Sabotage
The last few days have been a mix of good and bad; not separate things which are either entirely good or bad, but rather that mostly, each thing that happened had both a good and bad side to it. It did start however, with something entirely good: the meeting with Caroline, the new client, went extremely well. I did get up late, but got myself ready very quickly, and getting a taxi into Bournemouth we arrived a little ahead of time, and so walked around borders for a few minutes before heading up to the hotel. The second I stepped into the lobby, I wasn't too surprised to find that my first thought was of Prattville.
Being allowed to linger on that wouldn't have been a good start to the day, but luckily we were interrupted by Caroline herself. She came over to ask if we were who she thought we were, and took us over to introduce us to her colleague. She was on the phone for the moment, so we sat down to wait for a few minutes, before introducing ourselves to her. Unfortunately, as usually happens to me, I can't remember her name. I have a bad habbit of completely ignoring people when they tell me who they are, disregarding the information as unimportant, and then wishing I hadn't when I want to use it.
The environment was very nice. It was just a meeting area a little way off the main lobby, not actually separated in any way, but it was quiet and comfortable, and there was a bar and good service. Caroline offered us some tea, which I was surprised but grateful for, and we accepted. The meeting itself lasted about two hours, but was the best meeting I have ever been a part of, due mostly to the people we were talking to. Both of them were friendly, but very professional, and whilst they were happy to explain clearly about their business, they were just as happy to then listen and ask relevant questions whenever it was our turn to explain our side. They shared our thoughts on the low standards of presentation that seem to be so common these days, and that in itself was almost incredible to me. Things that I've always found so obvious, I've never met anyone other that Graham who's been able to see the same, or with similar quality standards as myself. They were the perfect clients, the kind of people I expected to meet from the very start, before my expectations were cruelly destroyed by our experiences to date. It was actually refreshing.
We gave our demonstrations, and they were impressed. They gave us a good overview of what they were looking for, and anything either party was unsure of, we discussed. The site they're after is pretty much the type we love working with the most: simple, uncluttered and clean, and in their company colours of deep, rich, low-saturation blues - probably my favourite colours. I know this site is going to be beautiful.
Of course, learning from the past we should still excercise a little caution, but I very much doubt we'll have any problems. We did bring up the contract briefly, and they understood that it was for both our benefits. I've written an informal but clear guide on the process we follow (or at least, will do from this point onwards), which we'll send over to her, and very soon we'll get together and start on some initial designs to send.
So, the first meeting of the day was extremely good. Then, we had to meet Darius. I didn't know why, and when I asked Graham, he didn't either, but we'd arranged it anyway and so we made our way to his still-unfinished Landsdowne shop to await his arrival. When he did turn up, he greeted us like usual, but when we got downstairs and into the office, we found out what we were actually there for: so he could blame some more things on us.
He says he's pissed off, and thinks we let him down after all the good he's done for us. He says that because he can't see it all working like it should, he doesn't believe our system does work. Also, even if it's something else causing the problem, our system is to blame because it should be compatible with whatever setup he has. Oh, and despite the fact he's got about twice as many features as are listed in the specification, he's not happy that we're refusing to add his last minute requests, because our software was supposed to be 'tailor made'. Well, we'd heard all this before and didn't really want to hear it all again, but still did our best to explain each point. He didn't care though, and then everything went downhill. Darius isn't very good at controlling his temper - as soon as things got in a way he didn't like, he decided that banging things on the desk hard and shouting and swearing at us would be a good solution. It wasn't, of course, so he moved on to threatening to take us to court.
I've no doubt that for the moment he said it, he probably meant it, but I'm sure that by the time he'd actually get around to it, even he would see what a stupid idea that would be. First of all, take us to court for what? Doing too much work for free? As far as they would see, we've fulfilled our contract, and he's not yet paid - he owes us money, we owe him nothing. I didn't want it to come to that, but if it did, I think I'd actually rather enjoy it. I do like proving a point, and winning.
He calms down as quickly as he gets angry though, which doesn't make him easy to talk to, but did mean that the meeting did eventually conclude on a peacful note. We calmly explained to him the reasons behind the things we've been refusing, and what we were and weren't willing to do. In the end though, we did agree to go down to the Wallisdown shop and take yet another look at the connection, if anything just to prove that our software really isn't at fault.
