Oct 04
ErinTop of my head, Work life, musings, Work
I am not stingy when it comes to sharing knowledge. I always say to my team members that I have a 3-strike (or 3 chances) rule when discussing a topic and mentoring at work. Anyone can ask me anything tech-related, soft-skill , or maximizing a loophole three times and I will gladly do it.
- I will discuss a topic the first time, normally with fervor if its an interesting topic.
- I will discuss the topic the second time because the concepts may not have been clear or entirely alien to the target audience such that details wasn’t properly absorbed the first time.
- I will discuss the topic for the third and final time, because I may not be explaining it properly or the “recipient” was not really paying attention.
There is no fourth time. If there is a need for a fourth discussion then it means we have a problem.
May 25
ErinWork git
Leaving this here as I keep on forgetting these whenever I try to replicate a repository to a test repository:
git remote add new_repo git@gitprovider.com:/path/to/new-test-repo.git
git fetch --all --prune
git push --prune new_repo +refs/remotes/origin/*:refs/heads/* +refs/tags/*:refs/tags/*
Dec 26
ErinGarbage, Work delivery, scavenge, Work
[Lifted from an old email I sent to my previous project mates.]
This is an email to remind about wantonly tweaking configuration settings in the Oracle Fusion Middleware stack to make the code work. Wantonly in this case means it did not go through the official change management process as the members in question wanted to quickly solve an issue that was first encountered in the UAT environment.
E2 is supposed to mirror the E3 environment to catch any problem that could happen in E3, or replicate an ongoing issue.
Our goal is not to make our deliverables pass UAT, but to provide deliverables that will not malfunction in production.
Any setting that needs to be changed needs to be evaluated properly to ensure it doesn’t affect the other applications in the environment. Each setting change is always a compromise between two conflicting scenarios (e.g. performance vs scalability, traceability vs resource management, etc.). We need to understand what we are exchanging for each setting update. The E2 settings change needs to be propagated to E3 afterwards.
For the nomenclature:
- E2 is the User Acceptance environment, and
- E3 is the Production environment.
May 30
ErinGarbage, Work musings, Work
You probably have heard of “when life gives you lemons, make lemonade” or “you cannot make omelette without cracking eggs” but company business optimism is taking this a bit further. They are thinking ahead and in what I would assume to be pursuit of cost cutting the powers that be has shifted to “why bother making lemonades and omelette in the first place? let us take away the lemons and eggs so you wont have that problem” mentality.
Ingenious, yes.
Devilish, yes.
Practical? It depends on whose perspective.
I like lemonade and omelette. I also like having the choice whether I will or I will not have them.
ciao!
May 16
ErinTop of my head, Work humor, sentiments, Work
I am cleaning up my work inbox to free up some space and came across an email from the “enthusiastic” events committee of the UPEM team. This was about the awards they give out during the year-end party. Guess which one is perennially mine. 🙂
- Banksy Award – lives up freedom of expression via whiteboard graffiti
- Bleep Award – for having the most “colorful” vocabulary in the team
- Bully Award – do we even have to define this?
- Caffeine Addict Award – for someone who drinks the most coffee in a day even if not collecting stickers for a Starbucks Planner
- Call of Duty: Ghost Ops – for the one who stays longer than our core hours to fulfill duties
- Could Have Been Sweethearts – their chemistry is palpable that in another time, place, and lifetime they could have been… We can rename this to Popoy and Basha Award? May second chance! =))
- Duct Tape Award – for being able to fix issues, resourcefully
- Early Bird Award – for consistently being early in the office
- Fitness First Award – for someone who hits the gym regularly
- Food Basket Award – for being a saint in providing nutrition to the team
- Human Vulture Award – for eating anything found lying around
- Iron Chef Award – for the person who always packs a delicious looking lunch while everyone else gets Ministop’s Nuclear Chicken
- Keep Calm and Carry On Award – for being calm, cool, and collected on the highest severity of issues
- Man of Steel Award – for being thoroughly dedicated to his work that no disaster can stop him . This is given to the teammate who had no or the least number of SL’s/EL’s for the year.
