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!

In our current project, we have to work with WinForms using VS 2005 and VSS as the project source control. There are two solid developers and one developer/Product Manager involved in the coding of this project. Our Product Manager suggests and prefers we use VSS rather than SVN for better source management (check in/out). As for us, developers (me and my bro), we had a great time using SVN in the last project and prefer to use SVN; nevertheless both of us are flexible and agreed to work with VSS after a few discussion. Things are fine when I focus on designing forms and my bro working on code behinds. But the problem arises when we start testing on a few forms, which need both of us to work on design view.

In VS2005 WinForm IDE, it adds or writes to the licenses.licx file whenever you use custom controls/third party controls such as Infragistic in your form. Though I’m not so sure, I observe that the licenses.licx file is not needed if you work entirely with normal winform controls, but with third party controls, it acts as a config file storing the references of the controls.

Once you add a project to VSS DB, the licenses.licx file is always binded since it’s part of the project property. You can check out the code just fine but when you work with the form design, you’re forced to check out the licenses file. If you don’t/can’t check it out, you can’t do anything to the form design. With VSS, it’s really a pain if one developer checked out the licenses file exclusively, others can’t do any design work on any of the forms. To solve the exclusive checkout on licenses file, we tried to exclude the licenses.licx from the project and let it stay in local folder. Unfortunately, the file itself is part of project property and once it’s excluded, it loses the references as well. For that little experiment, I’ve lost two of my form designs and have to start all over; thank god, they were just small forms. With that failed experiment and out of ideas, we searched for the solution on the web. Found out that it was a known issue for VS2005 IDE and the fix would only available with the next release of Visual Studio. The only work around they suggest so far is to use VSS multiple check out mode.

We don’t want to use Multiple check out mode in our VSS DB for:

1. VSS doesn’t provide individual file multiple check out mode but for the whole DB,
2. There are a few careful steps to take before checking back in the multiple check out file. (You cannot check in directly. You must get latest on that file to ensure you get different versions from other developers to merge the file then only you can successfully check it back in.)
3. VSS merge is a real pain and should I would never trust it. Unless ofcos’ you don’t care about losing some of your codes or have a separate backup, go a head and try it out.
4. There is the need of source control administrator for merging files.
5. And again, don’t trust VSS Merge and can’t rely on it.

But untill the next VS release, it’s the only possible way so we don’t have a choice but to use that method. Don’t have time to dig up properly either. So gonna stuck with this problem for the whole project. It’s just making my life miserable. *sign*

Readings: MS Feedback | Forum Q&A

So I’m one of 53 participants (I hope) of the first round of CSSOff – Jabroni. (too many Ofs)

I always have a problem with world time zones. I had to ask two of my friends from US to check for the time. But their times are also different so they can only tell me the estimates. I did sent the entry a few hours before due time (I hope).

I don’t care whether it went in on-time or not; I’m just satisfied with myself that I’ve done something on my weekend and enjoyed it. It was interesting; took me a couple of hours to think the possible ways to slice and shape it up. I got bored on half way but my bro said I should finish up and done with it, so I did.

I’m not that satisfy with my CSS structure but I think I tried my best. It’s valid xhtml transitional. I don’t know why I didn’t make it xhtml strict…I guess I forgot and used to with my normal xhtml transitional Doctype. I thought of asking a friend to recheck my code but I dismissed that thought cos’ it’s a competition and I should participate it fair and square to find out what I’m capable of. I’ll upload my entry on my site soon.

Here is my entry: CSSOFF – Jabroni (2007-06-01)

Anyways, my weekend was meaningful and busy one…yah not bad. How’s your weekend go? Oh, Do you know any good world time site/application that list different types of time zones and country times? I’m too lazy to google.

Oie Turtle turtle, little tortoise, kuchi kuchi kooo…
Oh hello, I’ve just adopted a Tortoise recently. You see, we use to play with this creature called VSS before, but it got wild from time to time and the guys don’t like it much. I don’t like it in the beginning too. I did strangled and fist-fight with it for many times. But the thing is, you only need a bit of patience and time to tame him down. Once I start petting and playing with it, I tend to understand it’s tender part as well as bewilder sides. As you all know, everything has its own pros and cons; our VSS rode a bumpy road and came as an arse but it has soothen out after a while. At least for me, I’m on fair term with him.

Now I found a new pet. It’s really a sweet and gentle thing to start with. It says “Hello” and wags a little tail. Oh just so cute!

