Situ Normal: All F*cked Up

Well, I evidently haven't been clear with what's going on. There's this bug reporting system at work and as soon as a bug is reported, a countdown timer starts. You have x amount of time to fix the problem. Well, there's only one programmer--me--and I'm working on FINISHING the program--and many of the bug reports involved missing features. There was a choice to be made: I either FINISH writing and then address the bugs or I address the bugs and the program goes unfinished. Well, they told me to finish the program. In the meantime, the timer on the bug reports escalated their "visibility" and the next thing you know, people are getting notified via automatic emails that don't need to be notified. The project leader panics, and the idea is brought up that if I am working on site, things will happen faster.

Whatever. I'm pretty mellow. Work here, there, one military installation is pretty much like another.

So for a few days, I am supposed to work on site. No problem. I ask that the software tools I am used to working with be installed on whatever machine I am given.

I arrive my first day on site and find 1) the keyboard sticks, 2) the monitor shows everything in shades of pale blue, 3) I can't get connected to the network--and hence, the source files, 4) Not being able to connect to the networks means a) no email and b) no e-timesheet, 4) no FTP client, and 5) no editor installed other than Notepad. And to top it all off, we are strictly forbidden to install anything on a government machine. THEN I dropped my Archos, killing my 100 gig notebook drive. Yeah, I was not a happy camper.

Because I was frickin' paranoid in regards to my needs being taken care of in this regard, I had loaded both my Archos and my flash drive with the source files and several applications that would run from their source directory without being installed, so at least I had Notetab Light and an old but working version of WS-FTP LE.

So one of the main people I was supposed to work closely with 1) didn't show up until 1 PM the first day, 2) left early the second day, and 3) showed up late and then left early the third day. And today left for another doctor's appointment.

The other person, the SME (Subject Matter Expert), and I ended up working very closely instead and between us managed to shake out and get working everything it was possible to get working from my end. I can't do anything about the other end. Not my area of expertise. The SME had quite strong opinions about the other member of the team. I felt at least vindicated that I wasn't being overly critical that the other team member wasn't holding up their end and doing stuff that seemed to sabotage my end. If you're going to write a subroutine another person is going to call and you send them what the subroutine expects, you shouldn't change the parameter list or how the routine works without telling them. That's common sense, right? And yet, suddenly my code would break, I'd waste precious time trying to debug what had happened, only to find she had rewritten the code and forgotten to tell me. She evidently has a known reputation for that kind of thing. ::sigh::

Almost every major feature works--well, let me say this, MY end of almost every major feature works as far as screening out bad data--the SME has been banging against my code for almost a week and done a good job of shaking out any last bugs. The last big feature simply can't work as designed. It didn't work in the original application. Someone has to make a command decision concerning a major database change, and the customer just kinda blows us off, doesn't respond to questions. We're at an impasse.

So I'm finally back at my own office for the day. I have to go back on site tomorrow, but I'm just glad to be back "home" for the day.