#QA is Halping

[alexandria-lib]

Last paragraph is why QA loves Taylor (Taylor is best host). Such effective administration, powerful combinations of powers, and critical to the self-termination of Zion.

I'm 93% sure I made a post about this before, but Taylor using other people's powers better than they do is such a fun part of her character, especially since she seems to constantly be thinking "damn if only I got that actually useful power." Like, Lisa thinks Taylor would do better than her with her insight power, Taylor coordinates Cuff and Theo to make a lightning rod during Behemoth fight when neither of them had thought of that, Clockblocker with the string, ordering around like 10 people including fucking Eidolon to hold Behemoth still for Phir Se, she's always scheming and using people as chess pieces in such a way that they're not even mad because it's a learning experience. I think a large part of it is a want to be anyone but herself, which leads to her looking at other powers and considering their uses more than most people do because she just finds every reason to be jealous and justify her passive belief that she's inferior and weak. Also she's just so used to high stress fucked up situations that she performs well under pressure. She kinda acknowledges that in the chapter where she's like "what the hell why is Amy so stupid she should be using microbes to form defenses" because she realizes Amy has no experience in fighting, so she's never had a need to think about this. But Taylor is always fighting, even when she's finally safe she doesn't let herself relax, so she's used to this.

And as for wanting to escape her body and be someone else who's cooler and has a better power and isn't lame and worthless, if I recall correctly she comments more than once on how powerful Genesis is and how she would love her power, which honestly fits so well. She wants to have other people's powers because she doesn't like herself, and Genesis's power lets her create and customize new bodies that aren't her and can do whatever she wants. It's the perfect way for her escape being herself.

And then Khepri is thematically significant as always. She finally can use other people's powers, and damn she's good with them! She magnifies Sundancer's sun with Vista, she combines Ballistic and Foil, she uses every combination and interaction possible for an advantage. She can use other people's powers like she always wanted, and she stops being herself, just like she always wanted.

[mayra-quijotescx]

Thinking once again of 'A software QA engineer walks into a bar. He orders a beer. Orders 0 beers. Orders 99999999999 beers. Orders a lizard. Orders -1 beers. Orders a ueicbksjdhd.

First real customer walks in and asks where the bathroom is. The bar bursts into flames, killing everyone.' Since getting my work computer, our poor IT guy and I have reenacted this combustible bar skit like 15 times with such delicate processes as 'tried to send an email', 'tried to play an sound file', and 'tried to leave an update note on an account'. We've had to unfuck things you wouldn't ever believe could even be fucked in the first place. An IT guy from the new parent company has been in my computer menuing furiously for the last 30+ minutes because my work computer will not currently allow the work software to download copies of invoices to desktop. I pray a raise is in his near future. I would send him sympathy flowers if I knew his address.

and I'm over here just *types my password in once in a while* i halp :3

[rilldineth]

HALP WORK BE KILLING ME!

If any of my discord friends are wondering (don't think you are but still) reason I have been KIA it's because work has been killing me! I came back from my vacays and in time to be assigned a nesting group for the account one that consists of 20 peeps, for which I have to do 2 monitoring each per week to see if they pass or not (they will still pass this first round but still its to tell them where to improve), nesting lasts two weeks btw so that's four each.

And this damn week I was assigned another nesting group, this time of 25 peeps for a different LOB but one I have experience for, as that's where I started and here I am going crazy, but it's the results when like half of our QA peeps are on medical leave due tk covid for pete's sake.

Not to mention the several agents that are also on leave due to it, which has ended in a goddamn awful b2b in calls, thankfully due to the fact I am monitoring two nesting classes, and I sometimes have to go to work as a SME and support for the trainer (as they can't afford getting people out the phones, as it's usually a senior agent who does that) to help with the peeps if they have questions as they suddenly forget all the training and this also means going to the site on the days I am assigned that, management has spared me from the mandatory two hours QA need to now take each day to help with calls.

So yas me dying here.

[grazhir]

Evil Genius 2

Yeah, I haven't played since the day my machine shut down cold in the middle of a session. At least two hotfixes since then, and the mega-thread at Reddit for bugs with the latest is piling up with entries.

This is not good.

What the fuck happened to QA? I was QA for a damn long time for a software company (anti-virus, and later for another company for court reporting software), so I know just how draining the process can be, especially trying to communicate with devs who all insist shit like, "It works on my machine." But it needs to be done.

These days? Pshaw. The players are QA, and all it does is make the devs look incompetent, while players get rightfully angry. How can they not have trees showing dependencies when it comes to various quests? How did they miss an enormous amount of issues? And QA?

So yeah, still probably gonna wait until more gets fixed to even bother. Maybe I'll play Surviving Mars instead, because while that has the odd laggy bits, the modding community is right on the ball when it comes to bug fixes, well in advance of the devs (though some do actually get obseleted when they're officially fixed), and you can play without getting stuck for some stupid issue. Or maybe I'll play Rimworld (though I'd have to remember to cull my modlist again).

Seriously, though, I've been there, I did that job. It was hours upon days upon weeks of running tests, even some super weird ones that turned up frankly bizarre bugs (back when we still used 3.5" disk drives, and I must be damn good at pattern recognition to have ever tracked that fucker down), and talking with customers at times when they were all, "Halp!" Times when we literally stayed overnight and the boss called in orders for McD's or pizza or whatever to feed us while we were trying not to fall asleep at our desks while trying to go gold on the latest release.

I'm not exactly infuriated (I am, deep down), because that's not good for my stress level, but...

[oopsallvulnerabilities]

Laughed at this until I imagined the sad/dark version where QA is desperately trying to put Taylor's brain back together by playing out scenes it pulled from the shard internet using nearby students as puppets/actors. And then I imagined it as a halping fic and I laughed again. QA: You're not humaning right. Please... just... do the humaning. See, just like this. Taylor: Sort of lumbers about making grunting noises QA: Ooh, that's progress. So close. I'm definitely halping.

After Gold Morning, Contessa just enrolled Khepri at college on a random earth and dropped her off without cleaning her up, disabling her powers, or otherwise fixing her