Long update
Jun. 5th, 2003 12:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
brightbluegirlOk, so I'm back. The headache is gone. I'm actually feeling pretty good.
The Effects of the Raw Diet
Ok. So the migraine almost definitely had to do with the change of diet. Probably the lack of refined sugar.
We added cooked beans (beans need to be cooked to be digested properly) to our diet, because I'm really concerned about getting enough protein. We also added bread made from sprouted grains - it's baked, but there's no flour, no processed anything in it. We needed some grains to round out our diet and make a full protein with the beans.
Although I've been eating as much as I want as often as I want, I have lost 1 lb so far. Booyah! 17 lbs to go to goal. I am now officially the lowest weight I've been since trying to lose. (before I met Andrew I was on a diet, and I lost 22 lbs, and got down to 1 pound higher than I am now)
Monday was a write off. I had a second nap in the afternoon, and after that, my migraine was completely gone, although I still felt shaky and incredibly tired. Tuesday I was still tired, but we did a bit of biking around anyway. I had a nap, and that was fine. Food wise, we discovered that some things we just plain don't like (no matter how good they sound - like rolls made from nori, with tahini and vegetables - too sharp tasting for us), but we discovered that we enjoy papaya.
About the papaya - there are different types, and ours MAY have been a strawberry papaya. It was organic, of course. When I cut it, peeled and deseeded it, I was very leery of the smell - I was really concerned about the barf thing. (Although I'd like it to be otherwise, my stomach is rather weak, and I'd just gotten over the weak tummy of the migraine) But it didn't smell like (or have an aftertaste of) barf at all. It was actually a really nice delicate smell and flavour. Something that reminded me of some food somewhere I've eaten, but that I couldn't (and still can't) place.
It wasn't as divinely necessary to my existance as perfectly ripe organic honeydew, though. We decided we probably wouldn't buy them often unless they were super duper on sale.
It's possible that we enjoyed the flavour so much because we'd been off sugar for several days.
I had intense cravings on Tuesday, horribly intense cravings for grease and meat. We had sashimi (and shared one sushi roll), and by Wednesday I was ok again. Although we have already made plans for dinner for the night we're done the two weeks. Red Lobster, baby. Yeah.
In other Raw news, although I felt bad on Monday, and sort of bad on Tuesday, by late Wednesday I started feeling pretty good. I feel better than I did eating sugar and the like. *Although* when I'm tired, even slightly tired, I get nauseaus. Which used to happen before, but only after I was very tired. Now I get that feeling every night.
ALSO I can sleep longer at night. I can now sleep a full 4 hours before having to get up and pee. Which, BELIEVE ME, is a great deal better than usual.
On Wednesday we made (Andrew spent a lot of time with) this INCREDIBLE LEMON PUDDING. It has avocados and lemons and dates in it, that's IT. And it's so rich, and so lemony, and so very very good. It was the best treat ever.
The weekend
Food aside, the weekend was good. We rented some videogames, and spent the entire time playing Pac-Man World, of all things. It reminds me of Spyro the Dragon and Crash Bandicoot. And Super Mario Brothers. We've been having lots of fun.
Yesterday we biked out to Borders at the mall and bought a bunch of books for gifts for Father's Day, and my mom's birthday. It was a buy 3 books get the 4th book free sale, so we also bought two books for ourselves. :D
Job Stuff
That company I interviewed with called me on Tuesday to tell me no. The HR woman said that the manager I interviewed with was really impressed with me, but they decided to go with someone who had previous experience with the Rational Rose and Winrunner Testsuites. She gave me her number, though, and asked that I call her when I get into town, because maybe there'd be something else available then.
So here's what I'm thinking. Is she just saying that? Or were they actually impressed with me?
I got an email from a company I applied to, with a HUGE list of questions. I can only treat it as an email interview. Here's my response:
Hi Alexey,
Here are my answers, to the best of my ability:
>Could you tell me why you want to leave your current employment?
There are two reasons for this. The easiest answer is that I miss Canada, and I find that I prefer being closer to my family. I'm here on a work permit for the experience, and I always knew I'd be looking to go home again.
The second answer is that this job is not challenging. The Quality Assurance aspect is secondary, there aren't any leading-edge products, and a lot of my job is creating and optimizing the processes and procedures that the company uses. I want something more fast paced, with fun products to work with, and a dynamic team.
