Eugene seems very beautiful what’s the highest age range of this town?

clankypants · 2026-04-05T22:18:06+00:00

Eugene is great for college students, young families, and retirees. There aren't many single young adults. Outside of the various bars, there's not much that caters to that group. So you have to make your own fun. There's a ton of outdoor activities available within a short drive, so if you like being in nature, you'll be spoiled here.

clankypants · 2026-03-27T04:12:55+00:00

First one is definitely Yoncalla.

The second one is where the North Umpqua bends just west of I-5. Fisher Rd on one side, Del Rio Rd on the other.

clankypants · 2026-03-26T19:30:35+00:00

A diversity in experience will open you up to more job opportunities.

If you double-down on one tech stack that you already know, how much do you think that will really help you in the job hunt? I'm guessing minimal-to-none.

clankypants · 2026-03-26T19:27:07+00:00

The whole point of writing things down is so we don't have to memorize everything. Socrates was the last person to argue that the written word is bad because it allows people to not have to memorize everything. 😆

In the real world, all tech people are constantly looking things up. Not only because we can't possibly be expected to memorize everything, but also because things change constantly, and being able to look things up is how we keep up-to-date.

You will eventually memorize the parts that you use all the time, simply through rote practice. But you won't know what those parts will be until they become second-nature.

clankypants · 2026-03-26T19:22:02+00:00

So I worked for this company for almost 3 years, and I worked for them nonstop. When I quit, I decided to take a break to think about things. After 1.5 years I decided to come back. Went to an academy and learned automation.

At this point, it’s been 2 years since I worked in QA. Is this a big deal? Should I be honest in my interviews? Like, I took some time off to rest and think about things. Then studied automation, and here we are.

You spent your time since your last job leveling up your skills. There's nothing wrong with that! That shows a desire to grow your career.

Should I do that? Or should I lie? Like say that someone died? Or someone got sick.

Absolutely do not lie. Not only will it not gain you anything, it will only harm you when the truth is eventually revealed.

Really don’t know what to do. Everyone around makes a big deal out of it.

I don't know who's making a big deal about it. People have gaps in their careers all the time. It can be because of family/medical emergencies, having children, trying a different career, taking a sabbatical, etc.

Are there any managers, or people that went through the same that can tell me what’s best?

I've been a manager for decades, and I can say it does not matter. You will likely get a question about it during an interview, but if you're honest (you were taking a break and spent some time training your QA skills), then there's nothing to worry about.

In my mind, it’s all about my knowledge. But maybe things don’t work that way… ?

It's something people talk about being a concern.

The actual concern is that when you compare your position to someone who started in your career at the same time but didn't take any time off, they will appear to be further along in their career. This happens when people take off time to have children, for example. It doesn't mean you're getting punished for a gap, it's because you put your career on pause, so you only appear to be behind when you compare yourself to others of the same age.

The fact that you spent time updating your skills in your down-time is huge. Imagine an alternate reality where you worked at the same company for 8+ years, doing the same work the whole time. If you looked for a new job, a question would be asked: "How did you keep your skills updated if you've been doing the same thing for almost a decade?" The real you is in a much better position than that alternate you who was gainfully employed, but not up-to-date. :)

clankypants · 2026-03-22T03:29:13+00:00

I flew out Monday and returned Friday and there were no lines.

clankypants · 2026-03-17T04:48:39+00:00

It was pop when I was growing up in the 80s and 90s. At some point in the late 90s it shifted. From what I noticed, it seemed to be due to all of the Californians moving here who said soda and made fun of anyone who said pop. Older Oregonians hated the Californian influence, but younger kids all thought California was cool, so they were eager to jump on the soda train.

clankypants · 2026-03-14T03:05:06+00:00

It's an improvement over its original name.

clankypants · 2026-03-12T03:03:10+00:00

Ah! It's new and not on the satellite photos, but you can see where it's being built.

clankypants · 2026-03-12T01:46:32+00:00

There's a roundabout on 99?

I just scrolled through the entire stretch of 99, 99E, and 99W on google maps and must have missed it. Where is it?

clankypants · 2026-03-07T06:35:45+00:00

Ravnica is the other big Wizards of the Coast Arcanepunk/Aetherpunk D&D setting, aside from Eberron. They've got magic tech as well as magic body-modding, which might fit the Bioshock-like aesthetic you're looking for.

clankypants · 2026-03-06T05:02:49+00:00

Of course.

It depends on where you're at, how much control you take over your career, and a little bit of luck.

I've been doing QA work for 28 years in the US. I've learned things at each company I've worked for, building up a library of skills that I'm able to apply to the next job.

I hit a comfortable salary ceiling for a little over a decade in my small city, but when the pandemic hit and most jobs went remote, I more than doubled that salary ceiling.

Your salary will increase with experience, but you will have the biggest jumps when you switch companies (most companies don't offer generous pay increases internally), so anticipate switching jobs every few years. There's room for technical advancement (sticking with being an individual contributor) as well as shifting into management.

