Time to pick myself up :D

Okay, whatever unhappy has become history... Be in a lesson learnt or a fact seen thorough, just let it be ba :D

There have been happy moments after all :D


First, PY bought an Xbox-360 console for me... it was very hard for her as we didn't have the additional economy power to purchase such a "luxurious" product :D

But as she said, "既然那么想要,就买来啊,人本来就是要活在当下开开心心,你不也花了很多钱给我换了电话吗?"

How sweet, I should always remember this :D

Then after that is my dad's birthday, its been a long time since I had dinner with the family, but that night's dinner was very warming and nice :D I hadn't seen my dad laugh so happily for a long time le...

Although not long after that my mom fell sick, and all the problem in this world begin to pop up, at least I should still keep myself together :D AS ONE PIECE T__T

不开心一下子就过去,留下来的一定是美好的回忆 :D

Demotivated

Had been rather demotivated-cum-demoralised recently, too many things happened, too less time to digest..

Suddenly I find myself wandering lazily throughout the night, doing nothing; Sitting in front of the TV watching meaningless programme (I don't even know what I'm watching)...

Even when I decided to pick myself up and switch on the notebook, nothing falls into my mind. Maybe I'm tired, maybe I'm worn out.

Need a break, so I didn't force myself to do anything I don't like (although may be sensibly correct).


One happy thing that I enjoyed was reading, I have this book called "Complete idiot's guide to Lost Civilizations" from library, nice book to read though :)

Arghhh....

Weird things do happen at the most inappropriate times... this is what we called Murphy's Law -__-

Ok, its the 7th month of the lunar calendar, a lot of people said that those cannot be explained must be due to "that" reason -.- And today really witnessed (or almost witnessed) something like that >_<

Friday night we stayed till quite late to perform some testing of our system (it can be roughly divided into Application Server, Web Portal, Client Software and Database).

After troubleshooting a few problems we were able to come out with a stabilized version that we agreed will undergo further testings the next day (Saturday)... and so we packed our things and returned home...

The next day when I reached office, we began migrating the whole system to our QA server (to make sure everything was fine), weird things begin to happen...

First, the Web Portal failed to function (we only migrated the affected modules, the portion where the problem occurred has not been changed by anybody)..

then not long after, the database stopped functioning...

to add to the final spice, the Client Software failed to function too...


*PANIC PANIC PANIC*


After one hour of troubleshooting and backtracking the versions (by rolling back to the previous day's working copy) still didn't solve any problem.. we began to suspect something is not right T__T

Just then, it was 5.00 pm and we've been spending 2 hours on these problems without any progress...

ZJ (my team lead) decided enough is enough, we shall switch to debug mode and troubleshoot one by one...

(another 15 minutes later)

debugging begins...

we found out, for the Web Portal part, somebody changed the code without commenting (with 3000 lines of code in a single class... if you don't comment, we cannot find it :D), and that portion was changed after we migrated to test the stabilized version the previous day...

(*fixed one problem*)

(*then ZJ found more problem on the client software, so he decided to do programming himself, while I troubleshoot the mysterious Client Software problem*)

(another 15 minutes...)

"Argh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Stupid error!"

I found out why the Client Software failed, its not a bug in the software application, but instead a database parameter was set wrongly, due to the script generated with error... so devious, and once again it was proven that the mechanism i wrote has no problem, contaminated data is the problem (well, i'm proud of myself :D)

Almost at the same time, Zj found the problem and fixed a serious bug before user finds out...


As for the database error? Well, our QA server's C drive was only left with 2 mb space -__- sql server log cannot tahan anymore, all the transaction log and data log failed to function... zj reinstalled the sql server on another drive to solve this problem (pathetic eh....)


in the end, because of all these stupid mistakes... it became so eerie that how come all the wrong things happened at the same time T__T
damn scary... hahahahahahaha



hope monday's migration will be a success, my heart can't take such news anymore, hahahaha :D

A classic meeting

Last Friday I had this meeting around 4 pm, with my boss (SBTL) and a team lead (wendy), a programmer (devi) and me...

Devi: I studied the impact of changing the time zone of our system, we may need to change the way reservation is made in order for the user to get less confused.
Wendy: So, have you checked all prospects?
VT: When we say all prospects, it meant reservations, searching of conferences, editing and deleting, also including notifications.
Devi: Yes, I also checked the CRS (Client software) side, it can be done.
Wendy: Whats the effort like?
VT: For me, maybe 20 minutes.
(WHOA...)
VT: But mine is easy, just change the stored procedures. Devi's part is much more tougher, she may need one to two days.
Devi: *Nods to agree*
Wendy: So... we need to carefully plan for this change, as this is a big change and might cause a lot of things to work differently.
VT: Actually not really, what will happen is only whatever displayed to the user will be whatever they entered, we will not show them whatever our database has converted to.
Wendy: You are right, we should keep things simple, and clean. We shall proceed and change this next Monday, carefully of course. veetian, will the changes on the database schema be big?
VT: There will only be minimal database schema changes.

(Then TL raises his head... after finished checking his mail)

TL: WHAT? What you want to change? We should not change anything without getting SingTel's approval.
Wendy: Is the time zone thing, you told us to change what.
TL: We cannot say change then change, we need to have process control and the proper procedure, have you all studied the impact?
VT: YES, THAT IS WHAT WE WERE TALKING ABOUT JUST NOW.
TL: .... I know, what I meant is, we cannot change it so simply, we need to make sure that all aspects are covered.
Wendy: I believe we have covered all aspects during our discussion just now, so what do you think?
TL: .... I know, you all don't know what I want to say, why not put it this way, we should keep in mind that whatever displayed to the user will be whatever they entered, we should only start performing this change on Monday, keep it simple and all the schema changes to minimal.


(Then I saw Wendy very pek cheh, can see three lines on her forehead -__-)

(Then Devi kept quiet, but I can feel that she's going to laugh out soon.)

(I was supposed to feel very angry... but I felt more 搞笑gao3 xiao4 than angry lor :D)