Bzzt....zzzzt.....bzzt....

Let's have a meeting to discuss what should be in the status reports.

Genuine ping from one of my team earlier today:

"Back in a few...have to go chase the damn donkey down"

Wed Mar 15 2017 09:25:49 AM EDT from IGnatius T Foobar @ Uncensored

What does that even mean?

One of my consultants lives on a farm....he apparently borrowed a donkey from one of his neighbors to scare away the cayotes that were bothering his horses.  Seems he's a tricky donkey and keeps letting himself out of his pen.

So, my slightly larger company turns out to be really nice, the colleagues are fine, even the upper most tier of people are really fine guys. There is free beverages and coffee and snacks, payment is good and holidays plenty.

But I am not sitting in the main office, no sir! My company got a contract by IBM to do support for file management system of a large northern german car manufacturing company. The system is so old, it would be a perfect spouse for Citadel. The thing is a moloch and was written in 1994 and they won't let it die anytime soon.

My company was hired during a six month long transition phase which will end this month. How much knowledge was IBM able to get transferred during this time? Less than fuckall! With a few exceptions, the people that had knowledge transfer sessions all left the project. My part is to help with the oracle db component of this app we are supporting. My theoretical university knowledge about DBs is huge, but all that is totally irrelevant in the real world. So currently I am polishing my SQL skills, ramp up my knowledge about oracles grid features and learn about this ancient data storage facility.

Oh, and compared to the web interface of that thing, webcit looks modern! They should hire my as fronted dev instead.

So is it fun? In a masochistic way, it is.

Would I ever hire IBM to do systems management? No, I'd rather file for bankruptcy. The project management is so bad, even Scott Adams would sharpen his pencil, insert the pointy end into his nose and headband against the desk, in order to soothe the mental pain. We have exactly the situation described in the comic strip a few messages above, got the mail to file reports today.

PS: I am allowed to continue my freelance IT stuff, I do like my clients, but I might need to get rid of that. It just occupies too much of my free time now. Will give it a few month, to see wether it balances out.