My condolences go out to the 800 or however many amazing employees/devs that were laid off at Activision Blizzard due to poor leadership and guidance. Idk how many were devs were laid off but it’s all a shame. To think that one of the leading AAA companies is so fucking blind to the truth and only go for $$$ is a waste. If they had people in charge whom actually understood why products in the gaming industry are fun and popular and strives to make good games instead of slot machines and didn’t treat their development staff with such disrespect then maybe they’d make good games. Even bringing the great name of blizzard down to shit.. it’s phenomenal how blind they are and where they put their money. They are disgusting and need to get their head out of their ass even though it wouldn’t help anyone. Sorry to anyone that is involved with them

So I am finally plunging into continuous integration. If I make one more deploy script mistake, I've lost enough time to merit having learned a better solution than bash scripting calling git and rhc and py files I wrote. I have failing tests that are failing because they weren't updated after the million and a half urgent changes in the past 2 months, so it's time to act like I am a TDD fanatic and write the tests correctly. So much work. All from me listening to the constant req changes, listening to the urgency, letting non-devs get under my skin if you will. I'm optimistic in all the wrong places - I think I can write that by end of day let's try it. I'm lazy in the wrong places - I think that I can write that test later, because all I changed was XYZ (which took all night but I said I'd get it as close as possible didn't I?). And I think these handful of bash scripts are good enough to make sure I run tests? But remember, I didn't write the tests or I didn't go back and update them. Or the tests that fail, I'm too lazy. And so much of the tests, I would need to use, idk selenium for, and damnit if I really don't want to dig for element IDs to wait for every time I need an AJAX call.

Okay wow, I really did rant here. And discredited myself a bit lol I need to ignore the wrong lazy and embrace the right lazy. Protect myself from myself and from contributors. It really is, up to me now, to rescue myself from my bad habits. Bad habits perpetuated by clients urgency every day, to change things, that should have been finalized in November if we wanted a stable flipping system in January. It feels like the blind (client) leading the blind (me, when I do dumb shit like rush features out the door half tested).

Anyway all this came out, because I have been reading about continuous integration and stumbled upon this quote. And thought someone might laugh at the anachronism like I did

I always wonder why the IT guys seem to be short tempered when dealing with dev related issues.
Now I understand...

For a few days I have to help my colleague setting up his new project and dear Lord...
I thought I have enough patience because I am a woman...

This guy is very very junior, I couldn't get any input/ideas from him when debugging
Dear god, help us because I am the only one with enough experience in this project.

PM, we are going to go to an agile methodology for working. (despite PM having never done agile, and most of the team having never done agile) But we will have 4 week sprints, as 2 week sprints are too short. We are going to have daily stand ups, oh but we'll only have then once a week... And we will keep the 3 hour mid week meeting. Oh and we'll keep our existing JIRA, but you also need to use *new* JIRA as well, but that's going to the customer so don't post bugs on it.... (all with a ln important delivery in a few months) The suggestion of getting an adviser (either internal or external) who has experience with agile to help us transition smoothly and provide best practice got shot down. feels like the blind leading the blind...

So there's this place I go to when I sleep sometimes. I call it "The Circus", though it's more like the arcane sanctuary from Diablo II, if the arcane sanctuary was a hip arthouse and shit. Weird place, but I have friends there, they're like oneiric amalgamations of people I know, we all hang out at the Circus from time to time.

Now, each one has their own really bizarre power. One of the girls, for instance, bites off the head of a pidgeon and that heals her and makes her stronger. Think Ozzy Osbourne, but it's actually cutie goth Popeye. Also she's perpetually drunk for some reason.

Anyway, after having a brief reunion at this ornate round table we just happen to have laying around in the kitchen, we go out to hunt. That's the thing we do, we hunt for magical artifacts, and there's these demon gnomes all around trying to fuck us up. They suck, so we fight them with our powers and kung fu, that kinda vibe.

So it was a good hunt, right, but we have like a scoreboard based on mystical prowess and turns out mine is the lowest. Pidgeon Bitter, who is leading my squad, starts mocking me and says "hehe you have no real powers!" and I'm actually mad about that because it's true, I don't have any, I just fly around and do nothing useful in combat.

Anyway, we then bring the artifacts we collected to fucking Zordon, and he's like well done rangers. Turns out bald motherfucker in a tube doesn't discriminate based on mission score, so good on him. Everybody goes to bed, yeah we have bedrooms at the Circus for some reason, and I can't sleep because of what my captain said.

That's when I do something stupid, I think the dream logic here is I'm having a character arc moment or some shit, doesn't matter -- the point is I embark on a hunt all by myself, and I'm overrun by these fucking demon gnomes. I try to fight them with kung fu and escape with this magic crystal I found, but there's too many of them...

And so my true power finally awakens, and it's a fucking explosion. As in, I become a fire elemental, and in the dream this is good because I just cook all the gnomes alive and make off with the artifact, but I wake up before I can run to Pidgeon Bitter and smear my success in her captivating bloodstained drunk ass face.

My thoughts? Fire magic is two-times lame. One, because I was hoping for thunder, or ice, or something edgy like shadow or whatever. But NO, I got fire. Two, it's lame because it's the most uninventive, straight-forward fucking power in a setting where everything is obtuse, so it's out of place. I just go like really really mad and release an explosive pillar of flame, whoa, so original. Also casting this hurts me for some reason and it destroys everything around me.

And given that I've had other dreams of the Circus where it was obliterated and no-one trusts me anymore, I think it's safe to say those were a flash-forward to next season, and what happens next is I just randomly go into BLIND RAGE mode while taking a shit and everyone but me dies. Just a theory.

What is your Circus power? Let us know in the comments below!