Congratulations, aurelia!

And good on Boston.

aurelia, that's awesome! Congrats!

energy has waned. I blame Santa Monica.

I left an IT guy doing an installation at my computer while I was in a meeting.

Bets on whether he flipped over to my open browser and read any tabs?

I can't actually decide with him. Could go either way, honestly. The temptation would be so strong. I can't lie. But I would feel good knowing I hadn't done it. And I'd feel great knowing I had.

I have been driven to the point of committing chocolate. Lordie lord...it's just...you have to work out a way to phrase your questions differently from your answers. And agreement differently from dissent. If I can't tell any of those apart, it's kind of hard to be productive with you.

I was having a bitch session with one of the BAs, and I was complaining about the QA group, and how they always tore my requirements documents apart. He cracked my shit up with "Dammit! If the developers can develop without requirements, why can't you test without them?"

Which is...so very perfect. Could not have said it better myself.

Also, The Cutting Edge was directed by Starsky?!?!?

The comments about both the Boston rejection of Chik-fil-a and about even the possibility of curtailing the availability of guns are so filled with vitriol and illogic (at least on Facebook) that I fear for my sanity.

Congratulations, aurelia!

It's not your sanity I'd fear for, Sophia.

He cracked my shit up with "Dammit! If the developers can develop without requirements, why can't you test without them?"

Because then the docs team discovers there are no specs for anything, that no one is writing down what the hell they're doing, and that leads to wearing fangs to work and hissing at people. Hypothetically speaking, of course.

Hypothetically speaking, our SDLC has a big fat arrow running back from the testing crew to the requirements generation.

Which, as the business analyst, I have to shoulder blame for.

But the basic system requirement was "Allow producing field "salespeople" to single sign on into this vendor website, providing them with a free license if their yearly gross is over $75K."

Boom.

The amount of time we spent circling on "salespeople" and trying work out how to codify that (they're the ones that we pay! that bring in the money! how can we not know who they are?) was pretty stupendous, but we hashed it out. We're heading into the final stretch, having built up a decent head of steam, and one of the developers on the commissions system, who I've never spoken to, says "Which sort of gross do you mean?"

WTFuh-huh? We have different grosses? We polled a lot of people. They had no idea. That's the point at which you have to talk the stakeholders into going with what they already have, and not to get any big ideas this close to deployment.

God, that sinking feeling.

Pumpkin had an Adventure. The thing is, I don't know how she had it, exactly. Loki and Pumpkin were chilling on the deck, and I came in to take out the recycling. They'll behave for 2 minutes, right? Pumpkin followed me in as she usually does (and usually goes right back out.) I take the recycling down, noting as I'm shutting the door that she is about to jump on the bookcase next to the door. Take the recycling out, idly note I should shut the screen door when I do this, as mosquitos.

Come back upstairs and check on cats. Loki is still chilling, no Pumpk. Come inside, calling. No jingle (she's belled for a reason, this cat.) Proceed to flip out. Comb the house, call from the deck, peering out over it, check everywhere. Run around the basement, go out the back door, calling.

And she comes sorta slinking around the corner. She was happy to see me.

But I don't know how she got down there. She could've gotten out with me and the recycling, but I think I would have noticed. The only other option is she jumped off the deck. She's shown interest in the railings below before.

No more unsupervised deck time, not even for 2 minutes.