Schrodinger's Kittie

So, I was sitting at home on Saturday – dithering about facing the horrendous allergy attack I knew awaited me should I finish mowing the front lawn. Nothing horribly exciting happening in my life at all. A very quiet, typical day.

Finding excuses to avoid doing laundry (I am so bad)…playing with the dogs and playing my game. Speaking of the game, I managed to get Enheduannah* to level 53, yesterday, due to the help of some new friends. It’s so nice when you meet just genuinely nice people.

And, out of the blue, my doorbell rings. I think to myself, as I walk to the door, “I didn’t order anything. Who the heck is ringing my bell?” Muttering to the dogs, threatening to buy muzzles and shock collars if they don’t stop barking. The threats they, of course, ignore knowing they are totally idle.

I open the door.

And, lo and behold, there is this huge bouquet of flowers. Beautiful, gorgeous, amazing bouquet with the most delightful scent. I look at the young man (almost as gorgeous as the flowers he held) and said, “What in the world?!? People don’t send me flowers!” He laughed and asked if I was the person on the invoice. Sure enough…there was my name, big as day. A friend of mine and I had been talking the day before and I’d mentioned I was feeling down. So, out of the blue, just because he wanted to cheer me up…he sent me flowers. I got all teary eyed over it.

But wouldn’t you, with flowers like these?

*As for who Enheduanna was in the real world…she was a priestess of ancient Nanna in ancient Akkad (previously Sumer) and came to love and adore Inanna above all the other gods (one has to wonder at the conflict there) and wrote many hyms to this goddess. She is known as the first known author (by name). I’ve been fascinated with Sumer for a long time, and particularly fascinated by this intriguing woman. Enheduanna, daughter of Sargon of Akkad.

From About.com: Over 53 other hymns survive that are attributed to Enheduanna, including three hymns to the moon god, Nanna, and other temples, gods, and goddesses. Surviving tablets are copies of the hymns from about 500 years after Enheduanna lived, attesting to the survival of the study of her poems in Sumer.

I’ve had a few people ask me over the last couple of weeks what it is, exactly, that I do.

Currently, I am a DVT Engineer for a company that manufactures storage area network (SAN) hardware in the form of chips, host bus adapters, switches, storage services platforms and routers for iSCSI and fibre channel.

What this means is…

After development thinks they have a viable product, we get prototypes sent to us for testing. We make sure it:

a) works
b) performs within specifications
c) is reliable
d) is compatible with various vendors (including our competitors)
e) meets all compliance criteria
f) meets OEM requirements
g) meets standards

DVT stands for design verification testing.

We do this every time a driver, firmware or bios is updated, or a new product is released. And, you know those wonderful drivers that come in your Windows, Red Hat, SuSe, MAC, etc operating systems? Guess who gets to test to make certain that the ones my company makes work? Yeah – my team. So, yes, we have to be conversent in most operating systems – some the “normal” user would never interface with like Xen Source, VM Ware, Solaris and AIX.

Right now, I’m working on a beta operating system that is to be released soon. Verifying that the drivers work, that the boards do what they are supposed to do, that nothing hangs up or crashes the system. What I am not doing is testing their complete operating system – that’s for them to do.

What I am doing is testing our driver and hardware with their operating system installed to make sure the stuff we are responsible for works. Now, if I run across bugs in their operating system while I do this, then I will submit a trouble to them for them to fix…but that’s not part of my job if it doesn’t conflict with our product and is solely an operating system issue. But, I use those products myself, when they hit the market – I kinda like them working. *grins*

Also, the two worlds overlap in a lot of places, so many times I can’t verify that my stuff is working until their stuff gets straightened out. And sometimes, it’s a combination of the two and how they are talking (or not) to each other that is the issue.

I live in a world of bits and bytes…

A world you come into every day if you use things like Flickr, Blogger, GMail, Google, Yahoo or play any online games (World of Warcraft anyone?)…everything that requires massive amounts of storage.

Your company (if it is of a fairly good size) probably even has a SAN setup somewhere to store all the backups of data, email, etc. And in that SAN, I can just about guarantee you will see the name of my company somewhere.

Well, I’ve been out running around a bit like a crazy woman the last week because I was heading to Blizzcon last weekend. I mostly went to see my friends, but have to admit the forums were really interesting.

I got to see snippets from the upcoming release of the Lich King and for Starcraft II. Really nifty stuff. Then got to see L70ETC perform after Jay Mohre. Jay does great at playing off the crowd….really brings his audience into his performance.

But, as I said – mostly, it was to see my friends.

Felada, Ook, me and Hyp

We wandered around Downtown Disney and…on Saturday…I got to witness a proposal. It was sooooooooo sweet. Particularly since I’d been in on it since way back in April. It had been so hard keeping my mouth shut the whole time. But as I told my gal friend…some things are too important to spoil by giving away.

I didn’t want to say goodbye when Sunday rolled around, but alas – work, dogs and responsibility called me back to Austin. It was, however, quite a delightful time – and nearly not one stitch of knitting got completed (off the plane). I did finish the second jaywalker sock, but wound up giving them away before snapping a photo. So sorry about that.