Thank God

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The packers come tomorrow. For the past few weeks, the stress of trying to sort out all our world possessions has been steadily mounting - And not in the "oh-good-here-comes-the-end-of-the-film-where-everything-sorts-itself-out" kind of way, but rather "Honey-you-didn't-just-throw-out-this-pile-of-papers-including-your-daughter's-first-macaroni-portrait-did-you" kind of way. My bride and I, fortunately, have alternating stress cycles. Last Wednesday, for example, as I frantically ran about the house trying to spot all the missing bits of baseboard, she smoothly talked me off the ledge. Currently, I'm well past the point of stress and into some sort of zen-faith that the packers will manage to make some sense of our belongings. My bride, on the other hand, is bouncing off the walls, alternating between making endless lists of all the documents Her Majesty's Government is likely to deport us if we forget and muttering comments to herself like "they have soap in the UK, right? I'll just pack this, just in case." However, even after we've taken piles (4 trips worth) of unneccessary junk to the dump, and set aside more piles to go to Salvation Army, we still have piles of things all over the house. Moving has forced us to take all those pieces and parts that we've tucked away in closets and drawers "just while company's over" and go through them again. I've come up with no less than 5 unidentified power cables. Not having that many items which have lain about unpowered for months or even years, I've no idea where I've gotten them all. It's led to endless distraction while trying to pack: each of us has, at least a half dozen times a day, been forced to drop everything we're doing (usually right when we're at our packing-productivity-peak) and made to look at some scrap of a ticket from that time we went to the fair and ate too much popcorn and got sick on the Slap-and-Whirl... remember that? Yeah. Good times. The good news is, Ella's taking all this in stride. She apparently thinks giant pyramids of books/videos/clothes/etc. are all great fun, and takes joy in selectively redistributing random items from one organized pile to the next. When she hears a frustrated cry of "Now where's the bloody X?!", she's taken to proudly stating "I did it!" (Which, by the way, really saved my butt on the whole, 'where'd the macaroni portrait go?' question.)
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I have seen the enemy...

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Now I don't want to get off on a rant here, but did you ever wonder what happened to the hallway monitor from 5th grade? (That's Grade 5 for you Canadians). They all grew up to become QA. I work for a biotech company. That means we make drugs. The good, really expensive kind, mostly. Now, if you've ever worked in the pharmaceutical industry - and cooking large amounts of processed acetone through coffee filters doesn't count - you know that the Federal Gov't gets nervous when you propose to put things into people's bodies that may have potential side effects, like sterility, or leakage from the bottom parts. They're watching out for you, after all. So we have an entire army of Quality Assurance folks who want to see documented evidence of everything we do to our systems which are part of our drug-manufactuting operations. And no-kidding, in principal I whole-heartedly support this. Ah, but the problem. See, the QA folks who are supposed to ensure us programmer-type people aren't accidentally putting arsenic in your tylenol with our handy little computer systems have about as much familiarity with their computers as my 2 year old. No, wait - actually, Ella already knows how to find Sesame Street on the internet, which puts her years ahead of our QA folks. And like every bad idea gone worse, my own particular QA SS have the tendency to compensate for their lack of knowledge with ultimatums. (as a reluctant caveat, I will say that there are one or two in QA who are exceptions to this rule). When I'm asked what exactly it is that I do, I often have a hard time explaining. Mostly, I spend endless hours dealing with twits like this. Here's the gist of a conversation I had today (I only wish this was an exageration) Me: We are upgrading the network. You won't notice anything during this work, but we do have to change the IP address on your servers, which means rebooting. Sorry for the inconvenience, but here's a detailed schedule which will help you plan for the brief outage. QA: Will this have any impact on my [insert application name here] application? Me: Yes. It runs on a server. That's why I said 'your servers' at the beginning of this conversation. QA: But what about all my data! The FDA could shut us down! I refuse to sign off on this unless someone from my department can stand beside the system administrator and watch him plug it into the new network to make sure he does it right. Me: I said 'IP address.' Why are you talking about data and cables? Have I mistakenly assumed that because you are Computer Systems Quality Assurance you would understand what I was talking about? Just sign the plan which says you know what it means and I won't tell anyone your secret. QA: I can't sign that! I don't understand it! Me: Are you admitting that you don't know how to do your job? QA: Um... no... but I'm not signing... Me: ...Sigh... OK, I may have exagerated... but not by much.
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Living on the Farm

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Giuia and I spent a recent week in the UK, hunting for a new place to live. We also went cow-tipping. OK, there was no cow-tipping. But not for lack of desire on Giuia's part... We did, however, find a quaint farm to live on out in the English countryside. Very Wind In The Willows. In addition, I've updated the incredibly adorable pictures of Ella Very cute. A Must See. And last, but certainly not least - a UK Story Time, Wherin the Gradys explore the complexities of British cuisine.    
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