>Could you describe your previous work environment? How did you
>interrelate with your peers? What type of methodology did you follow?
>Documentation standards? Design methodology? And anything else you think
>is relevant?
The last company I worked with was xxxx. I was the first QA member (under the QA Manager, Stephen), and he and I worked together to build the team (at it's height, the team was 12 people). While I was with xxxx, they increased in size from approximately 20 people to over 100 people. It was a very manic time. As a team lead, I chose to relate to my team in a very consensus based way - I feel that a team that feels they've been consulted, and has bought in to what you're trying to do is far more likely to do everything in their power to make that happen. And it was pretty successful! We all worked together, manager, team lead, and testers alike, in whichever form was necessary, to see releases happen.
If you're familiar with the CMM (Capability Maturity Model), everything in the company was very ad hoc - level 1. It was all very reactive, and not proactive, which caused some problems. We worked together to make the QA team far closer to a level 4. Anything else was pretty much impossible given the rest of the work environment - if we'd gone higher we would have been too rigid to flow well within the rest of the company - defeating the purpose entirely.
We moved from a very ad hoc methodology (each piece of the product comes with little or no design, we talk to developers to flesh out our understanding of what the piece should do, we create testscripts, test the piece of the product, then closer to a release, we test the entire product using all the testscripts we have, plus some ad-hoc testing) to a more defined methodology (we had requirements before-hand, so test plans and scripts were created before we had the pieces of the product, and etc).
Although creating Automated tests can be time intensive, they save time in the long run. We were able to get company buy in, and spent 2 weeks between releases creating as many automated tests as possible for regression testing.
>In your testing experience, what did you do to decrease the number of
>necessary tests?
It's important to optimize test plans. That is, to make sure that each test is doing a maximum of things in a minimum of steps, and that tests aren't copying each other.
Here's another area where automated tests come in handy - manual regression testing can become unwieldly.
>Using which testing technique did you find the most bugs?
I would say functional testing, which I've been talking about most here - testing the function of pieces of the software. Although integration testing (testing to see if parts of a product work together as expected) was also very useful and generated lots of bugs. Also, when doing integration testing, you're testing the functional things at the same time (which is good for minimizing tests and testing time).
>If you used automated testing tools, what kind of functionality did you
>test using the tools?
We often did load and stress testing using automated testing tools. Also, as I mentioned above, we did regression testing with automated tools, to ensure previous functionality was still at par.
>If you were about to write a test plan without having requirements and
>specifications for the product, what steps would you take to create the
>test plan?
Well, I assume someone knows what the requirements are for the product - that is, the developers. I'd talk quite a bit with the developers, and create my own requirements doc (of a sort). I'd confer with them afterwards to ensure I got the information correct, and work from there to create the test plan (because most often, once you have a requirements doc, a test plan is quickly done). We had to work like this when I first started with xxxx.
>If you are testing a product, under which circumstances would you decide
>that this product need to go back to development?
Well, definitely if there are crashes or freezes, or the load gets too large too quickly. I think with most companies, we need to come to consensus about what constitutes "not good enough", although I would say, if the product has 10 red-flagged bugs (high priority), that's a good place to start using as a cut-off.
It also depends on whether the product is a beta or a full release. I do think that holding a full release for an extra week to clean up some high priority (or even several medium priority) bugs is worthwhile.
>Could you please send us a sample test plan that you created?
That's actually a problem. All test plans I created with xxxx were confidential, so I'm unable to use them as samples. However, you CAN reach my manager from that time, Stephen, at 555-555-5555 (that's his home number) to ask him specific questions about them, if you'd like.
>Could you please give us an example of a bug report?
Subject: Fridge Light does not turn on after quick repetitions of opening door.
Steps to repeat problem:
1. Open Door.
2. Close door. (note, light went on).
3. Open and close door quickly, at approximately 1 repetition per second, 3 times.
Result: On the third repetition, fridge light does not turn on.
Priority: Minor
>What do you usually do to improve your skills and qualification?
I've been to one conference, but in general, I tend to do research on my own time. Also, TASSQ (www.tassq.org) is a useful organization to stay in touch with (although I will have to get a membership once I'm back in town) for new information and different ways of doing things. They have monthly meetings and newsletters.
