For a long time I avoided scrum. My paradigm when I got a problem report was to write an AR if I could recreate the problem or write an AR based on the logs supplied, wait for the developers to get me a patch, validate the patch, and send it off if it was good, or in the case of non-recreatable problems, it didn't break anything. I did my thing, the developers did theirs, and I felt no need to bother with their scrums.

That's changing. I'm picking up new duties, particularly transactional stuff like IPDS. That used to be supported from El Segundo, but the logngtime guy that supports that is getting off the project, so I'm now supporting it. Not that I haven't been ad hoc supporting it for a while, but now it's official.

Job security wise, it's a positive. The guy leaving is the only other citizen on our project in my role, so there's one less person to travel on short term notice to countries that allow Americans to visit without visas. Stil it's one more thing to learn, and new practices to learn, like listening in to the developer's scrum. So, six+ more weekly meetings added.

Long term wise it's good too, clients don't seem to want to move away from this so there will be a need for printers that understand it, for a while.

Other work changes are some of my cow-orkers going back, and people being moved into the work they're vacating. I think that's a head count thing as our project is slowly dwindling.

In a nutshell, I get more work and more stress. Joy.

At least it's not punch cards. We went to my parents for my dad's birthday and I guess my dad was boring Mrs. Ha with tales of his time in college, working in the computer lab, dealing with punch cards.

January has been an expensive month for medical/dental and vision reasons. Mrs. Ha and twenty_one_year_old have racked up over $800 in meds, and I suspect that's probably correct. I will check when I get EOBs or HIPAA access to their meds. It's expensive to be properly medicated.

Twenty_year_old spent $400 on glasses and eyecare, and I just spent $200 at the dentist, with another estimated $700 to come for a crown replacement.

If you total that all up, the maximum FSA of $2650 will probably be exhausted by February. Health care is going to be expensive this year. Joy, more financial stress.

For a final stressor, Mrs. Ha doesn't like her job, it pays less than what she was making, and it's more physically challenging. She was sent back from the bakery to be strictly on the register, but she's okay with that. I try to compensate at home, but there's a limit to how much I can overfunction. I'm not really sure a therapist can help with this either, unless he can give her a job. So, we're stuck until she gets a better job.

I would like to get to a point where she doesn't have to work, but that's going to take a lot of frugality and/or selling on ebay to reduce debt.

It's not all negative. I have a carboy of honey lager sitting in secondary that I should keg in a few weeks, and I should get some birthday money I can squander to feel better for a few minutes. Plus I'll be dead in a few score years, so there's  that.