Bugfixing mode and checkin email

When we check in changes to our product, it's traditional to send check-in email to the people that are impacted (and, if the emails I get are any indication, a dozen people pulled randomly from the Microsoft address book as well).

These emails usually say something like:

Fixed bug #11881 - added support for negative anti-pressure to the gravitational support code.

or sometimes just:

#11911

Where the numbers are bug numbers in our bug tracking system (named Product Studio but often referred to as Raid, after it's predecessor). A seemingly irrelevant piece of info that should become slightly more relevant in the near future.

Back in April, I'd just listened my way through the Hitchiker's Guide radio shows, and decided to write my checkin email in the form of a radio drama.

Which I would have shared with you, except for the fact that I'm not allowed to talk about what I've been doing (yet...).

In the weeks that followed, I did a scene from a bad sci-fi movie, a Led Zeppelin takeoff ("Fixed a whole lotta bugs"), a bit of Dickens, and ...

Well, you get the idea.

Some of them pretty funny, some of them not really that funny, but none of them fit to share.

This morning, however, I wrote one that I think I can share with you (or, at least that part without the bug details), so here it is:

Checkin mail: Bug Fixes

It was a hot day, hotter than I was used to.

The first two hours had gone well. 800 feet of climbing up Lakemont, down the south side, and then around the south end of the lake. The sun was shining, the wind was fresh off the lake, and the "beep beep" of forklifts announced to all around that the time Seafair was near.

It all started to deteriorate near the U. The heat, the pavé that passes for pavement on the Burke, and the earlyness of my start all weighed on my weary quads. Juanita hill passed slowly, made tolerable only by an encounter with a fellow sufferer near the top. Market street further lowered my spirits.

And there remained only one more hill. I took it slowly and steadily, finding a rythm that worked well. I was halfway up when the wispy thread of a thought burst forth, shouting, "Hey moron, you need some salt. Find a place to get some".

After half a bag of beef jerky, the snack food with the highest sodium/weight ratio, I continued on my way, arriving home just under the four hour mark. As I dragged myself into the kitchen, my wife asked, "Good ride?"

"No", I said. "But I did resolve 16 bugs in Product Studio".

....

There are those who think I watch too much TV...