>Is there a test technique that you want to learn, but didn't have a
>chance yet?
Actually, my interest is in Rational Rose Testsuites and Winrunner. Although I've done automated testing, all the testing tools I've used have been created in-house, and I'd really like to see what those have to offer.
>Could you tell me your impressions of our company and products?
One thing I noticed, when perusing your website, is that whoever does your writing is fantastic. That's so important for a successful product. I also feel that a company that invests in good writers is a company that understands the value of quality. (However, if you'll forgive me for being critical during an interview, I would prefer to see a cleaner front page to the website. The http://www.lalala.com page looks too crowded and messy)
I also like that there is no cost for software upgrades to fully licensed users and customers can try the product for 30 days (with support!) before buying. That's good business.
I like the idea of the product. It's the same idea, of sorts, as Rim Blackberry email pagers, only on a larger scale, with more than email. I like that it can link remote employees with a home office, facilitating communication. I also like that it seems to be an extensive product, which will be challenging and fun to test.
>What are your salary expectations?
I'd be happiest with a salary somewhere in the 60K-65K area, and of course, I'm willing to negotiate.
>What was the most difficult technical challenge that you ever faced and
>how did you overcome it?
This is a tough question. I've never found a technical challenge that I couldn't overcome through hard work and extra time.
For example: When I worked with Nortel I coded in C++. I moved to yyyy, and everything there was coded with C. I had to unlearn some things, so I got a good C book, did some searches online about the differences between C and C++, and pestered coworkers for a few weeks while I did some re-learning in my own time.
>What do you feel are your strengths are?
I'm extremely motivated by goals of personal bests. I become committed to a company, a product, and a goal, and I work hard to achieve quality, which I'm passionate about in my work and my self. I'm a responsible person, which means not only that if something is my fault, I will take the blame and take steps to remedy the problem asap, but also that I'll stay the extra hour and do the extra test to get a quality product out on time. Also, I believe in consensus building, and as such, I'm a great team member - I play well with others. :-)
>What do you feel your weaknesses are?
I get caught up in things, and lose myself to the physical world. Sometimes that means I forget to eat because I'm working on a problem, sometimes that means I don't hear the phone ring because I'm "just finishing up this last test", and sometimes it means I ask people to come and get me for meetings so I'm not late, because I know I'll be deeply engrossed in some task. It's something I'm continually working on.
>What was the most difficult team work problem that you had to overcome
>and how did you do it?
After I'd been with xxxx for about a year, a new Project Manager came in. He was very brusque, and made a lot of changes abruptly. He said and did things (including going over my head to talk to my manager, going to speak to my team members directly to get individual updates and push them to do more, quicker, and making comments in e-mails) to imply that my team wasn't competent, and that our processes and procedures were irrelevent. He didn't have buy-in from many people in the company, because he had handed down new rules without explaining himself to anyone.
It was a very tense situation. I resolved it by speaking to him directly, raising the points one by one, and telling him that we wanted to be on board, we wanted to be with him in his goals of increasing company productivity and optimizing quality, but that we had reasons for the processes and procedures we had in place, and we really needed to feel like we were part of a team working towards a common goal, not peons.
It was a successful meeting, that helped to reduce the resentment of myself and my team, and to help him see us as useful members of the company, and from then on, he worked more with us, instead of against us.
>If you were to join us and work with us for three years and you were to
>look back over this period of time what would have happened to make you
>feel really happy about your relationship with us?
We would have released products of exceptional quality, the processes and procedures of the QA team would optimize our results in a minimum of time, the design and development teams would have good working relationships with the QA team, and the QA team would be a highly motivated, creative team. I'd be a respected, useful member of the company-wide team, I'd be proud of how I presented myself, and I'd have made friends along the way.
Thanks Alexey, I look forward to hearing from you!
Regards,
Lisa
The Effects of the Raw Diet
Ok. So the migraine almost definitely had to do with the change of diet. Probably the lack of refined sugar.
We added cooked beans (beans need to be cooked to be digested properly) to our diet, because I'm really concerned about getting enough protein. We also added bread made from sprouted grains - it's baked, but there's no flour, no processed anything in it. We needed some grains to round out our diet and make a full protein with the beans.
