Wednesday, July 20, 2022

Completed Address Autocomplete

Total Unlocked: $230

Spent: $136.73

Balance: $93.27

Cards:
[Whimsicott V deck]
[Misc Support cards]
[Regi deck]
[Ice Rider cards]
Hisuian Sneasler V x3
Duraludon V x3
Shaymin V x2
Darkrai V x3
Darkrai Vstar
Gengar VMax
Palkia V
Another Darkrai Vstar
Dialga Vstar x3
Dialga V x2

I finished the Address Autocompletion project. It turned out to be significantly more complicated than expected, largely due to domain restrictions the 3rd party applied for using their API. Because of these restrictions, there was no way to test things in development, which created a delay between when I'd get things mostly working (I hoped) and when it was available for me to test to see the results (e.g. after Brian had deployed it to production servers). In the end, we got it completed before anyone even knew about the new system, so it was all well and good. This unlocked $30, counting as a one-level stage.

On the Pokemon side of things, I found great deals on getting another Darkrai Vstar ($7) and a set of 3x Dialga Vstars ($15 total). So I went ahead and paid the $5 needed to get 2x Dialga Vs. This rounds out the decks I will be using for IRL play until the next set releases.

Tuesday, July 12, 2022

Replacement Orders Complete-ish

Total Unlocked: $200

Spent: $109.33

Balance: $90.67

Cards:
[Whimsicott V deck]
[Misc Support cards]
[Regi deck]
[Ice Rider cards]
Hisuian Sneasler V x3
Duraludon V x3
Shaymin V x2
Darkrai V x3
Gengar VMax
Palkia V
Darkrai Vstar
Dark Patch x3
17x Misc Pokemon Go cards

Last week was a short week, with Monday being the 4th of July Holiday. I did complete a few tasks, but the only one that was big enough to unlock any funds was the completion of the Replacement Orders DB Efficiency upgrade. That unlocked $5 for the task itself, and $25 more for the Replacement Orders level completing.

Tasks on the horizon include:

  • Address Autocomplete API Integration - will unlock $5 or $30, depending on complexity.
  • Return Status Project - will unlock $30 to $55, depending on complexity.
  • Consumer-to-Business Transitions - will unlock $30.
  • Customer Support Ticket Interfacing & Tracking - will unlock $30.

There is a chance that all of these things are completed this week. But more likely, I'll finish the Address Autocomplete and Return Status projects.

From a Pokemon perspective, I have purchased a single copy of Palkia V and a single copy of Darkrai Vstar. I will be acquiring two more Darkrai Vstars, and may acquire a Palkia Vstar or two as well. Other than that, there are not many cards currently in rotation that I will be buying. However, testing has shown me that I will also want to get a playset one of the headline cards from the next set, as it has performed amazingly well in the limited testing we have done. Thankfully, I found a way to use my pre-existing judging points to get a free order of nearly 100 packs of the next set, so that should mitigate my costs.

On another note, I'm focing myself to start including some element of exercise into my life as often as possible. To make that a priority that I don't ignore, I am adding the requirement for at least a few reps or minutes of exercise ANY DAY that I play Pokemon. Whenever practical (e.g. weekends mostly), that has to happen BEFORE I start playing.

Friday, July 1, 2022

Consumer Transitions, Replacement Order Updates, CS Ticketing & Dark Deck Purchases

Total Unlocked: $170

Spent: $84.60

Balance: $85.40

Cards:
[Whimsicott V deck]
[Misc Support cards]
[Regi deck]
[Ice Rider cards]
Hisuian Sneasler V x3
Duraludon V x3
Shaymin V x2
Darkrai V x3
Gengar VMax

The last couple of weeks, I have spent a fair amount of time pursuing projects that don't-quite-finish. Sometimes that has been due to other priorities rising to the top. In other cases, it's because of factors outside the company's control. In any case, that leaves me very close to finishing up a number of stages, but not quite there on any of them. Here's the blow by blow:

