Brave Noise (Why was my hair green?)

It's been over three weeks since I've added a blog entry. You may wonder why I have "gone dark". The fact is, we have been very busy putting the final touches on SQL Server 2005. This point in the product development cycle is exciting, heartbreaking, and exhausting all at the same time. Exciting because you realize that years of hard work is really going to go out to customers, heartbreaking because you end up not being able to fix every bug that you would like to, and exhausting because of the large number of details and signoffs that must be done before we can call it golden.

Anyway, about a month ago, Jason (our product unit manager), Mike (our test lead) and I challenged the team to get to ZBB7 by July 15th. ZBB stands for "Zero Bug Bounce" and the 7 stands for 7 days. This means that there are no active bugs which are over seven days old. As you get closer to release, the timeframe over which bugs are worked decreases dramatically. While you never arrive at a true ZBB, getting to under a week means you are getting close to a release. In return for making this milestone, the team got to choose our hair color. For me, they chose green. Here's a picture of me about to get the green dye:

Since then, the green has disappeared from my hair and been replaced with a blonde buzz cut. I think I'm planning on letting it grow out for the rest of the summer.