- Megaphone Award – for actively voicing out (sometimes louder than necessary) his opinions to the team
- Most Bromantic Couple – for living up The Bro Code
- Mr./Ms.Seenzone Award – for someone who turns the Lync taskbar icon into a blinking light, and prefers the old fashioned way of one on one interaction
- Neatest Nook Award – for having the cleanest cube in the office
- One More Thing Award – most likely to extend meetings
- Papa/Mama Bear Award – for someone who takes care of the team
- Pig Pen Award – for someone who has the messiest cube in the office
- Six-pack Award – for someone so funny, he can give you a six-pack just by laughing
- Social Butterfly Award – for someone you are always up to date with due to his/her social media posts
- Stuck Thread King/Queen – for consistently causing downtime in any of our environments
- TMNT Award – for the one who demonstrates proficiency and skill in the art of stealth
- UPEM Fashionista (female) – for consistently dressing extraordinary in an ordinary day in the office
- UPEM Fashionisto (male) – for consistently dressing extraordinary in an ordinary day in the office
Quoting Robert: “Good Times!”
ciao!
May 21
ErinGarbage, Work rant, Work
SLA – the maximum amount of time that a task can be put off that the requester cannot contest except to raise the cost by involving higher-paid individuals to increase the imaginary priority shown to external users.
Sometimes misunderstood to be the time needed to require work to be completed.
May 16
ErinGarbage, Top of my head, Work Garbage, rant, Work
Imagine an environment where standards are strictly enforced.
Where security is of paramount importance.
Now imagine that at the expense of productivity or rational reasoning.
Where compliance is dictated by the contents of a clipboard checklist.
Welcome to Hotel California.
Mar 02
ErinWork rant, Work
Food for thought for operations people.
If you are doing support work and using a ticketing system that doesn’t provide a link or information to contact the administrators then you become responsible for connecting that request to the administrators. You cannot expect end users who are twice-removed from the administrator team to have the means to contact them directly. The very least you can do is to ensure the concerns are forwarded to the next link in the chain and avoid shoving the end user to fumingly face a brick wall when they are given the curt response of “it is not my scope”.
Jan 08
ErinGarbage, Top of my head, Work agile, Garbage, Work
I came across a leadership podcast a few weeks back wherein there was a description of leadership that seems to fit the type of leadership that a ScrumMaster or agile advcocate needs to exude. I lost my notes on which podcast it is for the necessary attribution but the notes that stuck with me contains the following (paraphrased) content:
During a performance show, an orchestrator (conductor) is somebody whom everybody in the group looks up to, following every flick of the wrist for the correct entry into the symphony. The choreographer on the other hand only teaches the vision of the dance, corrects any mistakes during the practice sessions, and then sits back in the audience to see the dance troupe interpret the visions, sometimes in ways that even exceeds what was practiced.
Image credits goes to freerangestock.com
The choreographer aspect seems to fit what the agile advocate needs to do. This follows the mandate that in an agile team the scrum master is a servant-leader, a person who influences without any direct mandate. For those who finds that hard to comprehend, it is the same type of authority that friends form over their experiences, wherein a select few of the pack is looked upon for inputs on what to do next. That only comes with trust that the “choreographer” knows what they are saying and that they will not lead the pack into ruin.
The only resistance is the inherent inertia that most of the corporate organizations still pine for the command-and-control structure which gives the “feel good feeling” that everything can be boxed into a specific plan. This makes organizations make more open to the idea of putting seasoned managers as conductors of delivery in order to control every aspect and cadence of the team. They are not entirely wrong but the unpredictability of the human mind and real life means they are also not entirely right.
The conductor can still be a person of trust but normally the conductor’s authority is proportional to their perceived reputation. The reputation is a double edged sword as that can be the initial hump that the team needs to overcome to start being comfortable with having the “conductor” as part of the team.
Sep 06
ErinTop of my head, Work irony, office policies, productivity, Work
Classic policies that results to a head scratching moment.
- Your network connection suddenly drops because the authentication software invalidate your session and prompting you for your credentials.
- You enter you credentials but is unable to get a connection because your anti-virus software definition is not updated.
-
- You cannot update the definition because you dont have a connection.
Bonus points: the AV definition should have been automatically updating but for some reason it stopped doing that.
Bravo.
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