A love letter to the software QA folks of the world

In our twisted little minds, we're fashioning castles out of dirt, breathing life into the imaginary peasants that inhabit the castle and coming up with new and fascinating ways to teach the little people to exercise functionality. Nothing could be wrong with my castle! I built it myself from scratch! Can't you see all the little people in there grinding away just like I taught them to?
But oh! There be a storm brewing! Eventually we have to put down our magic wands and show people just what we've been up to and there's the QA folks. Looking everything over with a discerning, non-paternal, eye and pointing out that I'm just an idiot playing with dirt and by the way that castle you built? The walls aren't up to spec.
Developers and QA operate in an antagonistic relationship. We build things that we're proud of (and if you're not proud of what you're building, you're making their job a hell of a lot easier) and they knock it down. Maybe it's because I'm an entirely reliable source of bugs, but on the whole, it's been mostly mock antagonism. True, I enjoy tagging bugs as "unable to reproduce" or "user error" more than I should, but at the end of the day, I appreciate that there's someone checking what I'm producing and verifying that it's not all wrong.
I'd tell you that I test as much as I can, but if I told you that, then I'd be pretty hard-pressed to explain some of the head-scratchers I've released in the past. Can I blame it on not using test-driven design? Not being agile enough?
Developers get the cool software toys. I've seen a few QA test environments in action and they're pretty execrable, little better than the (super-awesome and totally deserving of the coveted Dave Solomon Seal of Approval) Watir. I can get unnaturally pumped about source control. What else is there to get psyched about in the world of QA software?
We get the cool development methodologies. Test-driven design (jesus christ we're developers pretending to be QA! are we trying to put you folks out of a home?). Agile. Scrum. What do QA folks get? Seriously. I have no idea.
Worst of all, the project timelines. When the specs take too long to get hammered out and development drags on too long because the software's more complex than expected (leaving more nooks and crannies for bugs to fester in), what does your enterprising project manager propose as the solution? Push the release date back? Nah. Just cut the QA cycles short. Sell the sizzle, the quality of the steak be damned.
How many projects will be haunted to their grave by that decision?
So here's to the software QA testers of the world. Despite being forgotten children when it comes to software, viewed as a liability by managers and loathed by developers afraid to eat their own dog food, you somehow manage to persevere and keep the quality up.
Just quit going over my code with a fine-tooth'd comb, willya?