2022-08-27 03:46
We have a job at work that runs every Wednesday night. All of a sudden, it aborted the last 2 weeks. This caused some critical data to be late. The main question was what changed? Initial an… Read More
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Software Maintenance Blog
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The daily work involved to support a suite of software applications used across the nation.
2021-10-07 02:09
I had a good sized task to complete at work. Told my boss it could be done in around two weeks. He thought that estimate was too small. I did not argue with him. We settled in at three weeks… Read More
2021-05-29 03:16
There is a book sale going on at Humble Bundle. You can get 15 Python books for $18. Now I already own some of those books. But I did find at least 5 that I would definitely buy. The value h… Read More
2021-01-13 15:20
We were getting close to turn on some software we developed last year. The last piece we forgot about was the piece that automatically ran the jobs on a weekly basis. I negotiated the timing… Read More
2021-01-04 21:32
I have previously heard about Harvard offering some courses online for free. Well you can do that now with CS50. This course seems to teach a ton of info. It seems to last almost as long as… Read More
2020-08-17 17:11
Right now I am working on a tiger team to research why this new reporting system has different data than the old one. Most of the time I try to figure out what exactly is the complaint. The… Read More
2020-08-17 15:04
At the end of last year, I left my prior project. Not sure if the cause was lack of money or retirement of the system I was working on. Could have been both. Luckily, and old manager offered… Read More
2020-04-04 02:16
At the end of last year, I got a surprise. Was the victim of a layoff from my project. Had been there 3+ years. I should have known something was up as the custom was rushing me to get a lot… Read More
2020-01-21 23:45
Today I attended a one day class on the basics of Microsoft Azure. This is the cloud computing platform from Microsoft. Normally the course retails for $690. There was some agreement between… Read More
2019-11-23 20:24
At the recommendation of my boss, I am looking into some new technologies. Got to remain relevant for the future. My boss told me "low code" is one way to go. You create apps using a GUI. Th… Read More
2019-11-23 19:56
My boss has been encouraging me to learn some new technologies related to my interest in database development. He mentioned that Hadoop may be such a candidate. Hadoop is a set of open sourc… Read More
2019-11-23 18:53
My boss at work told me to maybe go into some newer technologies related to my data interests. One such item was Databricks. The name sounds cool. But I did not know much about them. Databri… Read More
2019-11-23 17:53
I spoke with my manager this past week. He said my project might not be around much longer. So I should gear up and acquire skills for the next gig. He recommended I learn some hot technolog… Read More
2019-03-19 12:38
I have a lot of trouble ticket assigned to me. We release them to the customer in batches. The development cycle is usually about a month long for each. We have a trouble ticketing system. I… Read More
2019-01-17 05:03
My new team leader asked me to cost a fix to a bug the customer found. I looked up the ticket in our system. Somebody had already done an analysis and provided a design for the fix. I said I… Read More
2018-12-03 17:14
I read a post a lot of replies to a Reddit group on computer science graduates. Met a dude there who is an old timer, looking to switch careers into computer science. He said that he is taki… Read More
2018-11-05 03:37
I recently joined a newly formed team at work. The whole project was changing how they tracked work. We were going to have a daily scrum. Great. Sounds like agile to me. Been there done that… Read More
2018-08-09 02:36
I continue doing LeetCode exercises. Worked on another "Medium" difficulty problem today. Seemed straightforward enough. Find the longest length of any substring in a specified string that d… Read More
2018-08-07 21:53
I decided I would try to LeetCode exercises for practice. Nailed the first one I tried yesterday. It was an easy problem. The one I tried today was assessed as Medium difficulty. At first I… Read More
2018-08-07 01:55
I have been reading the Computer Science Careers subreddit recently. There is a lot of talk about how to prepare for job interviews. Many people mention doing problems on LeetCode. I have ne… Read More
2018-07-26 14:51
A tester tried to run a data load operation. It failed with some password error. My team mate asked me to help resolve the issue. Apparently somebody changed the password of an account that… Read More
2018-06-21 00:59
I was assigned a tricky problem to work on. Some of the data was missing in our production environment. Everything seemed to work fine in development and test. Trouble is, I did not have acc… Read More
2018-06-05 17:57
I got on a conference call for our latest software release. The new project manager asked the test team to verify a bunch of tickets. A bunch came out failed and ended in my queue. The manag… Read More
2018-05-25 18:19
We use some software from the same vendor for issue tracking and source code control. The customer has declared that we will be upgrading to a new version of both of these clients. From past… Read More
2018-05-16 19:24
I got invited to a meeting with the customer today. There was a problem in production. And the customer wanted answers. When it came time, I explained what was going on. Our new system used… Read More
2018-05-09 18:29
