Wrote a long entry in my "when Firriver began to suck.odt" file. Geoff came up with a request to install the translation environments for Feds, for spanish, portuguese and chinese. I said chinese is already done, we can add two more folders and create two databases, connect the instances in these folders and we're done. Nope, they (Ralph the former accountant who is now a (part time?) CFO, and Karl) had him create a new VM, new SQL server, new set of users and whatnot over the weekend.
(now we can have a new server overnight, two months ago I had to ask everybody which VM would be the least affected if it was to become the translation machine (VM25 it was). Then it took some days to get a replacement VM26; now when Ralph says, we get one over the weekend. He didn’t even try to contact me this time, probably because it was weekend. But he got Geoff, whom the rest of us have trouble finding, sometimes for days.
The “spanish is on D:, portuguese is on E:, chinese is on F:” is bullshit. One empty instance of Feds takes about 100 megs at worst. And setting up one more server and a dedicated SQL for it is even worse – the databases involved have minimal traffic, can be handled by any of the existing SQL servers… none of this was necessary, all it took would have been to add two more instances of Feds to VM25, set a few users to be able to dial in directly into it and, ahem, yes, tell me to add portuguese to Feds.
Here’s my conversation, first a bit from last night:
Geoff, 18.39 - Hi, I was chatting to Ralph. He mentioned that you have a version of Feds for translation. Can you point me in the direction so i can install that version on a new VM or is it a case that it's available on all versions of Feds and is just hidden
(me) 20.02 - The chinese translation environment is on vm25 but it has its own database with chinese collation... which language is it this time?
Geoff, 20.22 - Spanish and Portuguese as well as the Chinese
thanks for the link.(me) (today) 10.08 - I'd have to create a database for each... so the lookups which may be set up etc stay separate. I can use VM25 for all of them, may just need to add keyboard layouts for each language.
Geoff, 10.25 - We have databases for each set-up already
I can arrange a log in for youGeoff, 10.40 - This documents what we setup. Requested by Karl and Ralph
(me) 12.24 I can't login into .81:1080
Geoff, 12.26 - I need to add you to the VM but can't until later today. Sorry I'm on the road.
(me) 12.27 - nice that I was consulted all the way on this project.
Geoff, 12.27 - We started this on Saturday and finished it yesterday. Karl only asked about it last week.
Sorry. Only doing as we were asked
(me) 12.28 - also nice that I set up the chinese already on vm25, which took me about two days, and amounted to nothing.
pass this to RalphGeoff, 12.29 - I'll make sure to get you admin access in that this new VM. And we can move the Chinese version over
We were told to get this done as a priority so we did(me) 12.33 - Ralph can take over my job any time he wants.
Another notch closer to retirement.
On the van front, the shit is worse than I thought. The trailer hitch is to be either removed or certified. The latter costs about 100€ (a normal hitch costs 80€), plus whatever the manufacturers of the vehicle and the hitch think they should charge for the certificates, plus about a dozen phone calls, waiting for this or that, being somewhere on time only to wait for others who wait until theirs is done and then hopefully finishing yours the same day. So I took the van to the usual place and just told the guys to chop it off if they can't unscrew it.
And so they did. It cost 4500 dinars (38€ presently).
BTW, Jan is just as pissed off at what's going on in Firriver as I am, but he doesn't have the luxury to retire whenever he wants to, there's good dozen years ahead of him, plus a long term mortgage to pay off.