L’enfer, c’est les stupide de personnes

I have a customer.  He wanted me to hold his hand while he tried some fairly complex SQL code on his own.  When it became evident that he was never going to take the time to learn the db he was taking the data from (and was thereby failing), I told him I could do the work myself as a billable service or he could be on his own.

He chose to accept my work as a billable service.  Fine.

It has since become clear that, if he knows what he wants, he doesn’t wish to tell me.  I have finally resorted to, over and over, asking him to please give me about three mocked-up records from his hypothetical output to demonstrate what he is looking for.  In answer to this (three times so far today) he keeps sending me the code he was working with when he admitted that he didn’t know what he was doing.

How can he possibly believe that offering me code that DOESN’T DO WHAT HE WANTS IT TO DO is going to help me produce code that does?

I think he doesn’t know what he wants, and is afraid to admit it.  I can’t explain his behavior any other way.

Crossposted from Epinephrine & Sophistry

The Matrix has me, but I don’t have the Matrix

My laptop just lost the ability to log onto the wireless network.  My muscles are spasming, my mouth is dry.  I can feel cramps gripping my abdomen with clawed vice grips.

I’m not addicted.  I don’t need it.  I just want to be online, that’s all.

I don’t need it.

*shivers & fidgets*

Hey, anyone spot me for ten minutes of bandwidth?  Just a dime bag, man, that’s all….

Crossposted from Epinephrine & Sophistry

Okay! I’m alive! Lay off!

I spoke with the financial consultants, who talked to me for 45 minutes before admitting they had nothing for me in the court case, but have use afterwards.  During this time I was at work, and continuing to work…three emails came in while I was on the phone; fussy customer irritated by deadline’s passing on cow-orker’s abandoned report, fussy customer irritated because I haven’t installed revisions (I had, but she didn’t understand them and so became even more fussy), and a customer who had lost the report I sent her and was blaming me.

I got off the phone and began to compose  and email begging for help from Supervisor with cow-orkers report, that being the agravating one of the bunch, and coworker came up.

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Leaving Martyrdom By The Tracks

Today was terrible, horrible, no good, and very bad. I overslept. There was no coffee, and when I found things for breakfast it was a bad bran muffin that I never got to eat and a mushy banana that I only got a bite of by almost-lunch. Then I didn’t get lunch until 1:00 and it sort of sucked so much that I finished my mushy banana so that if I died the sucky lunch wouldn’t be the last thing I ever ate.

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