Movies Since CNY

Some movies that I have watched after CNY, those that I can still remember lah.

"Hi babies have fingernails."
"Oh, gruesome. I wonder if the baby's claws could scratch your vag on the way out?"
Teen pregnancy! Just once and kena, how suay can they get? And fancy going to school with that tummy? >.< If it happened to me, I think I would rather get an abortion and quit school at the same time.

Witty dialogue. Soundtrack that for once, doesn't sound like a mishmash of various artistes promoting their new albums. Great!

"At last! My arm is complete again!"
The only colors in this movie are probably, black, white, yellow and red. Wouldn't be able to understand the musical if not for the well-done subtitles. Surprisingly violent! Blood spilling like nobody's business! Mr Todd's customers exiting his shop in the form of pies! And he even killed/tried to kill the very ones he was avenging :\ The baddie so gross ley, after snatching Todd's wife, he even raised his daughter so he could marry her in future! EEKs!

Maybe the video quality sucks. All black black, didn't see much. Not much fighting also. The only impressive thing was the glowing super duper powderful acid that corrodes everything in its path. Its really unfortunate that A and P must choose Earth out of so many planets in the universe for their battle.

I wasn't expecting that explosion in the first few minutes of the movie. Lawyers trying to manipulate evidence, to the point of removing people deemed likely to jeopardize the case. George Clooney is a habitual gambler, broke, in debt and gave up pursuing justice for money in the blink of an eye. Exciting ending!

Gigi Leung became a CFO just before the Asian financial crisis struck. So suay can? This movie is about the difficulties she and Hong Kong faced from 1997 to 2007. Quite boring lor, it's like, financial crisis struck, then in this year SARS, then o, this happened... zzz. And may I add, it's one humongous Osim ad towards the end.

Wow what blueberry nights? A 王家卫 film, I was expecting something really abstract, but it actually meant blueberry pie nights. Makes so much difference leaving out 1 word eh? This is more mainstream and easier to understand.

I encountered low frame rate while watching and assumed it's too slow playing from my server. When playing from my pc didn't help, I realized it's just something 王家卫 -_-;;

A producer of (failure) game shows by day, CIA hitman by night. Meeting his contact secretly, having beautiful women around, assassinating people, uncovering a plot to kill him... all from a guy who looks nothing like 007. Ok lah quite enjoyable. The dark humour.

Erm what was that about? Afghan-Soviet war? Pakistan in the picture! Too chim lah! Too political! Anyway, this Charlie Wilson guy coaxed money out of the US government to supply weapons and training to Afghanistan.

So does this mean he's the guy who trained Osama?

For Rambo 4, please refer to Devil's guide to the movies : Rambo 4. Basically I feel the same. Some points to add, I don't remember much of Rambo, just a muscle man in singlet and red cloth across his forehead, maybe to absorb sweat and facial oil. Didn't even know that he has a first name. Or that he actually has a dad and a hometown. Anyway now he's too fat to run around in a singlet anymore. New dresscode is T-shirt.

LAME! The part where Jay rewinded time was a bore. It's like telling the CG artists that they have 2min to do whatever they wanted, so they just did something. ZzzzZzzz.

Jap DVD always take so long to release. The movie is just like the drama, nothing much. Watch only if you have watched the drama.

Doink doink! Another crappy movie, but not as bad as Jay's. I don't understand why the scriptwriters had to cook up something called Jumper so that they can have a story about people who can teleport but have no purpose in life. It's supposed to be genetic, but there seems to be no pattern of inheritance, which would enable they to predict the birth of a jumper and sabo the mother to a miscarriage.

At least the paladins have a purpose - to hunt them, which brings me to another question. How do the paladin know that they are born paladins and they are supposed to hunt jumpers? When they were young, did they feel an indescribable hate for their peers playing hopscotch outside? Totally weird!

How come the male lead's mother, who is a paladin, gave birth to a jumper??

And the poor girl, her dream Roman holiday has become the nightmare of her life.

Sabotage

陷害 xiàn hài：策划阴谋害人

This pretty much summarizes how I feel about the latest enhancement I am involved in. Add new functionalities to an existing screen that had already been in use for a few months. Sounds simple, doesn't it? Afterall, somebody else had laid the foundation and since it has been in use without complaints so far, it must be rather stable. Not to forget, our layers of QC.

Developer -> QC tester -> UAT

Not when you have people doing like what Rambo is doing now, laying a trap.
After completing my enhancement with 100% confidence that there's no way I could have broken the existing functionalities, I performed my own testing and passed the buck to the QC tester. Found some bugs, fixed them, and proceeded to UAT.

The users came back to us with a bug list. Some of my own doing, but there are also bugs that have slipped past the above QC process undetected the first time the screen was rolled out. More appalling is that the latter outnumbered the former.

And it's not some hard-to-encounter bug. They are so obvious that they should have been uncovered the last time. Previous developer sleeping, previous QC tester sleeping, and best of all, previous users sleeping during previous UAT, waiting to 陷害 the suay developer for this enhancement.

Unfortunately, the same logic could be applied to me. At the meeting to discuss the bugs (according to experience, the bugs can be real, data anomaly, or users simply forgot what they wanted), the QC tester, L (the same person who tried to sell me The Bio Disc) remarked that I should have done thorough testing. Well I did, on my part! I didn't think that I was expected to retest every single thing all over again, on top of mine. L didn't find the bugs herself too, didn't she? But with the meeting agenda in mind, I wasn't interested in pinpointing the sole responsible person and so wasn't the TL. We just want to identify the actual bugs and fix them fast. Don't know why she has to bring that up! We will all get hurt if she probed. Anyway, PM also not probing, so why was she doing so?