After the meeting, we played a quick game of snooker to relax a little. We didn't even complete a frame before it was time to go to catch the bus home, but I thought I was playing reasonably well, so it added in a positive way to my mood. I got off the bus a stop before the one I'd asked for, because I decided to walk the back way down to my house. I don't think it's actually shorter, but it seems like it is sometimes. As I started walking, it just occured to me that the last time I'd taken that route was coming back with Shanna from the fireworks on Bournemouth beach. I remembered something she said to me on a particular corner. Then I felt like I was going home; not to where I live now, but to my house, our house. For a while, there and here were the same place, and they won't be again, but wherever it was, I was going there and she'd be there. It felt like the first conclusion to a day of work I'd ever had. I'd... gone to work... had a day of business... and was going home. I'd never felt that before.
So, after a few hours of sleep, I got up the next morning and headed over to Graham's house before we went on to Wallisdown. Darius called before we left to ask if I could bring one of the computers I'd cleaned out for him, but since they were at my house it was a bit late for that. He still wanted them though, so after we got to the shop, he then drove me all the way back home to pick them up, meaning I could have just stayed there in the first place.
The problem that Darius had described to us was that the whenever the network went down, if he then unplugged everything from the switch and plugged the camera system in by itself, it worked fine, and from this he concluded that only our software was faulty. The switch, by the way, that we'd changed to a router the time before, and explicitly said that nobody should touch without calling us first. Of course only the camera system worked in that case - the NTL box with a switch causes everything to behave strangely, and give the same external IP address to all the computers on the network. This is obviously going to cause a conflict, and though nothing appeared to complain, two computers trying to access the internet was never going to work.
So, we put the router back instead, again, and discovered who was to blame. Our software worked immidiately, but even though it wasn't our problem we had a look at getting the camera software set up too. We looked in the router's configuation, and saw first of all a collection of conflicting NAT and firewall rules intended to direct traffic on certain ports to the camera software. This is the correct method, but wasn't done properly at all, it was a mess - in one case he'd used a dash rather than a comma between two port numbers, thus allocating a range of one thousand ports instead of the two he'd intended. Most of them weren't even active though, because the person who set it up, in his wisdom, had enabled an option that directs all incoming traffic to a single computer, the camera system. Result: instant death of our software, because it can't communicate with the database at Ringwood anymore. Clever.
So we turned that off, and tried to repair the mess of rules. This wasn't easy though, as the router is teh suck. It doesn't have a section called 'NAT', it has two, called 'Virtual Servers' and 'Special Applications'. The former most resembles typical NAT, and the second is almost the same with some mysterious extra fields labelled 'triggers'. The help for these options states that 'Special Applications' are for applications that need multiple connections and won't work with normal NAT. Lies. What they mean is that some things didn't work with their 'Virtual Servers' settings, and so they made up something else that sometimes works a little better. I use NAT on my own router, and have never had a problem with any application.
Obviously, he'd encountered the same problems we'd had in setting up the rules, and so just directed all traffic to his system, thus of course making it work, and left. He must have known the effect of that, but showed absolutely no regard for our software, not at all worried about changing the setup without asking anybody first or considering the consequences. Oh no, he'd made his software work, he'd done his job. We called Darius and told him who's fault it was, since he seemed so keen on blaming us for it, but also said that we couldn't get this router to do what we needed to make them both work because it was useless. I advise you all never to buy a D-Link router if you want it to actually perform any routing - it'll just about manage as a switch, maybe. He said if we wanted to get another router, he'd send someone to get what we requested. We asked to come along, but oh no, that'd use extra fuel to get us first.
Instead, the first thing we were brought was no use, and so we had to call Rob back and get him to take us there anyway to return it and get something else - would've saved fuel to take us in the first place, mm? But don't listen to us, we're only right. The new router though, worked perfectly, and within a few minutes we had all the computers online and NAT rules directing relevant traffic to the camera system. We left, satisfied that finally, it was all over - the connection would be fine for as long as it was left alone. No thanks to the one who broke it all though. Although, he turned up towards the end, and we got into some conversation about him becoming a reseller of the new software... so... meh. I hate it when people do stupid annoying things, and then do helpful things. I have no concept of balancing these things - I will never allow kindness to excuse malice, and nothing in between either. Everything everybody does to me directly or indirectly, stays. I do not forgive, or forget. I'm reasonable, and I can acknowlege when people try to correct their mistakes, but they'll always be there. If we can come to a deal it'll be beneficial, but I don't trust him with anything important.
