in the world and need to vent.
First, on Thursday, someone I sold an application to a year and a half
ago emailed me saying the application no longer works on the new version
of ColdFusion. I explained the application was written to work on CF5
and that I made no guarantees on future upgrades. I asked her what
server it is on, and all she says is it is the latest version of CF.
So I assume there is a problem with the code, I go home and it seems to
work fine on CFMX. I get on the phone with her and learn that the latest
version of CF means BlueDragon. She had a contractor come in and make
some updates, and he sold her on an upgrade, got the server going and
never tested the application. He did, however, make $4k for a three day
project.
So last Friday I was rewriting code for this lady all night. At around 2
am Saturday, she finally starts to understand this is not getting done
in a weekend and she needs to roll back to CF5. Of course, she is not
the admin, and she wants to know if I can come out to CA to take care of
it. Having a job to return to on Monday, I got on the phone with the
guys at the co-location facility and get them to restore a backup.
Problem solved for the present.
The best part of this: I didn't get paid a dime for the overnight
support.
Around 8:00 AM Saturday I get a call from another client saying
something is wrong with his database. He has an online catalog I built
that ties into eBay. I go to the site and there is no content at all
whatsoever.
I ask him what happened recently to cause this. He had a friend who is a
'Web guru' come in last week to work on the database and add a 'News and
Events' section to his site (he runs a computer shop that sells things
online, don't ask me why he is adding a 'News and Events' section). Now,
I know how this guy does his inventory, it's kept on a local
installation of Oracle that replicates over to his hosting company. So I
think to myself: the dude messed something up. All I have to do is ride
up to Pittsburg, push a button and look like a hero. No big deal, and I
get out of town for a day with my daughter, it's worth the three hour
drive.
I get there just before noon and take a look at Oracle, but there is
nothing there. The 'guru' did his work on an ancient backup of the
production database that didn't have half of the tables that support the
site. He overwrote the existing tablespace and completely wiped out all
the catalog data.
I ask the client if he has been switching the tapes. He responds: "Oh,
you mean running the back ups you told me to do every night? I haven't
really kept up on that, is that going to be a problem?" Meanwhile, about
20 emails come in from eBay announcing various bids have been won but we
have no record of what specifically has been bid on. We call the 'guru',
who turns out to be a 55-year old Y2K programmer who wants to talk about
how he has been out of work for three years more than the database. He
tells me he has backups of everything and is going to bring them in
right away.
I'm thinking we're back in business and start looking around the store,
there is a ton of surplus technology including routers, monitors, and
complete systems. I find a poster printer (the kind they have at Kinkos)
and the owner tells me he would be willing to part with it for my time
in getting the site working. I think that sounds like a good offer
(since this thing probably cost $5K and I wouldn't be there long
anyways) and take him up on his offer.
The 'guru' gets there with his backups and leaves just as I'm putting
the disk in the drive. The backups turn out to be backups of the new
database without data. Meanwhile, 20 more emails come in from eBay.
That's when things got crazy. The owner says he has to go find out what
these items are that need to be shipped, and told me to figure out how
to get him back up and running.
I was smart enough to bring a diagram of the database I wrote last year,
so I could at least restore the basic structure. Tthe only tool for
doing all this was SQL+, which meant I was writing the CREATE TABLE
statements y hand... and there is nothing I hate more than typing CREATE
TABLE statements.
His inventory is bar coded and the listings he has on eBay reference the
bar-codes. This meant we needed to scan the inventory again to get
things going. I think, this isn't a big shop, we can have this done in
time for dinner.
I tell the customer the situation and he goes ballistic. He explains we
are not talking about just the stuff in the shop, but also the stuff in
the warehouse next door. He takes me over to see what we are talking
about. You could park a cesna in there sideways and it is stacked floor
to ceiling with computers, chairs, books, tables, water coolers, TVs,
VCRs, and other junk.
When I see this I go ballistic and tell him this is his fault for not
backing anything up. He has nine people that work for him, he says they
are all too busy to change a tape once every morning.
Things continued spiralling for a while before we realized this was
solving nothing. We came up with a plan, he would call in his entire
staff and I would get the database back online. This would let us get
the inventory back online before the end of the weekend. Next week, he
can start typing all of his descriptions back into the site.
I get started with rewriting the database, and the client gets busy
macking back in his big chair and bellyaching with his white-trash
millionaire friends.
Takes me four hours to get the database running, by this time it's 7pm
and none of his employees have arrived. He wants to know, since right
now all he's really selling are laptops, if I wouldn't mind scanning in
all of the laptops and finding their technical specs on the Internet.
I tell him no, my work is done and he is responsible for the content. He
tells me the deal is the site has to work and it doesn't work without
content. We have a deal, and he doesn't have to pay a dime if I don't
get the site working.
So the guy forces my hand and I get with the content. We get all the
laptops scanned that night and I spent most of the next day working on
the descriptions. I do some of the monitors and bare-bones systems too,
and I get maybe 500 items into the database.
He finally agrees we are done and offers to throw in the cartridges and
the power cable for the poster printer (what a guy).
Finally, the weekend ends and I am on my way home. The printer was too
wide to fit in the car, so we packed it in a blanket and tied it down to
the trunk with some twine.
Driving uphill on the Baltimore beltway, I hit a rock or something.
There is a loud thud, followed by a long noise not unlike the one wipers
make on a dry windshield. I look in the rear view mirror and see a dark
object bouncing around in the middle of the highway, and people are
swerving to get around it.
The printer had come loose and slid out of the back of the car. I pulled
over, but was unable to retrieve it before a large truck came through
and smashed it to bits. The stand is dangling from the trunk of my car,
I put it back in and leave.
For all this effort I get: a stainless steel stand.
M
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