Today I was able to get everything installed on the test server, save the bot itself. But the LAMP is up and running, mp-wp installed, firewall configured, and I already tested and can confirm that I can connect to freenode.net from this server via port 6667. I made a point to look at what I could improve to make it faster for next time, and that turned out to be refining my notes to be more of a “manual script” that I can follow.
As for last week in review, with the exception of Friday I hit my goal of daily updates. I got my applications out as well and the server is pretty much ready for testing once I prop the bot up (this bot-propping shouldn’t take long; I’m just overdue for bed tonight and had to call it a night).
This new workload at the saltmine has me with new ~weekly deadlines (in addition now to the monthly stuff in the first two weeks of each month), and this week I need to get this certain thing done by Wed. It’s the type of thing that I just need to sit down and study for a few hours and I’m way behind, so I want to get that out of the way Monday. Then Tuesday I can get back to bot prep. On that front I need to get the bot up and running and then (finally) I’ll be ready for testing. Besides sending out 5 more applications that’s all I’m focused on for next week because once March comes I don’t want to be scrambling with this thing.
Entirely missing from this review&plan: any idea of improvement as well as any serious look at *everything* of last week or any consideration of the impact of unpleasant changes (such as those weekly deadlines now from that great saltmine, eh?) and how to possibly mitigate them at least if nothing else.
Either you start doing proper reviews as in purposefully looking at everything that happened and at what and how to *change* for the better (aka to learn! and this includes looking for ways to make sure the change sticks!), or I’ll stop commenting since there’s little point to keep pushing you if you don’t want to go further.
Comment by Diana Coman — February 24, 2020 @ 9:26 am
This is reasonable. As a first step I think I’m gonna start doing my weekly reviews on Sunday morning rather than my current habit of waiting until the last minute on Sunday night (hence I’m sleepy and sloppily ‘rushing through’ what should be a thoughtful review).
So by tomorrow night I’ll add to / fix this review and going forward I’ll start my reviewing process earlier on Sundays.
Comment by Eric Benevides — February 24, 2020 @ 4:07 pm
Saltmines threatened to gimp me again today, yet I managed to get the server fully set-up and bot functional, and I gotta say that feels good. Tomorrow I’m going to take another look at that testing thread from #o and plan out my testing strategy.
Getting to bed now to get up early tomorrow. I still owe that revised review as well..
Comment by Eric Benevides — February 26, 2020 @ 4:40 am
Nice re server and bot, looks good!
Re saltmine, it’s apparently going to keep happening and/or only get worse. There’s of course the question whether it is *this* saltmine and/or only it or whether a lot of it is how you handle the situations (ie you might end up with the very same exact problem even if you change the saltmine so worth a proper look & think there too).
Comment by Diana Coman — February 26, 2020 @ 7:47 am
That is a good point re how I handle situations, and honestly as I thought about it I found that I had fallen into that same pattern at this saltmine as I did here in the past. Specifically the pattern where I just say yes to whatever work comes by and I neglect to take into account.. what I actually have the capacity to do. So today I told my manager that essentially I have too much on my plate to do this new data mapping project atm. His response was pretty much: “well they need your expertise on this new stuff asap, so I’m gonna mobilize every other person to take over your old stuff”. In other words, whatever the result here I gotta speak up more often when I need to, and know my limitations.
I reviewed some of that testing thread and did some noodling. I’m gonna try to get it all written out by tomorrow (maybe an article) and get started.
Comment by Eric Benevides — February 27, 2020 @ 3:28 am
Well done, hopefully that does indeed get your saltmine-related workload to something more manageable at least. And hooray to speaking up, indeed! Do remember that you *always* have an option, no matter what it is about – at the very least to speak up and say no (in whatever form or shape), for sure.
How’s that garage/rooms cleaning going?
Comment by Diana Coman — February 27, 2020 @ 8:03 am
Yeah, I need to keep this in mind. I ended up writing this quote down on my notepad next to my desk in fact.
The garage is clean, though I have not started on the living room. I wanted to spend all of my free hours this week on the server setup. However, if I end up getting said setup knocked out ahead of schedule I will start on the living room.
As for today’s report: I didn’t get much of anything complete on the testing prep; I decided to stay late at the saltmines trying to get my head wrapped around mapping the data for this thing. It is making some more sense at least, but I’m gonna reach out to some more people tomorrow to see if I can’t expedite it a bit. (More of that speaking up in action)
However, I got the green light to work from home tomorrow, so I will actually spend my early hours tomorrow on TMSR duties before saltmines like I should be doing. As for the rest of the weekend I have no other plans so I’m gonna try to close out my testing for this bot.
Comment by Eric Benevides — February 28, 2020 @ 3:43 am
Did some thinking and reread that testing thread, and I have a plan of attack for the weekend:
So first off in the spirit of knowing my code, I’m going to simply re-read through existing code, focusing on data flows, inputs, and the boundaries. I’m not going to get too crazy with the testing, but I’m going to test two things: 1) the main bot/mp-wp and 2) the dump format/process that I’ll need to provide MP with (this caused some headaches all around the last time).
Number 2 won’t require too much testing I don’t think, but I will need to make sure I have that correct in any case.
As for number 1 I’ll be doing both a white and black box approach. For the black, I need to enumerate the inputs (the most relevant ones) and various boundaries for the data flowing through the process. For the white I’ll need to cover all the control and data flows. The good thing is that many of the inputs (such as commands) I know work already. I mainly will want to be focusing the inputs that are “not static” such as the parsing of urls to echo log lines / blog selections.
Comment by Eric Benevides — February 29, 2020 @ 4:49 am
Sound reasonable. With inputs and tests basically aim for potentially problematic ones – in some sense the fun of testing is that good testing aims to break the thing.
Comment by Diana Coman — February 29, 2020 @ 9:03 am