I self-register as a PL/SQL Oracle database developer with my company. So it came as no surprise when I got a targeted email from my company. It highlighted the book Mastering Oracle PL/SQL:… Read More
2018-04-26 15:29
The customer found some problems in our reporting system. Whole parts of data were missing. Counts were not matching up. I was put on the task of resolving this. Had to dig a bit to found th… Read More
2018-04-17 16:59
I got word from my manager that a new problem would be resolved imminently. I had not even looked at the problem. So I dug in. I told my manager that it would not be done on time. The custom… Read More
2017-10-19 02:25
I was woken up this morning from a call from work. Not a good sign. Apparently the customer found a potential problem in our delivery. I got on a conference call to sort the thing out. Yes… Read More
2017-10-13 16:31
I sold my old car recently. After turning in the license plates, I called my insurance company to cancel the insurance on the car. They said they could also provide homeowners insurance to m… Read More
2017-10-04 02:08
I work in the back end on my current project. It is a big database reporting project. My role is to provide the structure for new tables, write code to load those tables, and sometimes write… Read More
2017-09-07 19:12
I am working on a release at work. Initially we were supposed to replicate some bunch of database tables that the customer had in an old system. We did a quick dive into what was involved an… Read More
2017-08-08 17:49
We are delivering our latest release to internal test today. Had a code review yesterday. Many issues were found. We are fixing the highest priority problems. Before shipping to test, though… Read More
2017-06-11 06:44
Turns out we need to work all weekend on fixing bugs before the customer will even consider accepting our system for production use. I got assigned a ticket to analyze. At first I had some t… Read More
2017-06-01 19:34
I looked around at some job postings the other night. Saw a few that paid really well. I don't think I am ready for those specific jobs. But it gives me something to shoot for. I am going to… Read More
2017-05-03 16:14
On my current project at work, I have a team lead and a project manager. I take most of my direction from my team lead. He manages the list of trouble tickets on our system. And he hands the… Read More
2017-03-07 04:59
One of the newer guys on the team asked our project manager for some info. He needed to figure out how to get his scripts logging in to run unattended. The project manager asked our team lea… Read More
2017-02-16 20:02
I had promised to finish my current task within two days. First day I paced myself and did pretty good. As soon as I got in the next day, my boss called me up. We needed to debug some code t… Read More
2017-02-10 02:06
I got my next assignment from my team lead. Needed to figure out the code to create a bunch of database tables. Then I need to write the code to put data in those tables. The good news is th… Read More
2017-01-09 21:47
I have been backing up the data from my company laptop to CDs or DVDs for year. Initially I just used the reader/writer in my laptop. However newer versions of my work laptop did not have su… Read More
2016-12-07 03:25
I got handed a bunch of database functions a while back by my customer. He told me to get them to work and deploy them. It was a rush job. I fixed some bugs and got the things to compile. Th… Read More
2016-11-15 04:01
I got an invite to connect with a stranger on LinkedIn. It has happened before. Just a recruiter looking to make a commission I guess. I looked at their profile. It seemed new - only a few c… Read More
2016-11-15 03:55
We had a rush to finish our first delivery for testing. Some guys on the team were staying late until midnight to finish tasks. I was gunning hard to be productive so I did not need to work… Read More
2016-10-20 15:56
LinkedIn released a list of top skills you should have to get a job in 2016. Unfortunately none of the top 5 looked like anything I was interest in. At least I am studying up in #6 Network a… Read More
2016-10-03 20:04
I recall about 10 years ago I was on a big project. They had a guy that was a JavaScript dude. He was well respected. I figured I should learn the language. Eventually I got around to taking… Read More
2016-09-20 17:47
Some time ago my customer gave me a task to complete. There was some trouble getting clear requirements for the task. I did the best I could but went down the wrong path. In the end, my cust… Read More
2016-06-16 19:22
I am on a new project for the time being. Still waiting to get to my eventual destination. The official source code control solution on the project is IBM Rational Clearcase. This is mandate… Read More
2016-06-06 20:29
Today I registered to take the CompTIA Network+ certification exam. I got about a month and a half left to prepare for it. Currently I am reading a study guide which is not too good. I… Read More
2016-05-11 17:28
This year I think I am finally off the big project I have worked on for the last 15 years. That was quite a run. Now that I have jumped around to a couple teams, I am seeing a different dyna… Read More
2016-03-23 20:48
I rolled off my old project last year. They seemed to be out of money, at least for me. I did a short stint on an analysis gig. Then that job changed its requirements and I was again looking… Read More
2016-03-11 19:59
I talked with a couple guys who interviewed me for an interesting project. They could not tell me the specifics on the applications I would be developing. When pressed, they said learning to… Read More
2016-02-27 02:11
I want to go work on this cool project at my company. Need to jump through some hoops to get prepared. I asked the guys on the team if there were any industry certifications that would help… Read More
