Software Consultants. Die. Die. Die.

Oh you software consultants.* I appreciate your role. Really. I respect you and value the work you do, namely talking with the clients so I don't have to. I worked for years in various jobs where I had to face the customer, and I can appreciate trying to keep a balance between doing your job well and managing what are sometimes ludicrious customer demands, from several customers even. I try not to waste your time.

Here are some tips on how you can not waste my time.

1. Please don't write crap specifications.

This is so obvious to me, I can't believe I have to mention it, so forgive me if I'm a little brusque. This one is doubly important as it will save two people a lot of nerves and confusion: your developer and your tester. Teamwork, a'ight? A'ight.

spec·i·fi·ca·tion –noun

Usually, specifications. a detailed description or assessment of requirements, dimensions, materials, etc., as of a proposed building, machine, bridge, etc.

ge, etc.
- Dictionary.com

Here are some excerpts of some actual specifications that have made their way across my desk lately:

"New business rule must be created."

"Add new drop down to form."

"Create new table for new form"

"XYZ Security Profile should be modified to allow client access to ABC Module / Form."

Nevermind that reconfiguring the security profile in such a way will shatter the security profile everywhere else and now its completely destroyed and we've got to fix it now to make everything peaches n' cream.  Please consider specifying new security profiles instead of asking for endless modifications of current configurations.  Nit picking at security here, patching up an access issue there (over and over again)--this never goes down well.

      2.  If you client has paid for 300+ additional security profiles and only an absurd combination will work to get anything to function correctly, then say so early on!  Statements like "Yeah, its confusing if you've never used it before." and "Oh, yeah." only make me want to karate chop you in the throat. 

     3.  Return phone calls / emails.  Again please see my opening paragraph.  I am probably the last person to get upset about your busy schedule and postphoned calls.  However please trust that I am not calling to waste your time and most likely have a question about something which will affect the end product for your customer.  If you don't answer you run the risk of it being completely wrong.  Something I am sure you want to avoid explaining.  I try to help you, so you look brillant in your job.  Please get back in touch.

Again, I appreciate you and your role.  If it weren't for you, we'd probably have to spend more time on project coordination than our actual jobs.  Everyone can take a moment and think about the little things they could do to help their team members jobs a little easier to do.  I personally hate writing emails, but take those extra minutes to write short messages to relevant people about the progress of their project because a) I know it's important to them, b) saves me interruptions later in the week when they would come by and ask anyways.  Your five minutes of time could help someone save 30 minutes of frustration.

*To those consultants who do their job well, and they exist, this doesn't apply to you.

This Just In: Roman Polanski NOT cool enough to make up for being repellant creep

We've all read various accounts of what happened 30 some years ago, to summarize a couple of basic points:

1. The then 13 year old child was 13 years old. Mr. Polanski in his 40s.
   
2. Roman Polanski requested permission from the victim's mother to photograph the victim for the French edition of Vogue.

Roman Polanski ended up being charged with pretty much every charge you can possibly be charged with involving inappropriate behavior with minors under 14: oral copulation, rape, sodomy and so on.

Some would like to argue that she appeared older than she actually was. My counter: why would Mr. Polanski bother to ask her mother permission to photograph her, if he believed at the outset that the victim was not a minor?

This isn't intended to be a post concerning the legal ins and outs of this case, but one thing stands to reason: Mr. Polanski obviously did not want to go to trial for the several charges levelled against him by the State of California in the 1970s. He accepted a plea bargin to reduce the charges to a statutory rape charge. If he was really so adamant about his innocence of the charges presented to him, the he would not have accepted a plea bargain, basically an admission of guilt, to face a charge of a much less severity. He would have been angry at such accusations and would have defended himself to the end.

Instead he accepts a plea bargin and after some time served for psychiatric evaluations, was released on bond where he promptly fled the country, being "on the run" for 30 some years.

I don't know about you, but all of that just screams GUILTY AS HELL to me!

Ok, ok. I will give him the fact that he was probably freaked out and possibly very intimadated as a foreigner by the American justice system. As an American living in Germany, I'll vouch for a very real fear of foreign law enforcement, courts and their processes. I'll also allow that he was scared of the outcome and decided to leave before being wrongly convicted (in his eyes). Why then stay on the run for over 30 years? Wouldn't you want your good name cleared as soon as possible, instead of having these nasty accusations floating around that you're a child raper?

Obviously not.

My point of all this is: why are so many "actors" and many others in the arts coming to his defense? He's allegedly plied a 13 year old girl with drugs and booze and used her however he pleased against her wishes. At the very least he's admitted to having sex with a 13 year old girl (that's what the plea bargain amounts to). Doesn't anyone else find that absolutely appalling? Of course there is the phrase "innocent until proven guilty", so we cannot unilaterally say that he did rape a young girl every which way till Sunday.

However he did agree to the plea bargin, which does amount to sex with a 13 year old girl. Let's forget all about Roman Polanski for a moment. At a work get together, you discover a work collegue who is in his mid-40s, is bonking consenting 13 year old little girls. Your co-worker earns a lot of money because of his job and likes to spend it. He appears wealthy and influential.

The girls are consenting so it's not this big secret you discovered appalls you, right? Riiiiiiight.

You still look at your co-worker the same way and totally respect him still, right? Riiiiiight.

The truth is, if you had a similar situation arise in your own life, you wouldn't think twice about thinking the worst sort about this sleazy person-and that's just someone who sleeps with consenting 13 year old girls, not someone who drugs them to make the raping easier.

Yes, some 13 year old girls develop crushes or infatuations with much older men or men in authority. However, this is what separates the children from the adults. The adults are supposed to know that sexual relations between a person aged in their mid-40s and one that is 13, is just wrong.

I would have thought anybody would have known that. I mean, duh.

So I don't understand this may-jah outpouring of sympathy for Roman Polanski. Arguements of "it happened 30 some years ago" don't really work logically. Good point dipshits! Should we also forget about the Holocaust because it happened 60 years ago? What about the U.S. Civil Rights movement? According to that logic we should start updating our history books as we have a 30 year statue of limitations now.

What should have been a simple plea bargain agreement to a charge which would have pretty much amounted to a slap on the wrist in the grand scheme of things has turned into one of the most ludicrious I've witnessed this year.

Just go to California, go to court like a man and like you should have done ages ago, get your fine/2 week prison sentence/community service deal, what ever it is, and just be done with it. Statutory rape is not the worse charge you could stand trial for, it is not first-degree murder, and as he is now 70 something they are not going to put him away for years and years for being on the run.

Go to California. Stand trial. Accept responsibilty. Stop looking like bitchy old nag.

Morons are calling offering "free gifts"

My cell phone service provider called me the other day.

"Hi! Since you've been a long time customer of ours, we'd like to show our appreciation by letting you try out our Surf Stick for free for four weeks!"

Wooooooow. Four whole weeks. Really? I'm in awe of your generosity.

First of all dipshits, I can read. Everywhere I look these days, I see advertisements literally everywhere for the same offer from the same company, so I'm confused how this "amazing" offer consitutes any kind of reward for being a long-time valued customer.

It's pretty insulting. Why not give out a free phone? Better yet, why not offer one month of free services instead? That's something you can really appreciate, but trying to force feed your client base to try out your new toy in every way imaginable is not the way to go about it.

Not content with raping your eyes with their visual ad pollution pushing the Surf Stick, now they call - constantly. Now that their wave of paper advertisements has failed to convince the public they MUST have this new gadget they've resorted to vocal harassment, hoping against hope if they disturb you enough at work you'll finally give in just to stop the calls.

How DO they think those bills get paid anyways?