I have never encountered this much pain in the arse customer than the current one before.

I’ve done twice/thrice more complicated and bigger projects than this project in the past but never ever had this much of discussions, arguments, back and forth explanations and long meetings after meetings with the customer before.

I grew a few white hairs after handling this project and going to grow some more since the project is no near to the closing stage.

I thought I’m 90% done after sending out the last build and the user manual. I’m only expecting minor bug fixes but NOOOOOOOO he just has to go change the whole damn lot and have to fix almost everything from the DB schema to almost every form.

It’s all because of this F*ed up requirement spec and F*ed up customer to start with. I need a bad ass project manager to handle this kind of bad ass customer. Unfortunately, there is no proper project manager was assigned to this project, thinking it’s going to be a small one. I know I should
turn myself into a bad ass bitch to take matters into my own hand but the problem is I can’t become the bad ass bitch; I don’t know how.

It’s not that easy to become a good “bad ass bitch” when you’re trying to become one. You need certain skill in that area as well. I’m terrible in that area. The most I can do is I start raising my voice and become angrier but there is no art/tactic in it.

My main problem is that the angrier I am, the quieter I become. I’ll just yell back a few words then I won’t talk anymore. I got mess up in the head that I can no longer put those mess into proper word. I need some trained/naturally talented bad arses to back me up with the arguments. I think I need to go take a course on the art of bitching. Let me know if anyone providing one.

Anyways, my boss is just so nice dealing with customers. He accepts anything if they pay for it. Ok, it’s actually a good thing if they pay for it but what if they don’t pay and just keep bullying me and dragging the project on and on?

There should be a time when we say, “That’s it, no more, we are done, no nil nada F* off!”, and close the damn project.

Anyways, I’ll have to do more analysis and effort sizing on the new changes. I’ll bitch more about it later. Bye!

Yesterday, I went to see my brother’s squash game at Defence Club. There is this Fiji Bitter Squash Tournament going on here at Suva for this whole week – every evening after 5pm. My bro’s game was supposed to be on Monday but his opponent didn’t turn up so they postponed the game to Tuesday (yesterday). He played against one Indian man around 40+ (hmm I forgot his name) and was thrashed badly.

It was the very first squash tournament for my brother since he started playing squash a few months back. We use to play Badminton only and this year my bro started playing squash with some of his friends so he still has a lot to learn before he can compete in the tournament. Nevertheless, he signed himself up in B Grade thinking C Grade is for kids and he would do fine in B. Well the result was he got knocked down pretty badly; he wasn’t really in his best form also and the opponent was quite experienced player who knows how to make him run around in court. So he lost his game and went into Plate pool and will be playing again today at Victoria Park. I guess I’ll go watch again this evening.

Aung’s very first squash game

One of the Ministers, Mr. Kenneth Zinck (and a few other big faces I sometimes see on TV), came to play as well, I’m not sure he came just to play for fun or was in the competitions as I couldn’t stay long to watch his game. He was cheering his buddy’s game quite loudly/actively. I was taking a few videos of the game and itching to take him as well but that would be awkward to directly shoot at him so I was waiting for his game but I left early and missed the game. I think he wanted his picture taken as well cos’ he kept smiling at my way while cheering for his buddy (Ok may be just my thought) .

I know him as one of the most active sport lovers among Fiji Government Ministers especially on Rugby games. We are sure to see him cheering from the front row in almost every Rugby games, yelling and waving his things (the flag/the banners I mean) at the camera. LOL. So we normally search for him everytime there is a Rugby 7 game on TV. Quite a celebrity he is. I also remember him very well after seeing him wear Tweety Bird necktie on one of the interview sessions on TV. Quite a fashion for him. It was so funny to see a Minister wearing some childish necktie with big Tweety bird at the bottom. I guess it must have been a gift from his kids or something. But that was one of the unforgettable sights about him.

There were some players from Nadi and other towns participating in the tournament as well. I met 4 young guys from Nadi; their coach was pretty nice man who encouraging us to join their club and telling us about his 4 players. His son plays in A Grade and other 3 guys play in Bs. He was also coaching a Korean girl who lost in ladies game against a Fijian girl. He said he also will be playing in the competition but I missed his game.

Coaching a Korean Girl

The Game with a guy from Nadi

Well you see, I had some ulterior motives, it’s not just watching my brother’s game but I went there to check out some good looking players but turn out only the old men were there. The Nadi guys are quite cute but they’re just too young, under 19. hehe Oh but there is this handsome organizer, I heard he’s very good player and former Fiji representative or something. Aww but it’s a pity he got ring on his finger haha. Nah I’m kidding, I just went there to cheer for my brother’s first game and also getting some material for my blog (Ok there’s still a motive behind but good motive).

