Aaaand.. we're done.

18:34.17 - Tuesday 4th January 2005   (Link to This Entry)

Phew! Applause all round - we finally called it a night at 4am today, as I taped up the last of the jiffy bags containing the program, ready for posting at 9am this morning. Of course, this didn't go entirely as planned since I woke up at 8am, switched off the alarm and promptly went back to sleep for another hour. When I did eventually get to the Post Office at roughly 09:45, I found I'd left my bank card at home and had to go all the way back and get it. Gah.

And of course, no sooner had we finished everything and posted it off - we found more buglets. This is traditional, however, and happens with all software projects, so we're not too pertubed about it. The customer had a couple of cosmetic changes for the website as well, but they were simple enough.

So now we wait.

Once the agents get the program and get it installed on their laptops I'm sure they will come up with their own lists of bugs and feature requests, many of which we will either have fixed or we'll ignore completly. I don't think there are any major problems in the program or with the website (although there was something about notification messages, come to think of it) - the first revision is actually pretty clean. Huzzah!

Return to Work (!)

21:24.09 - Tuesday 4th January 2005   (Link to This Entry)

Got an email from a contact this morning with the subject ''Return to Work'', saying he'd be over tomorrow (meaning Wednesday) to get back into the swing of things - cheeky monkey! What have I been doing for the past two weeks, then? Still, I suppose I better get a bath and a shave and look at least half awake before he gets here around 10 tomorrow morning.

I don't actually have a lot of other work to do. There's this sign/engraving thing that I want to get out of the way, and a luxury restaurant thing I am still waiting to be paid for, but other than that there's not an awful lot on the horizon. Of course, this could all change within the next 24 hours, but hopefully there will be none of the craziness from the last fortnight.

A nice, easy start to the new year - that's what I want!

Bloody Nuisance Bloody Callers

21:48.40 - Tuesday 4th January 2005   (Link to This Entry)

Got a weird phone call this afternoon. M answered it and promptly referred it to me as she is wont to do when she doesn't have a clue what's going on - kinda like it's my fault that these weird people are calling us. Anyway the guy says he's compiling a list for Market Research or something, doesn't have any information about us whatsoever and wants our details, blah blah blah.

I explain that we're registered for the Telephone Preference Service and that we're not supposed to receive calls like this, and he says that it's nothing to do with TPS - the computer has dialled my number at random. At this point I tell him that if he has no info whatsoever about the number he's just rung, then I'm not going to help him, and put the phone down.

I can't believe some of the crappy business practices about these days. Seems everyone and his dog wants to flog adverts for crap via any means possible, no matter what. If the organisation that rang me had been a little busier, this could well have been one of those silent calls that you read so much about.

Look, I'm all angry now! I need to chill out.

Thought of the Day

22:22.52 - Tuesday 4th January 2005   (Link to This Entry)

While talking to Booday about stuff...
The world is full of things that look nice, but which are ultimately uninspiring and cheap mass-produced rubbish.