, and Reno is an extra hour. Intriguing, and I've had this itch to go west for about 5 years now, and it keeps getting stronger.

Anyway, this is getting long, and I need to get home. I'd like to close with a shout out to my friend who cannot be named, and I hope this post gets him the review he's been waiting for. With that raise he's sure to get, he can probably afford to upgrade his monthly cable to HD and maybe have a little left over to buy some fancy treats for the dog.

I kid, I kid...