Before you start with the tortoise, you have to know its family tree; the big fat “Turtles” – Subversion (SVN) evolved from their ancestors called CVS back in ice-age. I’m not interested in CVS but I’m very much interested in SVN and how the little TortoiseSVN communicates to its parents.

So I did a bit of research on Googology and started learning about the whole Tortoise family and their neighborhood. So here we go…

What is SVN?

Subversion is an open source application for revision control, is a replacement for CVS. The goal of the subversion project is to build a version control system that is a compelling replacement for CVS in the open source community.

Subversion’s Features (# Parent Site) (# Wiki)

What operating systems does Subversion run on? (# Portability)

All modern flavors of Unix, Win32, BeOS, OS/2, MacOS X.

Subversion is written in ANSI C and uses APR, the Apache Portable Runtime library, as a portability layer. The Subversion client will run anywhere APR runs, which is most places. The Subversion server (i.e., the repository side) is the same, except that it will not host a Berkeley DB repository on Win9x platforms (Win95/Win98/WinME), because Berkeley DB has shared-memory segment problems on Win9x. FSFS repositories (introduced in version 1.1) do not have this restriction; however, due to a limitation in Win9x’s file-locking support, they also don’t work in Win9x.

To reiterate, the Subversion client can be run on any platform where APR runs. The Subversion server can also be run on any platform where APR runs, but cannot host a repository on Win95/Win98/WinMe.

It’s not necessary to set up Apache to use Subversion on the client sides.If you just want to access a repository then can use subversion client such as TortoiseSVN to integrate with the server. Only when you want to host a networked repository then you have to set up on Apache2 or an “svnserver” server. More info see FAQs (#)

What is TortoiseSVN?

It’s a free open-source client for the Subversion version control system, implemented as Windows shell extension. TortoiseSVN manages files and directories over time. Files are stored in a central repository. Its immediate ancestor was TortoiseCVS which talks to CVS server. (# Doc)

TortoiseSVN’s Features (# Doc)

• Shell integration
• Icon overlays
• Easy access to Subversion commands
• Directory versioning
• Atomic commits
• Versioned metadata
• Choice of network layers
• Consistent data handling
• Efficient branching and tagging
• Hackability

You can also integrade with Visual Studio.net using this tool called AnkhSVN. It is a Visual Studio .NET addin for the Subversion version control system. It allows you to perform the most common version control operations directly from inside the VS.NET IDE. Not all the functionality provided by SVN is (yet) supported, but the majority of operations that support the daily workflow are implemented. (#)

I think this is all for today’s learning about my new pet. I’ll add more detail on how to feed things and teach your pet A,B,C,D later.

So you want to adopt a Tortoise too? Here are where you can get it from and how to look after it.

# Get Subversion here
# Get TortoiseSVN here.
# Download AnkhSVN

I’m learning new things these days and am just sharing some notes here. I’m still learning and these technologies are very new for me, hence my notes gonna have heaps of errors and wrong information. You are most welcome to correct them, fill some more in and share you notes with me too. Alright, so we are set to go.

I’ll be updating this post with links so still tune.

• Windows SDK Setup
• Installing .NET 3.0 and Orcas
• Microsoft® Visual Studio® 2005 Service Pack 1
• Basic N-Tier Recap
• Introducing O/R Mapper and LLBLGen Pro
• LLBLGen vs CodeSmith
• Dear DotLucene
• Greetings Subversion and TortoiseSVN
• Source Control Resources
• Versioning Models
• More coming soon…

All the notes are subject to change as I’ll be filling in with more info later.

Obviously, I’m for “Not to Cut”. How can it be good, if you get cut?
This is outrageous, demoralizing, depressing, disappointing, demolishing, deteriorating, d…d…d…damnation.

Socialist Measures? I just don’t understand any of those socialist, communist, democratic, republic, lic, flic, slic, nist, dick!

F%*# Banimarama, if they are blaming on him, but I pretty much doubt it’s cos’ of political situations. Some teams are just slack and management is taking this opportunity to slide along with current situations.

It’s already been crappy pay and 15% is just too much to bear.

(Ignore me, I’m just screaming out my work related issues.)

I’m starting my hand on sql05, vs.net 05, sdk 3.0, WCF, WPF, WWF etc etc… and…

Arrgghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!

Windows SDK Setup Wizard

Setup file: 400KB
Installation: 958.8MB ?!!!??!!!!
Estimated Download Time: 20 Days, 18 Hours !!!!!!!!!

Arrrggghhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!

That is just so great! What am I to do???
I want to start test now, NOW! NOW! NOW!!
Garrrhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!