Blame II
I've been reminded that I'm going on holiday for a week on Monday. Yeah... I forgot. I still don't know where we're going, actually; I did ask but have forgotten that too. I think it's not that far away though, and on the coast somewhere. Anyway, if I don't make another entry before Monday, that's why the following week will also be blank. I probably will, though.
I stayed up all night two nights ago, and went to bed early last night and recovered all my sleep, thinking that if I could then go to bed early tonight, I'd have repaired some of the damage to my sleeping pattern. It would've worked, except that I'm still here. Now I'll end up getting up late tomorrow too, and all will be back as it was. That worked well.
You may have already read Graham's Entry, but if not, Wednesday went as follows. Graham woke me up (after two hours of sleep) with a phonecall in the morning, and explained that he'd had Darius on the phone about more connection troubles at the Wallisdown site. It'd turned into some kind of argument where Darius decided he could somehow blame us for it, and resulted in both sides shouting at each other. Not ideal to shout at your clients perhaps, but Tux I know that Darius would have deserved it. He threatened us that he would remove our system and find something else if it wasn't working by Monday.
The thing is, our program does work, it works perfectly, and the Ringwood Road site is having no troubles. The problem at Wallisdown is with the internet connection, which we neither supplied nor connected. The modem and connection is down to NTL, and the internal wiring and the switch were down to whoever Darius got to do it. All he sees however, is that 'it doesn't work' and we gave him 'the system', and therefore it's our fault. Teh wrongs.
Despite this, we still went down to the shop, on our own time, and set up the internet connection with a router as it should have been done from the start. We told Nicky who was there, that everything was now working, and that there'd been no fault in our software, and that if anything should break from here on, it's NTL's fault. Also, if anybody, even 'qualified' network engineers want to touch that network in anyway, they're not to do it without calling us first.
So, they completely ignored this request, and NTL came and installed a new modem (probably unnecesarily) and now it doesn't work again. If we get there and find that the NTL person changed the router settings, and we weren't informed... grr!
I don't know what's happening at the moment, but Darius has definately gone far beyond reasonable now. Nicky kept getting us to see his point of view, that because it didn't all work, and he knew we could make it work, he blamed us. Seeing his point of view wasn't the problem though, I can see it perfectly - it's just completely wrong. I don't care how he sees it, he has to accept the fact that you can't just blame somebody for something they had nothing to do with. Besides, I'd like to see him try and find another system to use instead of ours; he keeps saying how easy it is that he could 'pick one off the shelf', but if it was, why'd he call us in the first place? It's bullshit and we know it. He's got an incredible deal there's no way he'll find anything better than this, especially not for our price. Even if he did, they'd install it, and it wouldn't work because of the connection, and then what would they say? 'We just supplied the software... not our problem'.
Honstly, he reminds me of a child, who likes to go round telling people what to do all the time and just blames everybody in sight when something doesn't go quite how he'd like. He doesn't understand.
All of this is just delaying further our work on the new system too (which he probably also thinks he's getting for free - sorry, the deal is you get us sales first). Admittedly I could have worked harder today, since I only wrote a few lines, adding nothing much more than a non-functional menu bar... but I don't feel I can work again. Too many things are wrong - I need to sort them out before I can feel right again. I could do one of them by leaving right now, but I'm still here. I'll go after this, though.
If our holiday is very close to the beach, then hopfully by now it'll be deserted, or at least fairly empty. Better yet, it'll be stones and not sand, because nobody likes beaches that aren't sandy, and it'll be even more likely to be empty. Then, I'll find myself a little place and spend some time on my own. I hope it'll be enough for me to be able to come back at night and write my diary some more. Maybe it'll even be enough for me to remember the things we did. I won't like that... even the little I have been able to recall is too much... but if I don't now, I never will, and it'll be lost forever. I'd hate that more.
Maybe I'll even get some work done there. I should really. But my laptop... it's useable, but not in a way that won't piss me off every few minutes. Perhaps it'd be okay to run on AC so long as I take the battery out... worth trying.