Although I've been eating as much as I want as often as I want, I have lost 1 lb so far. Booyah! 17 lbs to go to goal. I am now officially the lowest weight I've been since trying to lose. (before I met Andrew I was on a diet, and I lost 22 lbs, and got down to 1 pound higher than I am now)
Monday was a write off. I had a second nap in the afternoon, and after that, my migraine was completely gone, although I still felt shaky and incredibly tired. Tuesday I was still tired, but we did a bit of biking around anyway. I had a nap, and that was fine. Food wise, we discovered that some things we just plain don't like (no matter how good they sound - like rolls made from nori, with tahini and vegetables - too sharp tasting for us), but we discovered that we enjoy papaya.
About the papaya - there are different types, and ours MAY have been a strawberry papaya. It was organic, of course. When I cut it, peeled and deseeded it, I was very leery of the smell - I was really concerned about the barf thing. (Although I'd like it to be otherwise, my stomach is rather weak, and I'd just gotten over the weak tummy of the migraine) But it didn't smell like (or have an aftertaste of) barf at all. It was actually a really nice delicate smell and flavour. Something that reminded me of some food somewhere I've eaten, but that I couldn't (and still can't) place.
It wasn't as divinely necessary to my existance as perfectly ripe organic honeydew, though. We decided we probably wouldn't buy them often unless they were super duper on sale.
It's possible that we enjoyed the flavour so much because we'd been off sugar for several days.
I had intense cravings on Tuesday, horribly intense cravings for grease and meat. We had sashimi (and shared one sushi roll), and by Wednesday I was ok again. Although we have already made plans for dinner for the night we're done the two weeks. Red Lobster, baby. Yeah.
In other Raw news, although I felt bad on Monday, and sort of bad on Tuesday, by late Wednesday I started feeling pretty good. I feel better than I did eating sugar and the like. *Although* when I'm tired, even slightly tired, I get nauseaus. Which used to happen before, but only after I was very tired. Now I get that feeling every night.
ALSO I can sleep longer at night. I can now sleep a full 4 hours before having to get up and pee. Which, BELIEVE ME, is a great deal better than usual.
On Wednesday we made (Andrew spent a lot of time with) this INCREDIBLE LEMON PUDDING. It has avocados and lemons and dates in it, that's IT. And it's so rich, and so lemony, and so very very good. It was the best treat ever.
The weekend
Food aside, the weekend was good. We rented some videogames, and spent the entire time playing Pac-Man World, of all things. It reminds me of Spyro the Dragon and Crash Bandicoot. And Super Mario Brothers. We've been having lots of fun.
Yesterday we biked out to Borders at the mall and bought a bunch of books for gifts for Father's Day, and my mom's birthday. It was a buy 3 books get the 4th book free sale, so we also bought two books for ourselves. :D
Job Stuff
That company I interviewed with called me on Tuesday to tell me no. The HR woman said that the manager I interviewed with was really impressed with me, but they decided to go with someone who had previous experience with the Rational Rose and Winrunner Testsuites. She gave me her number, though, and asked that I call her when I get into town, because maybe there'd be something else available then.
So here's what I'm thinking. Is she just saying that? Or were they actually impressed with me?
I got an email from a company I applied to, with a HUGE list of questions. I can only treat it as an email interview. Here's my response:
Hi Alexey,
Here are my answers, to the best of my ability:
>Could you tell me why you want to leave your current employment?
There are two reasons for this. The easiest answer is that I miss Canada, and I find that I prefer being closer to my family. I'm here on a work permit for the experience, and I always knew I'd be looking to go home again.
The second answer is that this job is not challenging. The Quality Assurance aspect is secondary, there aren't any leading-edge products, and a lot of my job is creating and optimizing the processes and procedures that the company uses. I want something more fast paced, with fun products to work with, and a dynamic team.
>Could you describe your previous work environment? How did you
>interrelate with your peers? What type of methodology did you follow?
>Documentation standards? Design methodology? And anything else you think
>is relevant?
The last company I worked with was xxxx. I was the first QA member (under the QA Manager, Stephen), and he and I worked together to build the team (at it's height, the team was 12 people). While I was with xxxx, they increased in size from approximately 20 people to over 100 people. It was a very manic time. As a team lead, I chose to relate to my team in a very consensus based way - I feel that a team that feels they've been consulted, and has bought in to what you're trying to do is far more likely to do everything in their power to make that happen. And it was pretty successful! We all worked together, manager, team lead, and testers alike, in whichever form was necessary, to see releases happen.