That night was... wonderful, in a very strange way. I was talking to Atieh whilst I was waiting for Shanna to come online, when suddenly, I was scared. Terrified. It came from nowhere and I had no idea why, but there was just fear. It did fade a little, but very slowly, and even when Shanna did show up about an hour later, it was still quite strong. I couldn't say much, and after being invited to view her webcam, just found myself watching intently. My feelings did start to change though, and we had a short, simple, but meaningful conversation which left me no longer afraid, but something else... and much stronger. The rest is mine. It was perfect.
Today I decided to recover some of my missing sleep, and got up just before 5pm to call back Graham, who'd tried to call me earlier. He told me that he'd been down to Wallisdown for more connection problems. I couldn't believe what he'd said, after all the effort to get it all working... but luckily, it wasn't what I thought. He discovered that the connection wasn't down, just slow. The camera system had decided to start using as much bandwidth as it could, and with the lack of any kind of load balancing, was killing everything else. A ping request now comes back with a round trip time of over 2000ms, which is awful. At least though, it's actually working, just slowly - someone else is definately going to have to fix that though. There's no fault of ours anywhere here, the supplier of the camera system will just have to limit the bandwidth usage of their software. Now who's incompatible, eh?
I meant to get on with some CaliHQ3, but for some reason that never happened and my achievements of the night include only ordering some headphones. I found someone on Amazon selling the same model as my old ones (which were great, before Connor destroyed them) for a penny. Yeah the price is suspicious, and indeed as I suspected they make up the price in delivery charges; a common trick, but the total was still only £5, so I ordered them. Having owned some, I know they're good quality, and will certainly do until I can get some pwnage ones. Anything would be better than these little Creative ones that came with my MP3 player. I really do wonder why they bother including crap headphones with such products - surely it doesn't give a good impression of sound quality. I know the output from the player is very good, having plugged it into my speakers, but the headphones don't come close to exposing that.
Now... I don't know. I'm waiting for Shanna, but I'm stupid, because she's not coming tonight. I'm just waiting anyway, for some reason. I'll just see how the night goes from here.
Being allowed to linger on that wouldn't have been a good start to the day, but luckily we were interrupted by Caroline herself. She came over to ask if we were who she thought we were, and took us over to introduce us to her colleague. She was on the phone for the moment, so we sat down to wait for a few minutes, before introducing ourselves to her. Unfortunately, as usually happens to me, I can't remember her name. I have a bad habbit of completely ignoring people when they tell me who they are, disregarding the information as unimportant, and then wishing I hadn't when I want to use it.
The environment was very nice. It was just a meeting area a little way off the main lobby, not actually separated in any way, but it was quiet and comfortable, and there was a bar and good service. Caroline offered us some tea, which I was surprised but grateful for, and we accepted. The meeting itself lasted about two hours, but was the best meeting I have ever been a part of, due mostly to the people we were talking to. Both of them were friendly, but very professional, and whilst they were happy to explain clearly about their business, they were just as happy to then listen and ask relevant questions whenever it was our turn to explain our side. They shared our thoughts on the low standards of presentation that seem to be so common these days, and that in itself was almost incredible to me. Things that I've always found so obvious, I've never met anyone other that Graham who's been able to see the same, or with similar quality standards as myself. They were the perfect clients, the kind of people I expected to meet from the very start, before my expectations were cruelly destroyed by our experiences to date. It was actually refreshing.
We gave our demonstrations, and they were impressed. They gave us a good overview of what they were looking for, and anything either party was unsure of, we discussed. The site they're after is pretty much the type we love working with the most: simple, uncluttered and clean, and in their company colours of deep, rich, low-saturation blues - probably my favourite colours. I know this site is going to be beautiful.
Of course, learning from the past we should still excercise a little caution, but I very much doubt we'll have any problems. We did bring up the contract briefly, and they understood that it was for both our benefits. I've written an informal but clear guide on the process we follow (or at least, will do from this point onwards), which we'll send over to her, and very soon we'll get together and start on some initial designs to send.