  • Customer Support Ticket Interfacing & Tracking: We have a third-party customer support system. It's currently entirely separate from the rest of our backend site. But we are integrating things together to make it easier on our Customer Support Agents to keep on top of things, since happy customers mean good things to the whole business. Except, this was put on pause while we worked with the third party site to overcome some obstacles (e.g. their API had very low rate limits). We've sorted out a few ways around this issue, but won't be circling back to it until the high priority projects are done, as well as the Consumer Transition project (below). This is probably at 80% complete.
  • Consumer-to-Business Transitions: We are around 90% complete with a single-level stage around the project to enable automated transitions from an account and all connected features to go from being an individual user's consumer account to being part of a business's heirarchy of accounts. This will ease a lot of work for our account staff, but went on hold this week to address two large projects that were higher priority.
  • Replacement Order Updates: After an onsite demo/test of the Replacement Order System, a few small bugs were found, and a laundry list of nice-to-have requests came back. The goal has been to get this ready for release by the end of the week. It became the highest priority item, as it apparently makes a ton of things easier and will actually support a much broader part of the business than us Engineers even realized. Moreover, I achieved that goal. The high priority stuff is done now! But there's one lower priority task remaining before this stage is deemed complete. I'm splitting the stage into 3 levels:

    1) Listing Page Updates -- Complete ($5 unlocked)
    2) Details Page Updates -- Complete ($5 unlocked)
    3) Database Efficiency Updates -- Pending

    The first two levels were by far the most important in terms of fast turn-around and ability to deploy everything to production. The DB Efficiency Updates basically consist of shifting a large number of Entity-Framework database pings into a single database call of a stored procedure, and then using in-memory datatables to more efficiently load and process everything for these pages. The EF version works fine, and was probably preferrable for getting the initial version out fast while allowing easy rapid adjustments. But now that things are getting finalized, EF methods result in a lot more database hits than we want, which will be slower page performance as things grow. So we're getting ahead of that ever being a problem, by moving it all to an SP-driven system with a single DB hit.
  • Return Status: Lastly, the next highest priority after the finishing the Replacement Orders, is a new 6-part project around Return Statuses. I haven't delved into what this one is about yet, but it will be the largest priority for next week. I'm not sure how many levels will feel like the right number for this stage, but I'll figure it out next week.

All together, that's another $100+ worth of work-stages that will be unlocked in the next couple weeks. For now, I've stepped forward to acquire some of the parts for a couple of different Dark Decks. I traded to get 2x Gengar V + 1x Gengar Vmax. Then I purchased 3x Darkrai V + 1x Gengar Vmax. The goal here is to end up able to run up to a 2-2 line of Gengar Vmax and up to a 3-3 line of Darkrai Vstar. Testing will determine exactly which counts we want to settle on. I'm still holding off on purchasing Darkrai Vstars as they are the only cards involved that are still likely to see a significant reduction in price (and because I don't know if I will end up wanting 2 or 3 of them).

Tuesday, June 21, 2022

A Few Pokemon Purchases: Duraludon, Shaymin, and Ice Rider

Total Unlocked: $160

Spent: $65.36

Balance: $94.64

Cards:
[Whimsicott V deck]
[Misc Support cards]
Hisuian Sneasler V x3
[Regi deck]
[Ice Rider cards]
Duraludon V x3
Shaymin V x2

After saying that I wasn't going to buy anything, I ended up buying a few things over the weekend: 3x Duraludon V from Evolving Skies (I have copies of the superior, Champion's Path version, but it is rotating in a few months and I believe Duraludon will be a reasonable deck for play post-rotation), 2x Shaymin V, 4x Ice Rider Calyrex V from Chilling Reign, 1x Ice Rider Calyrex V promo (because I want the option to include a sniping attack), and 3x Ice Rider Calyrex VMax. All told, that was $21.72, which has been updated in my purchase info

Tuesday, June 14, 2022

Level 5: Smart-text Links & Header Search

Total Unlocked: $160

Spent: $43.64

Balance: $116.36

Cards:
[Whimsicott V deck]
[Misc Support cards]
Hisuian Sneasler V x3
[Regi deck]

Last week, my boss was once again out of town. The week started off on a low point, as the owner of the company held a staff meeting themed all around customer service. And he went person by person demanding new ideas for improving customer service. For myself and a new employee (who had no new customer service ideas), he chastised us with a tirade about how customer service should be at the center of everything we do, no matter what level or department we work at in the company. That sent me off the deep end for about a day, and I seriously pondered quitting. But I righted the ship of my mental state by watching a video conversation between myself and my boss, in which we discussed the ins and outs of what I was actually supposed to be working on (right before he left). That conversation put me back into the mindset I needed to be in, and over the course of the week, I was able to knock out all of the projects my boss had lined up for me.