Okay, now I am going to go to bed. I'll be up again by 1pm, because I'll force myself to be. I will come here, and post, to prove it. I will.
Maybe.
I stayed up all night two nights ago, and went to bed early last night and recovered all my sleep, thinking that if I could then go to bed early tonight, I'd have repaired some of the damage to my sleeping pattern. It would've worked, except that I'm still here. Now I'll end up getting up late tomorrow too, and all will be back as it was. That worked well.
You may have already read Graham's Entry, but if not, Wednesday went as follows. Graham woke me up (after two hours of sleep) with a phonecall in the morning, and explained that he'd had Darius on the phone about more connection troubles at the Wallisdown site. It'd turned into some kind of argument where Darius decided he could somehow blame us for it, and resulted in both sides shouting at each other. Not ideal to shout at your clients perhaps, but Tux I know that Darius would have deserved it. He threatened us that he would remove our system and find something else if it wasn't working by Monday.
The thing is, our program does work, it works perfectly, and the Ringwood Road site is having no troubles. The problem at Wallisdown is with the internet connection, which we neither supplied nor connected. The modem and connection is down to NTL, and the internal wiring and the switch were down to whoever Darius got to do it. All he sees however, is that 'it doesn't work' and we gave him 'the system', and therefore it's our fault. Teh wrongs.
Despite this, we still went down to the shop, on our own time, and set up the internet connection with a router as it should have been done from the start. We told Nicky who was there, that everything was now working, and that there'd been no fault in our software, and that if anything should break from here on, it's NTL's fault. Also, if anybody, even 'qualified' network engineers want to touch that network in anyway, they're not to do it without calling us first.
So, they completely ignored this request, and NTL came and installed a new modem (probably unnecesarily) and now it doesn't work again. If we get there and find that the NTL person changed the router settings, and we weren't informed... grr!
I don't know what's happening at the moment, but Darius has definately gone far beyond reasonable now. Nicky kept getting us to see his point of view, that because it didn't all work, and he knew we could make it work, he blamed us. Seeing his point of view wasn't the problem though, I can see it perfectly - it's just completely wrong. I don't care how he sees it, he has to accept the fact that you can't just blame somebody for something they had nothing to do with. Besides, I'd like to see him try and find another system to use instead of ours; he keeps saying how easy it is that he could 'pick one off the shelf', but if it was, why'd he call us in the first place? It's bullshit and we know it. He's got an incredible deal there's no way he'll find anything better than this, especially not for our price. Even if he did, they'd install it, and it wouldn't work because of the connection, and then what would they say? 'We just supplied the software... not our problem'.
Honstly, he reminds me of a child, who likes to go round telling people what to do all the time and just blames everybody in sight when something doesn't go quite how he'd like. He doesn't understand.
All of this is just delaying further our work on the new system too (which he probably also thinks he's getting for free - sorry, the deal is you get us sales first). Admittedly I could have worked harder today, since I only wrote a few lines, adding nothing much more than a non-functional menu bar... but I don't feel I can work again. Too many things are wrong - I need to sort them out before I can feel right again. I could do one of them by leaving right now, but I'm still here. I'll go after this, though.
If our holiday is very close to the beach, then hopfully by now it'll be deserted, or at least fairly empty. Better yet, it'll be stones and not sand, because nobody likes beaches that aren't sandy, and it'll be even more likely to be empty. Then, I'll find myself a little place and spend some time on my own. I hope it'll be enough for me to be able to come back at night and write my diary some more. Maybe it'll even be enough for me to remember the things we did. I won't like that... even the little I have been able to recall is too much... but if I don't now, I never will, and it'll be lost forever. I'd hate that more.
Maybe I'll even get some work done there. I should really. But my laptop... it's useable, but not in a way that won't piss me off every few minutes. Perhaps it'd be okay to run on AC so long as I take the battery out... worth trying.
Okay, now I am going to go to bed. I'll be up again by 1pm, because I'll force myself to be. I will come here, and post, to prove it. I will.
Maybe.