If you're familiar with the CMM (Capability Maturity Model), everything in the company was very ad hoc - level 1. It was all very reactive, and not proactive, which caused some problems. We worked together to make the QA team far closer to a level 4. Anything else was pretty much impossible given the rest of the work environment - if we'd gone higher we would have been too rigid to flow well within the rest of the company - defeating the purpose entirely.
We moved from a very ad hoc methodology (each piece of the product comes with little or no design, we talk to developers to flesh out our understanding of what the piece should do, we create testscripts, test the piece of the product, then closer to a release, we test the entire product using all the testscripts we have, plus some ad-hoc testing) to a more defined methodology (we had requirements before-hand, so test plans and scripts were created before we had the pieces of the product, and etc).
Although creating Automated tests can be time intensive, they save time in the long run. We were able to get company buy in, and spent 2 weeks between releases creating as many automated tests as possible for regression testing.
>In your testing experience, what did you do to decrease the number of
>necessary tests?
It's important to optimize test plans. That is, to make sure that each test is doing a maximum of things in a minimum of steps, and that tests aren't copying each other.
Here's another area where automated tests come in handy - manual regression testing can become unwieldly.
>Using which testing technique did you find the most bugs?
I would say functional testing, which I've been talking about most here - testing the function of pieces of the software. Although integration testing (testing to see if parts of a product work together as expected) was also very useful and generated lots of bugs. Also, when doing integration testing, you're testing the functional things at the same time (which is good for minimizing tests and testing time).
>If you used automated testing tools, what kind of functionality did you
>test using the tools?
We often did load and stress testing using automated testing tools. Also, as I mentioned above, we did regression testing with automated tools, to ensure previous functionality was still at par.
>If you were about to write a test plan without having requirements and
>specifications for the product, what steps would you take to create the
>test plan?
Well, I assume someone knows what the requirements are for the product - that is, the developers. I'd talk quite a bit with the developers, and create my own requirements doc (of a sort). I'd confer with them afterwards to ensure I got the information correct, and work from there to create the test plan (because most often, once you have a requirements doc, a test plan is quickly done). We had to work like this when I first started with xxxx.
>If you are testing a product, under which circumstances would you decide
>that this product need to go back to development?
Well, definitely if there are crashes or freezes, or the load gets too large too quickly. I think with most companies, we need to come to consensus about what constitutes "not good enough", although I would say, if the product has 10 red-flagged bugs (high priority), that's a good place to start using as a cut-off.
It also depends on whether the product is a beta or a full release. I do think that holding a full release for an extra week to clean up some high priority (or even several medium priority) bugs is worthwhile.
>Could you please send us a sample test plan that you created?
That's actually a problem. All test plans I created with xxxx were confidential, so I'm unable to use them as samples. However, you CAN reach my manager from that time, Stephen, at 555-555-5555 (that's his home number) to ask him specific questions about them, if you'd like.
>Could you please give us an example of a bug report?
Subject: Fridge Light does not turn on after quick repetitions of opening door.
Steps to repeat problem:
1. Open Door.
2. Close door. (note, light went on).
3. Open and close door quickly, at approximately 1 repetition per second, 3 times.
Result: On the third repetition, fridge light does not turn on.
Priority: Minor
>What do you usually do to improve your skills and qualification?
I've been to one conference, but in general, I tend to do research on my own time. Also, TASSQ (www.tassq.org) is a useful organization to stay in touch with (although I will have to get a membership once I'm back in town) for new information and different ways of doing things. They have monthly meetings and newsletters.
>Is there a test technique that you want to learn, but didn't have a
>chance yet?
Actually, my interest is in Rational Rose Testsuites and Winrunner. Although I've done automated testing, all the testing tools I've used have been created in-house, and I'd really like to see what those have to offer.
>Could you tell me your impressions of our company and products?