So, the first meeting of the day was extremely good. Then, we had to meet Darius. I didn't know why, and when I asked Graham, he didn't either, but we'd arranged it anyway and so we made our way to his still-unfinished Landsdowne shop to await his arrival. When he did turn up, he greeted us like usual, but when we got downstairs and into the office, we found out what we were actually there for: so he could blame some more things on us.
He says he's pissed off, and thinks we let him down after all the good he's done for us. He says that because he can't see it all working like it should, he doesn't believe our system does work. Also, even if it's something else causing the problem, our system is to blame because it should be compatible with whatever setup he has. Oh, and despite the fact he's got about twice as many features as are listed in the specification, he's not happy that we're refusing to add his last minute requests, because our software was supposed to be 'tailor made'. Well, we'd heard all this before and didn't really want to hear it all again, but still did our best to explain each point. He didn't care though, and then everything went downhill. Darius isn't very good at controlling his temper - as soon as things got in a way he didn't like, he decided that banging things on the desk hard and shouting and swearing at us would be a good solution. It wasn't, of course, so he moved on to threatening to take us to court.
I've no doubt that for the moment he said it, he probably meant it, but I'm sure that by the time he'd actually get around to it, even he would see what a stupid idea that would be. First of all, take us to court for what? Doing too much work for free? As far as they would see, we've fulfilled our contract, and he's not yet paid - he owes us money, we owe him nothing. I didn't want it to come to that, but if it did, I think I'd actually rather enjoy it. I do like proving a point, and winning.
He calms down as quickly as he gets angry though, which doesn't make him easy to talk to, but did mean that the meeting did eventually conclude on a peacful note. We calmly explained to him the reasons behind the things we've been refusing, and what we were and weren't willing to do. In the end though, we did agree to go down to the Wallisdown shop and take yet another look at the connection, if anything just to prove that our software really isn't at fault.
After the meeting, we played a quick game of snooker to relax a little. We didn't even complete a frame before it was time to go to catch the bus home, but I thought I was playing reasonably well, so it added in a positive way to my mood. I got off the bus a stop before the one I'd asked for, because I decided to walk the back way down to my house. I don't think it's actually shorter, but it seems like it is sometimes. As I started walking, it just occured to me that the last time I'd taken that route was coming back with Shanna from the fireworks on Bournemouth beach. I remembered something she said to me on a particular corner. Then I felt like I was going home; not to where I live now, but to my house, our house. For a while, there and here were the same place, and they won't be again, but wherever it was, I was going there and she'd be there. It felt like the first conclusion to a day of work I'd ever had. I'd... gone to work... had a day of business... and was going home. I'd never felt that before.
So, after a few hours of sleep, I got up the next morning and headed over to Graham's house before we went on to Wallisdown. Darius called before we left to ask if I could bring one of the computers I'd cleaned out for him, but since they were at my house it was a bit late for that. He still wanted them though, so after we got to the shop, he then drove me all the way back home to pick them up, meaning I could have just stayed there in the first place.
The problem that Darius had described to us was that the whenever the network went down, if he then unplugged everything from the switch and plugged the camera system in by itself, it worked fine, and from this he concluded that only our software was faulty. The switch, by the way, that we'd changed to a router the time before, and explicitly said that nobody should touch without calling us first. Of course only the camera system worked in that case - the NTL box with a switch causes everything to behave strangely, and give the same external IP address to all the computers on the network. This is obviously going to cause a conflict, and though nothing appeared to complain, two computers trying to access the internet was never going to work.
So, we put the router back instead, again, and discovered who was to blame. Our software worked immidiately, but even though it wasn't our problem we had a look at getting the camera software set up too. We looked in the router's configuation, and saw first of all a collection of conflicting NAT and firewall rules intended to direct traffic on certain ports to the camera software. This is the correct method, but wasn't done properly at all, it was a mess - in one case he'd used a dash rather than a comma between two port numbers, thus allocating a range of one thousand ports instead of the two he'd intended. Most of them weren't even active though, because the person who set it up, in his wisdom, had enabled an option that directs all incoming traffic to a single computer, the camera system. Result: instant death of our software, because it can't communicate with the database at Ringwood anymore. Clever.
