DWUTKA at marlow.com
DWUTKA at marlow.com
Thu May 27 16:10:35 CDT 2004
<snip> ... This reminds me of that scene in Shainghai Noon where the guy is burried in the dirt, and he is only given chopsticks to dig his way out. :). I've never had a problem w/ clients and their IT people... so I can't say I would have resorted to the same methods you took... in any case you mentioned that he had bad db practices, so choosing an overly restrictive field is very appropriate, still you stuck it to your client who in this case was a developer. -- -Francisco <snip> Well it's a back and forth issue on this particular project. I won't go into details on that. Don't take this particular case as typical with me. I do a LOT of work for this particular guy. Sometimes he gets the deal of the century from me, sometimes he gives me way more then what I did for the project, and sometimes it's just even. This particular job was one where we both got hammered really hard. He made a lot of decisions with that job, that I strongly disagreed with, and he knew it. So yes, I stuck him, because it was his decision for a lot of things. We were fought by their IT department on a lot of things too, and this guy doesn't have my IT experience to really bypass their issues. Yes, it was a lot like the scene you describe (though I haven't seen the movie, I understand the premise). There were a lot of other issues too. His client contacts me with issues. If it's an issue I am responsible for, I fix without charge, or hassle. If it's his arena, or new specs, I go through him, and ignore his client. But I went to this client a while back, with the developer, and while there, I fixed some of the 'data' issues (Not problems with my stuff, and not really problems with his stuff, just people entering incorrect data....which kind of leans towards his problems, cause he uses .... ahem... user entered text fields as primary keys.... (please, those of you faint of heart, please go outside and relax for a bit, I promise I won't shock you again like that in this email. <grin>). During that 'meeting'/'local fix time', there were a few field issues, which he (MY client, the developer) said he would change. Three weeks go by, and I have his client asking me when the changes are going to be made. No one can get ahold of him, they are getting very impatient. So I made the call to go ahead and fix them. I first asked their IT department to do it. (described exactly what they needed to do...would have taken THEM about 2 minutes, if that). I had talked to the developer before hand, and he said he had spent a lot of time muddling around in that 'web tool', and had no idea how to make the changes. So with all of that behind me, I did what I knew how to do, safely, and it worked. And your gosh darn right I stuck it too him. I didn't hold him at gun point though. He and I trade services quite often, so he could have bartered with me. But he didn't even try. I think he knew I was the one that pulled HIM out of the fire on that, because his client was getting pissed at him. Just as another little peice of info, I've moved 3 times in the past year (once because of a woman....., once because of a fire, and once to get away from a woman. Actually, the fire was started (supposedly) by some kid being pissed at a girlfriend, and tossing a maltose (sp?) cocktail in her window. So, I've moved three time because of women. Okay, this is getting OT.) Anyhow, this developer has helped me move three times. We have a pretty solid relationship. Drew