BPI inside

Tag: Personal

  • Happy New Year

    Oh wow, when did it turn 2012? Well, I hope you had a nice Christmas and a good ride into the new year.

    Last year hasn’t been very productive for this blog, no excuses. I won’t make any promises for the upcoming year but my current intention is to make more regular postings, probably some more technical ones. Nevertheless my priority #1 is to finish the university, #2 is my team at work. Since both of these are currently quite time-intense there isn’t much time left for other stuff. But that’ll have an end at some point and I hope it’ll be one of the better variants 🙂

  • One month in charge

    For one month now I’m in charge of a team as a ScrumMaster. To be fair, it’s not really a month because in the first week I’ve just been passively in the new team while we’ve been still working on our previous projects. My personal conclusion so far for the past 1 1/2 sprints? I think I’m doing a good job as a ScrumMaster. In the first retrospective which in fact was the first real retrospective for this team in a long time. The critic points could obviously be summarized to a lack of Scrum consequence in this team. At the beginning of "my" sprint I immediately began introducing a lot of the things I’ve been learning, experiencing and using in the last few years in fully integrated Scrum teams.

    I did leave out some (admittedly important) aspects at first intentionally because I think I should guide the team back to Scrum step-by-step avoiding a shocking big-bang approach for the team-members. So for example we skipped the estimation meeting because there were no defined userstories yet and we concentrated on the work which had to be done anyway. For the next sprint I already organized a correct estimation and planning. And I think my approach worked out quite well because in our last retrospective almost all of the previous critique points have been resolved. Even better most of them came back as positive responses.

    So, what’s coming up in the future? Well, the project will be finished in a few weeks. I still have a sort of special position because I’m no exclusive ScrumMaster but also actively developing on the project. Of course it’s not easy to keep the balance between ScrumMaster responsibilities and development tasks but for now it’s in a green state. I still don’t know in which direction I want to continue because I like doing active development but it’s also very interesting having Scrum responsibility for a team. I’m also participating in the offered ScrumMaster trainings (upcoming week there’ll be a ScrumMaster certification) and it’s fun and interesting but I still don’t know whats best for me and also my career development. From the feedback I got from my superiors I’m pretty sure they would appreciate it if I keep the ScrumMaster direction. Have to figure that one out, the sooner the better…

    On to the personal stuff. This week the 3rd of four semesters of my masters degree started. Some surprises already awaited us, for example some deadlines which were so far completely untold to us. But not a big problem so far. Nevertheless I have still to finish some courses from the last semester and these examinations are already quite near. Some of my former bachelor degree colleagues also started to study on a masters degree. Their and my study situation are a bit different and furthermore I’m a year ahead with the studies but currently we all have the same feeling that our bachelors degree was something special and it seems we’re all just comparing our current classes withAn the one from the bachelors degree. Currently the winner is clear (and for me the picture won’t change much anymore I guess) but things could still change for my former colleagues when they have had more time in their semesters. Well… good ol’ times… And one final thing, yesterday my old car which was still standing around and waiting for someone interested in buying it, found a buyer and was picked up yesterday. No more new memories with this old buddy anymore… farewell.

  • Still here

    This is the 6th posting in this year now. My output so far is quite below of what I expected from myself. While I blame stress and lack of time for that until the beginning of July, there should have been some time for an update since then. So the only thing preventing postings has been my own lazyness… Ah well…

    Ok, what’s changed or noteworthy in the last months? Maybe the most important thing for me personally is that I’ve purchased a new (used) car. I’ve been passively looking for potential new cars for quite some time now although I’ve been very pleased and happy with my car so far. But this time the costs for the required servicing and repairs approached almost 2k Euros without a guarantee that the costs will be lower for the next service intervals. So I decided to take the lemon, say goodbye to my old loyal and reliable companion and pick up something with lower regular costs. Welcome my new car, a blue Fiat Grande Punto 1.3 JTD Emotion with 90 HP. It’s in excellent shape and I hope it’ll be an as good escort as my previous Fiat which carried me over 180k km in the the almost exactly past 6 years.

    The next noteworthy news is that this year I’m a contestant in the Zwölfkampf which is organized by some friends. It is a series of twelve games where an overall winner is calculated over tracks of 4, 8 or all 12 games. The main event on Sep. 24/25th is preceded by some "sideevent" games in which I made a not too bad impression but they don’t count for the finale 😉

    Communication is the next topic. Back in May I purchased a new smartphone, the LG Optimus Speed (or P990 or LGOS/LG2X). While It worked for some weeks without a hitch at one day it began to show a very special defect where I could not place or receive calls when I’m registered in the 3G network of my provider. I borrowed some other SIM cards from different providers but the problem only exists with the network of mine. Since I’m denied service for it at my provider (it doesn’t have this phone in its portfolio) I have to handle everything myself. Currently (yes, it’s August now!) it’s on its 4th trip to the LG service from which I hope it will eventually return completely replaced. The previous three times the device was only "serviced" and at one occassion the mainboard (without baseband module) and the camera module (wtf?) were replaced. Of course without effect. At the moment my seller and I are just hoping that LG just relents to sending me a new phone instead of useless servicing of the defect one.