So we turned that off, and tried to repair the mess of rules. This wasn't easy though, as the router is teh suck. It doesn't have a section called 'NAT', it has two, called 'Virtual Servers' and 'Special Applications'. The former most resembles typical NAT, and the second is almost the same with some mysterious extra fields labelled 'triggers'. The help for these options states that 'Special Applications' are for applications that need multiple connections and won't work with normal NAT. Lies. What they mean is that some things didn't work with their 'Virtual Servers' settings, and so they made up something else that sometimes works a little better. I use NAT on my own router, and have never had a problem with any application.
Obviously, he'd encountered the same problems we'd had in setting up the rules, and so just directed all traffic to his system, thus of course making it work, and left. He must have known the effect of that, but showed absolutely no regard for our software, not at all worried about changing the setup without asking anybody first or considering the consequences. Oh no, he'd made his software work, he'd done his job. We called Darius and told him who's fault it was, since he seemed so keen on blaming us for it, but also said that we couldn't get this router to do what we needed to make them both work because it was useless. I advise you all never to buy a D-Link router if you want it to actually perform any routing - it'll just about manage as a switch, maybe. He said if we wanted to get another router, he'd send someone to get what we requested. We asked to come along, but oh no, that'd use extra fuel to get us first.
Instead, the first thing we were brought was no use, and so we had to call Rob back and get him to take us there anyway to return it and get something else - would've saved fuel to take us in the first place, mm? But don't listen to us, we're only right. The new router though, worked perfectly, and within a few minutes we had all the computers online and NAT rules directing relevant traffic to the camera system. We left, satisfied that finally, it was all over - the connection would be fine for as long as it was left alone. No thanks to the one who broke it all though. Although, he turned up towards the end, and we got into some conversation about him becoming a reseller of the new software... so... meh. I hate it when people do stupid annoying things, and then do helpful things. I have no concept of balancing these things - I will never allow kindness to excuse malice, and nothing in between either. Everything everybody does to me directly or indirectly, stays. I do not forgive, or forget. I'm reasonable, and I can acknowlege when people try to correct their mistakes, but they'll always be there. If we can come to a deal it'll be beneficial, but I don't trust him with anything important.
That night was... wonderful, in a very strange way. I was talking to Atieh whilst I was waiting for Shanna to come online, when suddenly, I was scared. Terrified. It came from nowhere and I had no idea why, but there was just fear. It did fade a little, but very slowly, and even when Shanna did show up about an hour later, it was still quite strong. I couldn't say much, and after being invited to view her webcam, just found myself watching intently. My feelings did start to change though, and we had a short, simple, but meaningful conversation which left me no longer afraid, but something else... and much stronger. The rest is mine. It was perfect.
Today I decided to recover some of my missing sleep, and got up just before 5pm to call back Graham, who'd tried to call me earlier. He told me that he'd been down to Wallisdown for more connection problems. I couldn't believe what he'd said, after all the effort to get it all working... but luckily, it wasn't what I thought. He discovered that the connection wasn't down, just slow. The camera system had decided to start using as much bandwidth as it could, and with the lack of any kind of load balancing, was killing everything else. A ping request now comes back with a round trip time of over 2000ms, which is awful. At least though, it's actually working, just slowly - someone else is definately going to have to fix that though. There's no fault of ours anywhere here, the supplier of the camera system will just have to limit the bandwidth usage of their software. Now who's incompatible, eh?
I meant to get on with some CaliHQ3, but for some reason that never happened and my achievements of the night include only ordering some headphones. I found someone on Amazon selling the same model as my old ones (which were great, before Connor destroyed them) for a penny. Yeah the price is suspicious, and indeed as I suspected they make up the price in delivery charges; a common trick, but the total was still only £5, so I ordered them. Having owned some, I know they're good quality, and will certainly do until I can get some pwnage ones. Anything would be better than these little Creative ones that came with my MP3 player. I really do wonder why they bother including crap headphones with such products - surely it doesn't give a good impression of sound quality. I know the output from the player is very good, having plugged it into my speakers, but the headphones don't come close to exposing that.
Now... I don't know. I'm waiting for Shanna, but I'm stupid, because she's not coming tonight. I'm just waiting anyway, for some reason. I'll just see how the night goes from here.