Team grows by another 33%

Today, another developer joined the team. Looking back, I gotta admit how much the team has grown in the past couple years - and the drastic difference from when I started 6.5 years ago.

Thinking back, it was quite funny - Erica and I being the newly hired QA/developer, plus Michael our main TS. That's pretty much our whole team (neither Erica and Michael is 100%, and I wasn't suppose to be full time on this team as well). I still remember calling our team one of the smallest team (if not *the* smallest team) in the whole company. Deadlines are especially *fun* of course, since we always have to scramble for PQA resources. I am still puzzled how we manage to pull several releases with such level of resources.... hahaha...

When Brian joined in 2006, which made things a bit better. Unfortunately with the departure of Konphused and the moving of our team to another division, we were back to square one with me being the only developer again. At the same time, things really got hectic as the dashboard was starting to take off. Fortunately, Ru joined the team late 2008/early 2009 - but it was still a crazy dev cycle.

The golden triangle was formed mid-2009 when Chris joined. After 6 years, we finally have enough people so our projects are "self sufficient" in terms of PQA. Well... Almost. Now that we have another member, that should give us a bit more wiggle room and our future project plans a bit smoother.

I just hope that we don't scare him away.

Overall, It was a Great Memorial Day Weekend

Bars on Friday night
Met some new friends on Saturday
Caught up with old friends on Sunday
And of course being a "workaholic", I did throw in a couple hours of work here and there as well. =P

Just like the title said, overall it was a pretty good weekend. Oh - and I got my hair dyed. It's been a while since I last had my hair colored, I decided to change things up a bit - also an early present for myself. Right now, it's brown with some hint of red in it. I wasn't too sure how red it will turn out when i picked the color, so I opted for the safer route. Next time, I think I should try the one that has a bit more red in it. (And if I could convince my stylist to move up to Madison - and then it will be blue!) I don't think anyone from work (at least my "current" team) have seen the last "copper" color, so this should be something new to them. The cost wasn't as high as I originally thought, so I probably will keep my hair colored in the foreseeable future.

Morning Meetings

I had a 830 meeting this morning... and it really has been a while since the last time I had a meeting earlier than 9. Those who work with me on a regular basis know that I am definitely not a morning person (thank goodness work hour is not too strict here). As a matter of fact, meetings at 6 or 7pm is much more preferable to me, but I digress.

The meeting actually wasn't too bad - other than the fact that it added some small projects/investigations on my plate. My main problem with coming to work early is that I don't get to leave early. It seems like regardless of when I come into work, I end up leaving around 730 - 8 (830 today). Even with an hour of lunch break, and taking a sanity break, that's still a pretty long work day when it's not around deadlines.

Hopefully the rest of the week will be better, but somehow I have the feeling that I won't get much of my own stuff done. :P