Today I spent at least 4 hours solid writing a 1100+ line script to rebuild a table. This is NOT EASY. However, because I am also the only one in the group that has come up with any kind of methodology as to how to do this, no one really realizes what a bitch and a half it is, they just know I am hyper-focused on something and ignoring the rest of the world.
During the course of this, I get an IM from the manager that one of my other clients wants their call escalated, as I am impeding the progress of their upgrade to the next version because I haven’t fixed their problem yet. I tell manager I have repeatedly tested the “problem”, cannot recreate it, and no one else has ever heard of this happening, and I will give it to M, no problem. I immediately IM her and being a good soul, she is off and running with it. Manager suddenly is saying “Oh, you didn’t have to give it away…” Um, yeah I did, client thinks I am a putz anyway, this will make her happy. Well, turns out the client lied to me, had me completely barking up the wrong tree and M had it figured out in no time flat. This is where the brain-fried stuff is bad - I’m too out of it to consider that the clients aren’t telling me the truth. M happily told the manager it was the user’s fault.
Finally finished the damn table, which isn’t even for one of my calls, but that was really good, it’s a kickass little thing I’ve figured out that no one else has ever even bothered to attempt, even if it is somewhat time consuming.
Then I get an email from another client saying that I have kept their budgets from working for the last five months… WTF? I’ve had this call for all of two weeks, and I’ve been fighting w/QC over whether or not it’s a bug. She has cc’d half the world on this, including the Managing Director for their implementation. (This client has been very, very high maintenance.) Before I can even reply, the MD is emailing saying to give him a call. Aw, shit, I am in no mood for this, every other time I talk with a consultant or MD, they’re mad at me for work done (or not done yet) by QC. Seriously guys, it’s not even my department!! So, I call. First words out of my mouth are, “Ed, I have NOT had this call for 5 months!!” He assures me it’s really OK, he understands, this client is rapidly becoming a known quantity for being full of herself and he will handle it. I did give him the rundown on what I’d done so far, told him I’d go poke QC yet again. I told one of the newbies who for whatever reason wants to strangle him (and probably legit) that for the moment, she is to be nice to him since he just helped me out. :)
Then, last call of the day. My old nemesis from AT&T. Who is now an independent contractor doing an implementation out somewhere in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Really, this should be M’s thing cause she’s the Asia/Pacific international person, but she’s also saved my butt today, and I owe her. He’d already talked to her last night, I looked over her notes, they couldn’t nail down what was wrong. So, I pulled a few more tables, could *conceptually* see what was happening, even if the data looked perfectly OK. Told him to go delete the record, re-enter it, and reprocess. Damn, I am good. Yep, it’s one of those solutions that I feel is right up there with “reboot your system and see what happens”, but it worked. And for the first time ever, this guy didn’t treat me like a total idiot. (It could also be that he’s forgotten who I am.)
But yeah, what an effed up rollercoaster of a day.