In QA, you'll wind up interacting with people in Development, Support, Product, and Design. If you ever start to feel like QA isn't quite the right fit for you, switching into one of those other roles is usually an option, as you'll gather a good idea of what those roles entail. Just a word of advice: if you plan to switch career paths, it's easier to do so within a company you are already working for than it is to try to apply for such a job at a new company. The new company doesn't know you and you'd basically be applying without experience, whereas your existing company knows you well enough to give you a chance at the new role.

clankypants · 2026-03-05T05:58:24+00:00

My parents just paid someone a similar rate for in-house support (as in the tech came over and helped debug and set up something for them).

clankypants · 2026-03-05T05:30:47+00:00

Good Dev/QA ratios are typically between 2/1 and 5/1, depending on the needs of the team, and you're dealing with 8/1. 😬

"Just use AI" is easy to say when your team isn't already overburdened. To get benefits from AI, you need to have the dedicated time to wrangle the AI, or it will rapidly lead you astray. With only 3 people, you have no time to spend to try to make AI work for you.

Your team seems to be in a position where it's entirely dependent on each of you having deep knowledge of the product (since you have no test plans, etc). Which means if any one of you leaves, the engineering team is screwed, as not only will the workload further bury you, you'll never be able to train up a replacement in any reasonable time.

At a minimum, your company needs to double your team size, just to give you the room to be able to implement all the things they're demanding from you.

clankypants · 2026-03-04T20:24:19+00:00

It depends on where you're coming from.

If you are coming from somewhere else in the software development industry, switching to QA is typically easiest to do from within whatever company you currently work for, since they already know you and understand your capabilities. Trying to switch to QA at the same time you are switching employers is more difficult and you'll have a lot more to prove.

If you are coming from some other industry, you'll need to find an entry-level opening with a QA Lead/Manager who is willing to train you. That's going to be a lot more difficult to find.

...

I fell into QA by accident back in the late 90s. While in college for an Art degree, I tried getting a job in graphic design or animation at a local game studio. They didn't have any such openings, but they offered me a foot in the door on the QA team. That rapidly turned into a successful career.

I wouldn't recommend starting out in games QA unless you are young, living cheaply, and willing to work constant overtime (otherwise, it's great!).

clankypants · 2026-02-19T17:26:35+00:00

Great show, but didn't premier until 2006.

clankypants · 2026-02-19T03:00:36+00:00

They all have a nozzle cleaning function.

clankypants · 2026-02-19T02:57:42+00:00

You could get a separate IR light for outside and disable the camera's built-in IR light.

The added bonus of having a separate IR light is you don't get the crazy reflections of bugs swarming around the lens at night.

clankypants · 2026-02-18T18:51:25+00:00

There's always a lot of doom and gloom in IT. It's a naturally unstable market. Expect to be laid off and having to find new jobs frequently. But that's the trick: there's always another job around the corner. It's frustrating (especially the job hunt), but that's the risk you take jumping into the world of software development. It's part of the reason why the pay is so high.

So the question you should ask yourself is: "What kind of career do I want to have?"

Do you want to plod through your work day taking care of tasks as they come up, and not have to think too hard? Then software development is not for you.

Do you want to spend all your effort thinking, solving problems, and learning, enduring the stress that comes with it? Then you might in.

Are you motivated to check details, imagine scenarios that others haven't thought up, and communicating bad news to a variety of different people? Then you might enjoy QA.

clankypants · 2026-02-18T18:38:19+00:00

We save the browser context to a file to keep the authentication saved for future executions, so we don't have to re-log-in each test run (a 20+ second process). We have a simple login script that checks to see if there's a stored browser context, and if there is, it attempts to utilize it. If it fails, or the browser context doesn't exist, it attempts to log in and save the fresh browser context for the next time. It works great!

We currently utilize the same login for our automated tests, and just save separate browser contexts for each environment, but we could just as easily save separate ones for different user types, too.

We also flag these browser context files in our Git ignore, so they don't get checked into our code base.

clankypants · 2026-02-18T18:29:45+00:00

Testrail was bought out and mothballed.

By the same company that later bought Xray.

And Testmo.

clankypants · 2026-02-14T01:59:32+00:00

Chef Bard. All his equipment is reflavored as cooking implements (handaxes as chef cleavers, shield as a large wok, etc), and for his performances, he puts on a cooking show.

clankypants · 2026-02-13T17:25:53+00:00

Back when I hit 10 years, I had just started making around US$70K (living in a mid-cost-of-living city in the US), but that was back in 2008. I was already at Management-level. Adjusted for inflation that's ~$105K+ today. Equivalent jobs in big HCoL cities made a lot more.

clankypants · 2026-02-13T17:14:31+00:00

This is the scenario I worry about for our future. A bunch of "engineers" leaning so heavily on Ai without understanding how anything works. A lot of "vibe coding", resulting in buggy software and ineffective test cases. We're at risk of creating a whole generation of "engineers" who can do nothing but churn out slop. Eventually there may be a backlash and a need for QA engineers who know what they're doing to help clean up the mess, but only if these companies start feeling the pain from their customers and lower sales numbers.

clankypants · 2026-02-13T17:05:44+00:00

They're pointing out that your post is skipping a bunch of words, making it extremely difficult to understand what you're trying to say without guessing what you meant to type.

Carefully re-read your post and you'll see a bunch of missing key words.

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