Those projects included:
1) Creating a javascript package that we could include on pages throughout the company's backend, which would run various regular expression checks against fields that were given the css class of "smart-text" where-in each regex that was applied could convert the resulting matches into a link to one of a few different parts of the site.
2) Updating our header search functionality to use a better, more efficient method of finding and supplying autocomplete matches.

Completing these projects counts as two stages and one level, and accordingly unlocks another 2x $5 + 1x $25. This week, I'm working on Level 6: Freshdesk API interactions. Currently, this looks like another two-stage level, but we'll see how it ultimately ends up once I dig in further.

Also, as a closing note, things are on hold for Pokemon purchasing until I work out what decks I'm going to run in the next format. I will likely resume live competition in that format, so I want to figure out what will be best for actual play at that point. Given that major pieces of all current decks are expected to rotate out (e.g. no longer be useable), I want to wait and see what emerges as the next decks I enjoy before I spend anything else on building them. Most of what I've acquired thus far is cheap cards that will not rotate this year, so things are in good shape in that respect. But many of the remaining cards on my list start to get a bit more pricey, so I want to be sure I want them before I spend the money.

Friday, June 3, 2022

Level 3 and also Stage 2-6 Complete

Total Unlocked: $125

Spent: $43.64

Balance: $81.36

Cards:
[Whimsicott V deck]
[Misc Support cards]
Hisuian Sneasler V x3
Regigigas x2
Regidrago x3
Regieleki x3
Regirock x2
Registeel x2
Regice x2
Shaymin VStar x1
Canceling Cologne x3
Cyllene x2
Eevee x2
Feather Ball x4
Gapejaw Bog x4
Gardenia's Vigor x3
Grant x4
Gutsy Pickaxe x3
Hisuian Basculin x3
Hisuian Heavy Ball x2
Mightyena x2
Miltank x1
Poochyena x2
Switch Cart x4
Trekking Shoes x4

Monday was a holiday (Memorial Day). Tuesday, I wrapped up the end of Levels 3 & 4. Wednesday, I started and finished the newly created Stage 2-6, when my boss's return from vacation brought with it another round of 10 requested changes to the Replacement Order System. Thursday, I started and finished two more small tasks, and today I've completed a small bug fix. Altogether, by completing that stuff I unlocked another $65 (calling everything I've done a level or even a full stage on its own would be way too generous), and also got some praise from my boss about my fast turn-around. I guess this gamification motivation system is working :)

I went ahead and used my newfound riches to buy everything for a Regigigas Deck, as well as pretty much all of the important supporting cards from the new set. This should serve me well going forward, but there are a few more decks I have my eyes on once prices settle.

Friday, May 27, 2022

Level 4: User page integration into Replacement Orders

Total Unlocked: $60

Spent: $28.76

Balance: $31.24

Cards:
[Whimsicott V deck]
Hisuian Sneasler V x3
Boss's Orders
Telescopic Sight
Bronzong
Rapid Strike Scroll of Swirls
Single Strike Stonjourner
Moon & Sun Badge

I finished stage 4-1 yesterday (adding buttons to the user page to create replacement orders), and stage 4-2 today (adding a display to the user page to show all current + past replacement orders). That completes stage 4, except that I'm expecting my boss to request a number of changes when he gets back, as he'll have his coding and styling preferences to request implementation. Accordingly, I've unlocked another $10 in purchase power, and will unlock $25 more once things meet with his imminent change request. Monday I'll warp back to stage 3-2, so that I'll be inches away from completing both Level 3 and Level 4.

Now that the latest set has released, some card prices are plummetting. That let me acquire most of what I lack for a decent deck featuring the new cards, all while spending only $5. I have my eyes on a very strong deck for the likely sum of a whole $10, once the weekend passes and prices continue to fall a bit further.