Ebbs and Flows

I am writing this on my phone so apologies for formatting/grammar/spelling errors. It has been very slow at work and I'm working on a project that won't be needed until 2018. It makes me wonder if all teams are like this or not. We will have a ton of work all at once then we will have nothing to do to the point where I can write a half ass blog post from my phone. I've been refreshing my email for about 45 minutes just to have something to do other than this tax XML. I know nothing about Brazilian taxes but I've been sent to create the XML that is sent to the Brazil government for tax and inventory control purposes. I've been working on it so log my mind is numb. Thank god for the Nerdist podcast. If I had to sit in silence and do this, I would start spinning in my chair. 

On a positive note, I went kayaking over the weekend with some girlfriends and it was fantastic. I want to buy my own kayak. It was nothing too intense. Just a lazy float down a river. 

Here's to hoping for more work soon. Take care, reader.

Happy 4th of July week!!

I am sitting in the office with only a few other people. Everyone else is working from home or took vacation time. It's so quiet and I love it! I am regression and defect testing today. I have already messed up and tested the wrong test set. It's not the end of the world but it's times like that when I remember I'm just an intern. I hope to learn more about slowing down and actually reading emails completely. It is also a Monday of a holiday week. My brain isn't on yet.

Everyone have a good week and be safe!

Ministry of Testing

I had another informational interview with a QA software tester at my company. He was a wealth of information. One of the resources we discussed was the Ministry of Testing. He went to TestBash last year and couldn't speak higher of it. I get so excited knowing there are so many people out there being innovating and growing this field. I hope to go to TestBash someday.

This was a quick post but last thing is I have joined the website uTest. It is a social network for software testers. I'm still working my way through it but check it out!

Tool Plug

Hello, dear reader.

Today I'm going to tell you about a tool in my life that has greatly improved my organizational skills. I have been using Toodledoo (www.toodledo.com), which is both an app and a web based task list system. There are many aspects to this product that are useful but I  mostly use it for the task list function. What sets it apart, in my opinion, is the priority and due date feature. I am able to put a task in, example, pick up my dog's flea meds from the vet. Then, I can choose a due date and priority. The service then ranks the tasks based on importance levels, the closest due dates and higher priorities have a top importance level. What I like about this system is that I can put everything I'm supposed to remember into my phone and check it daily to see what is coming up and what can wait. It releases me from the anxiety cycle of trying to remember everything that needs to get done and when. So, check it out. I do believe there is a subscription cost but there is a free trial. I highly recommend this app.

End to end testing

I'm learning a lot more about SQL and Oracle lately. We had some test requests to test interfaces from our store database to our Oracle database. I have absolutely no experience with Oracle beyond looking up what has replicated to it. But the queries to Oracle are ridiculous. So many decodes and unions, I have have no idea what's going on. I have to trust our senior analyst knows what she's doing.

And that leads me to my next thought. I love my team. We are only five strong but four of us are women. And the dev team has women on it too. I have contemplated maybe going to another team to focus on security. But I'm afraid to bounce around teams. I'm pretty loyal to my supervisor and I'm not sure how it would look. I'm so new to all of this career thing. So, I'm going to stick around in QA for now and learn as much as I can.

On the note of learning QA, I'm looking into classes and certifications. I have no idea what organization to go through or if I want to do QA or software testing. Finals week is coming up and I keep just adding to my stress. Thank goodness for yoga and coffee.

Where's the semicolon?

It's been a while, hasn't it? I actually forgot I had started this. Life has been kind of crazy but who's isn't?

I have discovered cold brew coffee. It's amazing. I purchased a warehouse club sized package of coffee over the weekend and it's almost gone. Needless to say, I've been on point with my tasks, if not a little jittery.

Not much going on at work because the dev team is in training. We are slowly creeping along with our weekly tasks. It's been pretty boring. I completed a SQL basics certification from sololearn.com and now I'm starting a Ruby one. Ruby is very similar to the previous languages I've worked with but no semi colon to close the command. It's driving me crazy. It's such a reflex to end each line of code with a semicolon. It's pretty irrational of me to be upset but if this is the worst thing going on in my life, things are going pretty good.

Informational Interview

I just had the greatest talk with a QA engineer in my company. He's on a different team so he brought a very different perspective to testing as a whole. His team is more of an Agile format as mine is Waterfall. The more I learn about Agile, the more I am in love with the concept. He also directed me to a new blog to read: lisacrispin.com. I look forward to reading her perspective as well. Also, he introduced me to some books that I will have to report back on as I acquire and read them.

Overall, an amazing 30 minute chat. So thankful.