One of the issues was when copying multiple rows of values, I displayed the first row because
1) it's existing logic
2) it's not mentioned in the specifications that it should be changed
3) it's been in use since x months ago and nobody made any noise
4) there was only space for one
There's no reason for me to suspect it's a bug and raise for discussion.

So now the user felt it is a bug because it may result in data-entry error, which as for why, I wouldn't go into detail. I told L #1 and #2, but somehow she interpreted it as me accusing her specifications of being unclear (she wrote it). The part where the bug occurred is right at the last page of the specifications, so she decided that she needed to reexplain the WHOLE specifications to me ALL OVER AGAIN! Even the front part where no bugs were found! I protested, but she said she needed to make sure I understood the front too, since they are all interconnected. I gave my TL the "help me" look and he intervened, probably because he didn't want to sit there waiting for L to finish the unwarranted lecture. *Phew*

The conclusion was that L was to ask the user whether they wanted to retain the current behavior or change it. L did so and sent out an email saying we would change the behavior as discussed. Black and white! I made the change, which was only an addition of 2 lines of codes, very easy. The tough part was having to write an impact analysis document and unit test case document. So troublesome lor. And not even my fault $^&$%#$@. I sent the "bug" for deployment.

Later in the day, the slow-to-react users replied the email.

"I thought we had agreed to retain the current behavior?"

W...what?

L replied:
"Yes, we had agreed to retain the current behavior, but later I sat down and thought, what if this scenario happened... *blah blah*, therefore, I feel it is better to change it"

WHAT FUCKING CRAP! YOU DOCUMENTED WRONGLY, JUST ADMIT IT!

Commenting out the 2 lines of code is not difficult, nevermind. I'm ranting because now I have to write yet another set of impact analysis and unit test case for this reversal!

ARRRGHHHH!!!!

The user reported another bug about inconsistency in system behavior. The user keys in some setup data and specifies a date for the setup to take effect. She found that sometimes the date would be saved as 1 Jan 2000 instead. After investigations, I found that the team lead had patched all old data to start on 1 Jan 2000. Judging from the transaction dates, I concluded that the user had mistook the old data for the one she newly added.

I told L my conclusion. But L thought it wouldn't be possible since the user is a very careful person and has more experience in the system than all of us combined. People do make mistakes, don't they? I showed L the overwhelming evidence. It's up to her whether she wanted to tell the user the cruel truth or sugarcoat it.

L: I'm thinking if it's possible that the TL changed the date to 1 Jan 2000.
Me: He patched the data first, then the user tested right? So that date must have existed before the user did that. Moreover, look at the transaction date, this 1 Jan 2000 was added in 2007. Look at this other row with, the transaction date corresponds to that in the screenshot, so I think the user actually added this row. She see wrongly lah.
L: No, what if TL patched the date to 1 Jan 2000 after the user added?
Me: Why would he want to do that? Unless there's another round of data patching, but no need for that right?
L: *shrugs* How would I know him?
Me: o_O

This is what we call groundless accusation.

Anyway, we sugarcoated the findings by saying we were unable to simulate the bug and ask the user to look out for it again.

So, next time in enhancement project plans, must allocate time for "TEST EVERYTHING ALL OVER AGAIN".

Spotted!

Was approaching this car from behind. On its butt, where the car model usually is, was written "left drive car". I thought it put for fun, until I overtook and saw the driver on the left side! Never knew Singapore got such cars!

The number plate very special also. S1934CD. Look out for it! Found from Wikipedia that it's for vehicles of the Diplomatic Corps. Don't ask me what it is. But they must be so important that we let them drive their cars themselves on our roads. Cannot use chauffeur one.

Hiring Blues

A guy from country C has passed the interviews and the TL was about to make him an offer. Unfortunately, his grandmother passed away and he had to make a trip back to China first.

Then he called backed from China to say that he's not coming back to Singapore anymore.

******

An appointment was made for the first interview of another guy, but he lost his way coming to the office. Nevermind, the office a bit ulu mah, so another appointment was fixed.

On that day, the guy called to say he has been hospitalized.
TL: O, give me a call when you are discharged?
Guy: I don't know when I will be discharged.
TL: ...

Made the TL wonder if the guy was simply saying he's no longer interested.

Most of all, why so suay??

*******

Had to give up a guy because we couldn't match National Cockup Schedules' offer. Seems like they are offering high pay to everybody huh.

Don't Invite My Mum

... to your wedding dinner.

Mum: How much did you pack?
Me:: $100
Mum: So much?! $60 is enough!
Me:: It's market price.
Mum: $60 IS market price!
Me:: 10 years ago is it?
Mum: Now lah, now is $60. Nowadays everybody pretending to be fat. (Meaning acting rich)
Me:: If you are really so poor, please don't attend the dinner.

You have been warned.

I shall help by not attending any invitations to her. Who knows, she will pack $60 for the whole family. If kena discover ah, dunno where to hide lor.

End of Tango

Yesterday, PM informed me that she has talked to the Manager and he will discuss with HR. So that means reply by tomorrow the earliest lor. Better man, still drag somemore, I don't know how liao. Maybe go home and type the letter first, if no reply, then print out?

But I was too busy to type letter lah. Today, got conclusion! The offer is perm, and a puny increment of $50. BUT! The PM took out calculator to show me that the increment is not just $50. I will be eligible for bonus. Last year, it was 2 months. Normal, 1 month, 0.75 month for a bad year. So assuming I got 1 month, plus AWS and the flexi-benefits, it is actually *TADA* almost 11% increment!

Really, I wanted to laugh. She's trying so hard.

If they really wanted to get rid of me, they failed. I accepted it :) Can keep the other bomb already.