Here are some more short videos I took: Two Games Mix + Score Sheet | Another Mix Game | Practice Games | Game Sheets

I’m going to watch the games today also at Victoria Park. One of our colleagues is playing in C grade and I’m sure more games to see today. They are having this tournament in 3 different places, Victoria Park, Merchant Club and Defence Club due to limited availability of courts in each club. Anyways, I hope I can watch some nice games this evening and hope that my brother and our colleague play well in their game also.

I haven’t written about office muses for a while and thought I’ll write something about last week muses from our department. Here is the story.

You see, we have this disc stakka where we stored all our department softwares. It’s attached to a spare box sitting on my desk and I kind of become an unofficial librarian. Whoever ask to borrow software from me, I’ll just eject the discs from the stakka and hand it to them. There is no record of how many discs we have and who borrowed them. The stakka itself is installed for everyone hence anybody can login to the box and eject any disc as they like. The result is we lost a few important discs over the months. I have no idea who took them but discs are obviously keep missing from the disc stakka. We sent a few notification emails to everyone in the office asking about the missing discs but nobody responded.

I kind of feel responsible about it since it was sitting on my desk and I am the one who is giving out the discs most of the time (unless ofcos they login to the box and eject the discs themselves when I’m away). The problem with me is that whenever I am into something or concentrating on a task at hand, I seriously don’t care about things happening around. I don’t see or hear anything unless someone pokes at me or waves in front of face. Even so, I don’t hear half of the thing they are saying. So when someone asks a disc from me while I am busy, I just remove the disc and give it to them without looking at their faces or noting their names. That must be one of the reasons people take advantage of my ignorance to snatch some discs from me.

Anyways, last week we had a very loud and noisy discussing about how to maintain our softwares. Most of my colleagues say not to borrow software to anybody outside our department. Our HR manager disagrees and wants everyone to share the software the company owns. (Ok, I wasn’t in the discussion/arguments as it was happening at one of our colleagues’ desk and I just over heard bits and pieces.) Finally we agree to properly keep track of the disc movement in some way. Boss made up a software borrowing register spreadsheet and mail it to everyone saying, unless and otherwise people fill in the register prior to picking up a disc, we are not to give it to them. But the spreadsheet was editable by everyone which is not a good idea so I created a form out of it and pass around the form. After checking the form, one of our colleagues argues that the form is very easy to fill and we like to make thing difficult for whoever comes to borrow our discs. So he suggested a few adjustments to the form.

Here are some of his suggestions:

Way too easy, we need some pain here. Can we add some more fields :
Put this under “Borrower Details“

• Weight (kg)
• Height (cm)
• Eye colour (offer Green, Blue, Grey, Brown)
• Blood Type (offer A, B, AB, O) (suggestion to add negative, positive as well)
• Hair Colour (offer Black, Grey, Brown, Red, Blond)
• Random Question from http://www.survey-machine.com/take_survey/627331 that we’ll change every week or so, we’ll start with no. 1 “Have you ever peed your pants after age 8?”

Make all fields required.

There is a few more input from other colleagues as well such as “Do you have any recent health problem say in last 6 months?”, “Provide the medical certificate to prove your blood type”, etc…

How about that!? Is the form painful enough yet? Haha, I’m not sure how many borrowers will be able to fill in that form and surely throw some serious curses at us.

Anyways, I felt sorry for whoever have to fill in the form, and I did not implement those “Borrower Details” but left the simple form as below and see how things turn out. We had a few beta tests with our gang and now it is released to suva_everyone. One serious flaw we try to ignore is that anyone can login to the machine and remove the disc while I’m away from my desk. But for the time being, it’s doing quite well without complaint, a few minute ago, someone filled in the form and took 3 discs from me. I wonder how long this system will last though.

So how do you keep track of the softwares in your organization? Do share with us some of the cool systems you use in your company. And ofcos’ you are most welcome to make suggestion to our system above as well.

I’m not sure it’s a spam mail or a proper mail. I did not write anything about salt on my site but posted a short link on GV the other day. Is that why this person email me or am I thinking too much out of spam mail? Well who cares, if it is a spam mail then it’s pretty good one. If it’s a proper mail then I’m sure whoever see this post and interested might contact him?

Feed Back Message from Mayvelous.com
Shahidul Haq Sikder wrote:

(more…)

I was reading this post, “Endless Conversation: The Unfolding Saga of Blogs, Twitter, Friendfeed, and Social Sites” from Web 2.0 Blog and checked out a few twitter applications mentioned in there.

