Development Mercenary

I’m sort of having fun now on RentACoder (RAC).  I’ve been taking on some pretty small sized bids just to get the hang out things.  There’s some really weird requests now and then.  It’s interesting, though, because a lot of the time the people requesting stuff have no idea what they really want.  So when someone asks for, say, five separate reports that show essentially the same thing, I will challenge that a bit and make sure that is indeed what they really want and that they have a need for it.  And then there are projects that just seem to have no real value to them, but that in and of itself is sort of a motivation to do it, if that makes sense.  As an example, one guy wanted an application that would read a list of URLs from a text file and then load all of those sites one by one in new browser sessions.  How weird.  Maybe he has a few favorite pages that he goes to every day and he’s looking to schedule this so they are ready and waiting for him when he wakes up or gets into work.  Or perhaps he’s trying to use it to abuse query strings on some sites so he can spam them with comments.  Heck, he could even be using it to attempt to fluff stats for traffic, ads, etc.  Who knows.  I don’t really care, either, for the most part.

So far, the hardest part for me has been when I bid on a project and come up with some way of doing it in my mind and then the person chooses another bidder.  It can be frustrating.  I guess it’s good training, though, in the long run… since it forces me to learn how to turn on and off my development mind.  Normally, I sort of just come up with whatever plan seems to make the most sense for the situation and then run with it.  If it proves to be more involved or time-consuming, I’ll re-evaluate… Otherwise, I’m usually done with the project before most people would normally be anywhere close.

Stu’s got a few side projects lined up for me, apparently.  He’s having me write programs or come up with suggestions for new ways his company can do certain things.  Initially, he’s paying me out of pocket, but I think if there’s enough noticeable benefit from it, I think he’ll probably get recognition for taking the initiative to fix a lot of these issues that have been around for ages at his company and I may have an opportunity for larger scale or longer term projects over there if the need arises.

One thought on “Development Mercenary

  1. That’s without a doubt the most difficult aspect of outsourcing a project. I know the process doesn’t work in its present format. Articulating why it doesn’t work, or a starting point for the project is another.

    I am not sure this is the area for this rant but case in point. I just started working at my present place of employment, its day 10. I walk into work and the Time & Attendance system is down.

    Its 7:30 in the morning and the IIS server has just rebooted at 5. Management has reported the outage at 6:45. Well by watching these guys I remember they are running the command iisreset and all is well for a few hours. So I do that, 20 minutes later another request…please reboot Crystal. The answer to this problem, iisreset…ummm, ok.

    This is a 350 employee based company so not that large. They do a really good job of documentation, so I start looking through the change log.

    Every Monday and Friday, same thing, iisreset. This has been going on for years, three or fours time every Monday and every Friday. By the afternoon, it stabilizes. I just can’t live like that, it needs to be corrected.

    The next time it happens I try the iisreset /restart, just to get different results. By this time I am just beside myself, how can this be, this is 2007 damn it. The next request comes in, please reboot Crystal. I am like hell no.

    Go to the user, show me why it needs “rebooted”. The reports have partial information, nothing on the top, a little in the middle, and nothing on the bottom. Now, I am pissed. Run the iisreset /restart command and go back to the user.

    Reports are fine. Upped the pagefile, hoping the memory leak thing is the answer. Rebooted and just waited. Next request, can’t get into the interface, you know the deal, iisreset.

    Ok, lets try the MDAC checker….it reports different versions. Reinstall the latest version for W2K server and reinstall Microsoft Script 5.6.

    So on to the next request, this time the interface is in French. Really, let me guess…iisreset. Yep and it starts working correctly.

    The point of this exercise, Kevin could fix this, I am sure of it but where do you start. I am in the process of building a Windows 2003 R2 server but the Time & Attendance software is old, the upgrade from this company is about 50K.

    We have many in house custom upgrades, my boss tells me the 50K is just a starting point. The custom work will cost many more dollars.

    Ok, I am tired of typing but its really frustrating…I guess I will practice my iisreset command now.

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