One thing I noticed, when perusing your website, is that whoever does your writing is fantastic. That's so important for a successful product. I also feel that a company that invests in good writers is a company that understands the value of quality. (However, if you'll forgive me for being critical during an interview, I would prefer to see a cleaner front page to the website. The http://www.lalala.com page looks too crowded and messy)
I also like that there is no cost for software upgrades to fully licensed users and customers can try the product for 30 days (with support!) before buying. That's good business.
I like the idea of the product. It's the same idea, of sorts, as Rim Blackberry email pagers, only on a larger scale, with more than email. I like that it can link remote employees with a home office, facilitating communication. I also like that it seems to be an extensive product, which will be challenging and fun to test.
>What are your salary expectations?
I'd be happiest with a salary somewhere in the 60K-65K area, and of course, I'm willing to negotiate.
>What was the most difficult technical challenge that you ever faced and
>how did you overcome it?
This is a tough question. I've never found a technical challenge that I couldn't overcome through hard work and extra time.
For example: When I worked with Nortel I coded in C++. I moved to yyyy, and everything there was coded with C. I had to unlearn some things, so I got a good C book, did some searches online about the differences between C and C++, and pestered coworkers for a few weeks while I did some re-learning in my own time.
>What do you feel are your strengths are?
I'm extremely motivated by goals of personal bests. I become committed to a company, a product, and a goal, and I work hard to achieve quality, which I'm passionate about in my work and my self. I'm a responsible person, which means not only that if something is my fault, I will take the blame and take steps to remedy the problem asap, but also that I'll stay the extra hour and do the extra test to get a quality product out on time. Also, I believe in consensus building, and as such, I'm a great team member - I play well with others. :-)
>What do you feel your weaknesses are?
I get caught up in things, and lose myself to the physical world. Sometimes that means I forget to eat because I'm working on a problem, sometimes that means I don't hear the phone ring because I'm "just finishing up this last test", and sometimes it means I ask people to come and get me for meetings so I'm not late, because I know I'll be deeply engrossed in some task. It's something I'm continually working on.
>What was the most difficult team work problem that you had to overcome
>and how did you do it?
After I'd been with xxxx for about a year, a new Project Manager came in. He was very brusque, and made a lot of changes abruptly. He said and did things (including going over my head to talk to my manager, going to speak to my team members directly to get individual updates and push them to do more, quicker, and making comments in e-mails) to imply that my team wasn't competent, and that our processes and procedures were irrelevent. He didn't have buy-in from many people in the company, because he had handed down new rules without explaining himself to anyone.
It was a very tense situation. I resolved it by speaking to him directly, raising the points one by one, and telling him that we wanted to be on board, we wanted to be with him in his goals of increasing company productivity and optimizing quality, but that we had reasons for the processes and procedures we had in place, and we really needed to feel like we were part of a team working towards a common goal, not peons.
It was a successful meeting, that helped to reduce the resentment of myself and my team, and to help him see us as useful members of the company, and from then on, he worked more with us, instead of against us.
>If you were to join us and work with us for three years and you were to
>look back over this period of time what would have happened to make you
>feel really happy about your relationship with us?
We would have released products of exceptional quality, the processes and procedures of the QA team would optimize our results in a minimum of time, the design and development teams would have good working relationships with the QA team, and the QA team would be a highly motivated, creative team. I'd be a respected, useful member of the company-wide team, I'd be proud of how I presented myself, and I'd have made friends along the way.
Thanks Alexey, I look forward to hearing from you!
Regards,
Lisa
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2003-06-05 12:47 pm (UTC)Re:
Date: 2003-06-05 12:56 pm (UTC)1 1/2 cups peeled deseeded sliced lemon
juice of 1/2 lemon
2 cups pitted dates
4 tbsp honey or maple syrup to taste (optional) (we didn't use this at all)
Grind it all up in a blender, chill, and eat! We found that adding a bit of water really helped, because the dates made the blending really hard.
We made a half recipe of this, and it was enough for 2 nicely sized servings (just enough for us)
no subject
Date: 2003-06-05 01:48 pm (UTC)I wrote down the receipie for the lemon pudding from your response post. I may try that this weekend!
no subject
Date: 2003-06-05 05:00 pm (UTC)Sugar = satan
I eat much more sugar now that I ever used to. Yeegh.
no subject
Date: 2003-06-05 05:45 pm (UTC)can't wait to see you at the picnic.
no subject
Date: 2003-06-06 01:15 am (UTC)