    On to the university stuff. Not much to report here, since the last exam in July and last hand-in also in July I pretty much left everything in a standby mode. But I’m warming up already as the next key-dates are approaching and there is still a bit of work to do, exams to prepare for and documents to hand in.

    Some holiday-related stuff now. I took two weeks summer holiday at the end of July. Originally I planned to use that time to firstly do the car stuff and to finish building some concrete walls for a terrace behind the house. The car business took sadly longer than expected as my first seller let me down and sold the car to somebody other. I could get my hands on another one as you already read above and retrospectively this was a lucky coincidence as my first candidate car was not in an as good shape and more expensive. The wall works also could not be finished in these two weeks because the bricks we ordered took longer to deliver than planned and also it rained the whole two weeks but for two days.

    And finally the work news. Project work in the company is running as usual with maybe some changes for me personally in the near future. But as it’s not complete determined, this is all I’d like to say so far. After my holiday I returned in a modified team with three new people and it’s still changing as soon one of our colleagues will change to another team and tomorrow we’ll receive assistance with another new team member. Yeah, bit of change 😉

    Well, that’s it for now. I hope that I can raise my posting interval in the future again but I wouldn’t bet on that as it didn’t work in the past six months….

    P.S.: Ah yes, I’m on Google+ too meanwhile. This time with my real name, those who know me are of course invited at any time to show me their presence 😉

  • sleep($aLongTime)

    Yes, it’s been a long time again. Seems that the period for my postings is not anymore in the day- but in the months-range. Sorry for that, but you have to believe me when I say that I thought of it several times and just had no time or computer near to put my thoughts down.

    University is stressfull as ever (only a slight easing in the recent days, but don’t let my colleagues know!) and my work duties get harder and harder the closer we come to a certain release date of our project.

    So, anything I can find time for currently is to quickly give you a list of some videos I can recommend to relax and recharge your batteries.

  • Easter Cleanup

    And another month went by without much news from me. There haven’t been many changes anyway. University is stressful as always, the amount of work at my employer keeps at a high level and there is only little spare time for relaxing.

    Furthermore over the last week, my laptop computer has been suffering a slow death wich I tried to prevent by repairing the failing operating system several times. Eventually I had to give up when the point came where the installation of some Windows updates rendered several subsystems (networking, graphics, …) unusable.

    I took the bitter pill and bought a new hardisk and installed a new OS from scratch. Currently I’m in the process of transferring all of my data from the old Hdd to the new Win7 installation. This will still take a few more days until I’m again at the point where I can effectively perform real work again but I’m slowly approaching that point.

    And what’s slowing this down too is the fact, that I’m sick since Friday and in bed since Saturday. Happy Easter, ha ha :/

  • First term almost over

    Last Saturday was the last lecture of this term. There is still some work to do and some exams lie ahead but the stress has lowered a bit nevertheless. So far the exams and projects went quite ok and I hope the upcoming ones stay within the trend.

    I have to admit, that I underestimated (again) the required effort for studying in parallel to my day-to-day work. It wouldn’t have been such of a problem if my project environment would have stayed the same since I started studying. But it changed and we got very challenging projects which needed more attention and time than I expected. Today another project started which promises the same requirements, which would be sort of good because it plays in favour of our team. Nevertheless now I hope that I’m a bit better prepared for what lies ahead and I’m confident that I can pull through.

  • Lifesign

    Yes, the last posting is more than a month in the past. Just giving a sign of presence here, nothing more. I’m very busy and exhausted because at work the pile of stuff to do hasn’t gotten smaller and on the university side there is the same situation. I just occassionally find (or rather take) time to have a fast visit to the cinema and relax a bit. The end of the term is coming near and the exams happen and projects and works have to be finished, not much time to think of an appropiate topic which I can quickly type down and post here.

    Suggestions for quick writedowns are welcome but I make no promises for their realization 😉 Don’t know, when I’ll actually have some more spare time again.

  • Merry Christmas!

    Merry Christmas to everyone! I wish you all relaxing days and a nice time together with the people you love.

  • Back to life

    Whew, what a month. The absence of new postings was mainly caused by the fact, that I’ve been extremely busy on several fronts at once. Most importantly I’ve been busy writing my second Bachelors Thesis which had to be handed in until last night.

    Granted, I started quite late working on the thesis, but the fact that there has been a several weeks long internet-outage at my place excuses a bit, that after I finally started I couldn’t progress as planned. Furthermore at work there have been several big changes for me.

    I changed the team, shifted my focus to a different project and, as I’m one of the most experienced persons in that area, have been working a lot to meet the tight schedules and keep the team together and focussed on meeting all deadlines. Furthermore, for these changes I also had to move my workplace which took also some time to finish up completely. I was able to take some days off by short notice but progress was not as wished in this time.

    Well, the main part of the stress is now over and I hope that I can cope well with the remaining stuff. Which is preparing for the bachelor exam on October 1st. For that, some presentations need to be created and practiced and also the preparation and learning for three areas of expertise has to happen until then so that I’m able to pass.

    But at least I can breathe a bit better now. For now at least…

  • Quick update

    Just a lightning-fast update that I got a call last week already that there has been a seat reserved in the Masters course for me 🙂