I LOVE Summize and Twitterfeed; I use them the most. I find this two, Tweetwheel and Twitter Charts, pretty interesting especially the Tweetwheel.

The result wheel is just amazing and you can hover over to see all those links in your connections.

Beautiful isn’t it? Well, if you have time, try play around with those. I bet you’ll love a few.

Just pop in to say, I’m back in Fiji and will be posting about Bali trip soon. For now I’m just resizing the photos and uploading a few on Flickr. Flickr keeps screwing up my uploads, it’s just not uploading well at all. Tried direct upload from the web as well as using the Flickr Uploadr but still not working as it should be. May be their server’s over heated, I’ll try again later.

It was very tiring yet very informational trip for me. Met lots of new faces and enjoyed talking with a few. Some of the discussions in the conference were very heated and too advance for me to understand but it was a good listening and enjoyed taking notes. I took a few videos of the parallel sessions but not sure whether to upload them online or not. May be not.

The conference was not really for me (actually almost none at all) but I’m glad to have attended such event and enjoyed my new found experiences. We couldn’t get to visit anywhere, not even to Bali town, except a day trip to Yogakarta. No shopping nor swimming for me. There are lots of beautiful swimming pools in the resort and the lovely beach in front but I couldn’t even dip my feet in there due to very short stay and very tight/packed schedules. So sad.

Anyhow, now I’m back and catching up news and feeds on my GReader and twitter; a lot happened while I was a way for a week. Gosh I couldn’t even leave my eyes away from you for a bit and now see what happen! There goes Nargis, Nargis, Nargis and Myanmar, Myanmar, Myanmar almost every news feeds (I see Mong done a GREAT job covering the news on GV, many thanks) and now it’s China earthquake, earthquake. Geez the world is such a mess! Alright stay calm, don’t worry, I’m back so everything will be alright and stay tune with mayvelous. (Yah right! hehe) My bad, I shouldn’t be making jokes as serious things happening all over the world, but then laughter is the best medicine sometimes right?

I was having lunch and having some random thoughts. I don’t know how exactly but I was thinking about the word “fauna” from “flora fauna”. I forgot what I was thinking but when I realised, I was googling the word “floral fauna”. The first hit I got was this “Floral/Fauna” photoset by sigth on flickr.

It’s floral alright; I’m seeing lots of flower in the set. Everything seems pretty much the usual flower photos should be, but then there is it; this one photo really (…) me that I just have to click and view in detail.

It’s titled “Aroma“, a photo of seven year old girl embracing the roses. It’s so…ok, what’s the word I’m looking for? It’s the way she closed her eyes, her hand posture, the angle of her tilting head, the three roses. Everything about it is so… Captivating, enchanting…no, no I’m looking for the word starts with “Mes” …I keep saying like messimize, maximiz, mezzame and couldn’t get the right word out of it.

So, I asked my bro for help and he goes – immerse?, engrossed?, magnetized? No, not those but it has to start with “Mes”, then he finally said, “Mesmerised“. Yep, that’s the word! Then one of my colleagues asked who’s been mesmerised and he told me that the word is after Dr. Mesmer who specialised in hypnotism. Well, I didn’t know about that, so I quickly look through wiki and there he is – Franz Anton Mesmer.

Franz Anton Mesmer (born Friedrich Anton Mesmer May 23, 1734 – March 5, 1815) discovered what he called magnétisme animal (hypnosis in 1842, his name being the root of the English verb ‘mesmerize’.

Arh like that!, I learn something new. Anyways where was I? Oh yes, the photos; I also checked out the other three photos of the same girl. For some reason, I cannot grab the direct url or save the images. I guess it must be to do with sharing privileges on the photos. Respecting the photographer’s rights, I don’t want to do a screen grab hence just get a small thumbnail of each photos and linked them to the proper page.

The 2nd one “Flower profile“, things that attracted me is her smooth, silky skin – her cheek and neck line and the way she’s looking at the roses.

The 3rd one “Roses” is … ohh soo cute! How so very lovely her face and action on trying to kiss/smell the roses.

The pose in “Brita” is interesting too, but it’s too monochrome compare to other three. Still, it’s very pretty. It says “actress” in the description. Indeed the little actress.

Well, what do you think? Very mesmerising aren’t they?

Alright, I shall continue with my lunch since I’m satisfied, contented, pleased, delighted, thrilled DONE with … what was I searching again? Oh yah, the floral-fauna search, which I somehow ended with mesmerizing the “Aroma”. And why am I posting this bullcraps? Cos’ I WANT TO! Hump!