2016-01-20 15:58
I recently moved to a project where I am doing analysis full time. No software development. No coding. Oh the horror. But hey, it pays the bills.There are some good things about the job. I g… Read More
2016-01-12 22:15
I am now off the project I have been on for the last 15 years. Got moved over to a new one. The new project plans to replace parts of the old project I worked on. Guess I am a good guy to ta… Read More
2015-12-09 15:00
I use a computer provided by my customer to do all my work on the project. Guess this is due to security. The configuration of this computer is on lock down. Only approved software can be in… Read More
2015-09-23 14:12
The other day, I got a message from my team lead. When he is out, I usually take over. Been busy with my current task. Now I got lots of tasks. A manger had asked for an investigation on a t… Read More
2015-09-16 03:38
I read somewhere that if you want to get a job in software development, and you are "old", then you had better have a LinkedIn profile. Now I have received invites to join LinkedIn from coll… Read More
2015-08-21 01:38
I have been looking around for my next gig. Because I have fun writing PL/SQL code, I am looking to find an Oracle database development position. There are a number of Oracle skills that I h… Read More
2015-07-28 19:01
We use IBM Rational Clearcase for source code control on our project. We do not do anything fancy in Clearcase. However we got it set up to only allow one person to reserve a copy of a file… Read More
2015-07-25 04:54
I finally got around to creating a Github account. Maybe I was reading something that strongly encouraged it. It is time to put some of my code online for all to see. I was glad they had a f… Read More
2015-06-16 19:22
I recently got assigned a new task at work. The bosses wanted me to create a tool that would generate large test files. The thing needed to run on a Linux server. The files needed to be in s… Read More
2015-05-05 20:52
These days you hear a lot about coding dojos. Get immersed and learn code quick. Of course you got to put in a lot of work. But they promise to turn you into a junior developer that can make… Read More
2015-03-31 04:26
I read a couple articles on the technologies associated with high paying tech jobs. And I saw a couple trends emerging. One is that of your software development process. Scrum and Kanban kno… Read More
2014-12-17 22:00
I got an email from a guy at my company who is looking for a project. I guess he needs to get placed or he is out of work. So I took a peek at his resume. One of the first things I saw was t… Read More
2014-12-02 21:26
When I first joined my company, there was a team of managers on the project. They worked hard. There was a lot of work to do. I got used to them. Then something happened. I suspect they got… Read More
2014-10-07 20:55
Was reading a forum talking about some big tech company laying off all their employees. Ouch. Different people were talking about opportunities for these employees on the forum. I suspect th… Read More
2014-08-27 21:41
I have an action item for my yearly review to propose a major change to any of our systems. That should be easy. I want to make my proposal beneficial to me. So I looked around for a pain po… Read More
2014-08-26 22:24
A developer asked me for some help today. He tested out his code and threw it over the wall to the test team. They said his stuff did not work. Then he tried his code again. Sure enough it w… Read More
2014-08-19 00:43
I have not taken much time off this summer. Last week I took a day off from work. Needed to help a friend with some heavy lifting. Got a call while I was out. Apparently a system that I main… Read More
2014-07-29 05:11
Read a few articles today on computer languages and technologies, plus their effect on your salary. Here is one thing for sure. New developers would be smart to add the following technologie… Read More
2014-06-25 03:02
I was working on designing solutions to some new client needs recently. Our process is to map all requirements to sections of our design. It is a little tricky when more than one team works… Read More
2014-06-20 05:15
The suits on the project want to record how much time we actually spend working on new features. They think we are spending too much time on them. Guess what? They are half right. We are spe… Read More
2014-05-21 17:28
Our project does a lot of estimation for new work we shall perform. The customer uses that information to determine how many new things we can handle per release. Recently there has been a p… Read More
2014-04-11 18:17
I have been working on my project at work for almost 15 years. See it all on the project. Been involved with a lot of pieces of it. So I usually know about things that go on. That's great wh… Read More
2014-03-21 03:34
We have customer requests for enhancements to our legacy system all the time. The customer first needs an estimate as to how long it will take to develop, and thus how much it will cost. The… Read More
2014-02-20 20:21
Some performance problem popped up in our production environment. A bunch of us developers got together and sketched out possible solutions. We brought in some DBAs and came up with an optim… Read More
2014-01-25 01:35
I am working on a new change for our system. This has been a rush job. All jobs are rush. But this one is really a rush. I started to think we were in trouble when a requirements analyst ask… Read More
2006-06-07 11:16
I have to roll out a new feature for our customer's system really soon. Since everything is rushed on this job, the requirements analysis team needed to step it into high gear. I was require… Read More
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