AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA...

[Bit]

Raaaaaaaaaaaaah! *sniff*
This had to be done!

[MasterWuuf]

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA-CCCHHHHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!

I checked out the links to utube.
For some reason, I couldn't make heads or tails out of the address..

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA...........

[Trantor]

May I chime in?

AAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!

Hm, didn't really help either... This one counselor (as in, she is giving us advice what we should write in our math schoolbook without writing herself) we have is driving me mad. She is constantly complaining about stuff I do wrongly. Sometimes, I don't change stuff according to her suggestions (which I often have never even seen), and sometimes she is complaining that I change text passages slightly (which is one of the main parts of my job). And she is extremely rude in that. My colleagues and bosses all back me up, the woman has a record of being unbearable. Even the other counselor called me today and told me she is totally overreacting and all. While all that does help, it doesn't help as much as it should. And that is probably what bothers me most - that I let it bother me so much (hope that made sense). Sometimes, I just hate myself...

[Gambit37]

the woman has a record of being unbearable....

Sometimes, I just hate myself...

It's not you, it's her I hope you find a way to chill out and let it out of your system, the screaming here doesn't really help!

[ian_scho]

Agree with Gambit here. Myself, I go a little bit too far the other way at work. After 6+ years working there all of the project managers are aggrieved with me for one reason or another then the director sits me down and discovers that I have no problems, hold no personal grudges or any bad feelings... It leaves him thinking that I don't give a sh*t... I just want to do my job and do it well. My world is coding in beautiful prose and providing the end users what they want - the people inbetween don't always faciltate that.

[Trantor]

Does anybody know any program that is more counter-intuitive than CorelDraw Essentials 2? I have no clue why this thing even is on my machine, but since I still don't understand anything about it, the cutscenes in my dungeon will be made with Paint...

[Ameena]

Only art prog I've got is Photoshop erm...7.0 I think. Oh, and we've got Flash on a disk somewhere. I did have Paintshop Pro at one point but I don't think I do any more.

[Bit]

Still love my old picture publisher.

[ian_scho]

I actually used Gimp last week on a lion fountain. Not only do I find it REALLY difficult to use and understand but it insists on being in Spanish. I think we all need patience with these tools.
Ohhh Paintshop Pro. I've got a copy of that of questionable legality -> I borrowed my friends computer it was installed on so I could use it for my DMJava dungeon.

[beowuuf]

I still use paintshop pro i got from a friend year ago. It's how all your beautiful D&D maps are getting done

[Ameena]

I got both Photoshop and PSP from someone over Messenger years back, but I think I only hung onto Photoshop. Flash we got from some mate of my dad's at work - he put it on a disk for us, but i've not really used it except for a bit of a mess around with it when we first got it.

[ian_scho]

While we're offtopic (the arty stuff is AAGGGHH! though), I can recommend the free Paint.NET app as well.

[Gambit37]

AAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHH!

It's no good telling me, 6 hours before launch, that "This page doesn't work the way the client expected."

For fuck sake, they had three weeks to look at this bloody stuff!!

I fucking hate web development.

[ian_scho]

Ufff, that's especially tough... On a friday.

I think you'll find that it would still occur even if you designed and made custom toilets, or flotsam furniture.

[Jan]

6 hours before launch

LOL - firstly, I read it as "6 hours before lunch"! Damn, it wouldn't be good to tell me anything 6 hours before lunch!

[Gambit37]

Pete has sent a screen grab of how he’s seeing the donor form when going through from a charity, is this how the layout was agreed or should it be like the first page of the donor form when you go to it directly – ie with the four radio buttons across the top?

The user doesn’t see the four selection buttons—that whole panel is removed when coming from the charity page; the assumption being if they viewed the site and selected a charity from its individual page, they are most likely creating a new donation.

I don’t think that we can assume it will always be a new donation – I think we’ll need the four radio buttons as per the normal donor form. An existing user is just as likely to revisit the site find out about charity and add or amend their existing donation.

Hmmm…. I see your point, but that’s not what I agreed with Kristen or what we developed. We need it to work this way for the pre-population of charities to work when coming from a charity page—if you have the four buttons at the top all the time, that stuff isn’t going to work properly.

I’m not sure what you agreed with Kristen she’s not here to confirm but the below is what we need. If major issue leave it until Kristen is in and we can agree way forward then. ‘If they come from the charity – they still need the three options ‘New, Additional or Replacement’ This should also be the same of coming from the calculator etc too

OK, but the donor form has been testable in that state for nearly two weeks and this should have been flagged earlier. It’s going to be hard to change core functionality at this late stage; I’m not sure what impact this has on the rest of the site…

Anytime you make an ad-hoc functional change like this, you have to test the impact on all other dependencies in the site. Changes like this can create new unexpected problems that might take a while to fix.

I’ve built what was requested, so I will have to charge for any time spent on this as per my Ts & Cs.

Matt it’s not an ad-hoc change. I assume the client has only just noticed it as we’ve only just asked them to test.

o_0

[ian_scho]

That last comment from the client is a killer. Of course the end-client should have been pushing to test the app before launch as well, but you if the middle party here is incompetent...
I wonder how much documentation you have to protect yourself from these sort of changes. A mock-up? A simple use-case explaining how the site works? All of that costs time and money of course.

[beowuuf]

The danger is you have to be very careful how you word communications with customers. Just as much as you assume thye are stupid/incompitent, they will assume you are dishonest/incompitent. They probably have no appreciation of what a major thing they are asking, and so will have no reason to trust your assessment that it is both a large change and chargeable.

As Ian says, I wonder how much documentation you need to protect yourself that won't waste lost of time to generate and track.

[Gambit37]

This is an agency I'm working with. I got pulled in to the project late as the guy supposed to be doing the work got a full time job. The functional spec was virtually non existent -- some wireframes were done, but didn't have enough detail on how things should work so I've had to do all the requirements questioning DURING the development process. Totally nuts.

But at least they appreciate I work differently from their last guy and they are totally open to me guiding them on "future projects" Whether I'll get any future projects is anyone's guess!

[Gambit37]

@Ian: My Ts & Cs do actually cover things like this.

I'm trying to word an email to the agency to tell them I'm going to be invoicing them for extra work. They won't be expecting it! It's tough, because despite the problems on the project, they are nice people and I don't want to be "tough" -- but I have to. Does this look any good?

Hi guys

I know everyone's under pressure to get WPG live and it's all hands to the pump. However, I'd like to raise some issues that concern me.

I previously agreed to finish the remainder of the site for free, based on my estimate of 37 hours work (just under one standard work week.) I was happy to offer this discount on the basis that we'll be working together on future projects.

However, issues arose that changed this: I lost a whole day last weekend trying to get things to work on Fasthosts. I lost more time on Monday setting up the new EzPz server. There are now also new issues regarding functionality of the Donor form that will take time to address.

I draw your attention to the Ts & Cs of my service agreement, in particular "Estimates", "Revisions" and "Additions" on page 5, and also "Production Schedule / Project Delivery" on pages 5/6. As noted here, I cannot be held responsible for problems and delays caused by other third parties and I am not liable for absorbing any related costs.

I'm sorry to get "tough" so to speak but I have to protect my time investment and ensure I'm compensated fairly for the work I've put in. I understand that you have your client relationship to maintain and that they will not release any further funds, however I have to maintain a good relationship with my bank balance and need to put food on the table.

I will therefore be invoicing for my time over the agreed 37 hours, at my hourly rate of £30. This currently stands at 47 hours and will increase with the Donor form changes.

I trust that you will agree that this is a fair and reasonable course of action.

I think I can probably lose the "get tough" paragraph. It makes my plea a bit more personal, but perhaps I should just keep it factual and remove all personal/emotive stuff?

[Paul Stevens]

I'd leave it in. What's wrong with personal?

[Gambit37]

I'm always undecided about such things!

[Paul Stevens]

You worry too much....

Most things like this make no difference in
either the short or long-run. And the things
that do make a difference make a difference
in a way that is totally un-anticipated and
un-predictable. Gut feelings commonly provide
the best guide.

[Gambit37]

Yeah, I take after my Mum in that regard.

However, I am getting a bit better at not caring what other people think. Thanks for your (always) wise words.

[Sophia]

I second that. Don't worry about it.

Of course, that's other people telling you not to worry about what other people think... so feel free to ignore that, too.

[Bit]

Gambit - I don't know about the circumstances and the environment of your situation, but all that's left for me after thirty years of programming is the realization that I was always too cheap and too handable.

[Gambit37]

LOL, yes, it's the same with me too. I'm certainly putting up my rates again soon, I didn't do so this year, and I've definitely become "tougher" since working for myself. Still too nice though!

[Gambit37]

Flippin 'eck. I thought this week was going to be a good one -- and then it all goes tits up just now.

I'm working away on a site, FTPing files up to a server and testing things out, when I noticed that bugs I fixed an hour ago suddenly reappeared. After some investigation, I established that someone else had cloned the folders I was working on and renamed them so that while it looked to me like everything was still the same, I was actually uploading files over a much older version of the site.

Talk about moronic. The client has got another developer working on the site at THE SAME TIME AS ME without telling me, and with no version control in place. FFS, I gotta find some better clients...

[beowuuf]

O.O

Wow, nice to not only be so trusted, but also nice to see the customer knows exactly how to control the situation.

I hope you bill all the additional time discovering this!

[Jan]

The clients are the same everywhere. My brother develops web pages too from time to time (he's studying programming - from a very sound theoretical perspective, so it's more high-level mathematics and these things) and he has the same stories about stupid clients. But he has even worse stories about stupid bosses and heads of the web-designing compaines (guys who know nothing about programming, they just want ot make a lot of many very fast, but they to tell you how to do it and they think they are the best and they think that they understand your job).