Last week, five days: 54 hours at work.

This week, four days: 43.75 hours at work.

Today was the first time in two weeks I’ve been home before 8:00 PM. It was nice.

Needless to say, there’s two doors in my garage that have been there too long, and still need one side sprayed with the second coat of polyurethane.

On the bright side, I found a place online I could order packs of 50 sand-paper discs, in whatever grit I want, at the same price a 12 pack is at Lowes. Score! I’ve got two fifty packs of 220 and 400 grit, and based upon the ten minutes I spent outside with the sander this evening, I don’t have any reason to spend hours with super-fine steel wool between coats of polyurethane anymore. I can knock down the unevenness quickly with the 400 grit, then final buff with the steel wool. So far, so good.

I’ve seen a lot in five years of being a software ‘consultant’. Most of my assignments boil down to rent-a-body type deals where some empire-builder manager who bases their political clout and success on the number of people they manage, not how much work they effectively get done. Once in a while, I actually get a client who cares about improving the very reasons they had to hire outside help in the first place. I haven’t seen one of those clients in about four years now. Yay for me, huh?

So effectively, I never have a ‘good’ job. I never have a decent job. I’m normally paid fairly well to put up with an inordinate amount of B.S. that would drive any sane, normal, (read underpaid, overworked) Full Time Employee running from the building screaming. On some occasions, I’m confident that I get assigned into the kind of environments known to foster the strong resentment that leads an employee to stalk from cube to cube with a firearm while culling the herds of stupidity… Not that this is a good idea. Besides, if you don’t off yourself after such a rampage, you’ll end up with a cell mate smarter than the morons you just offed, who unlike that moron at the office you just shot, will want to make your his, um, in a very non-metaphorical way.

I’ve seen a lot of stupid decisions made by misinformed, uninformed, self-righteous, self-seeking, arrogant, ignorant, incompetent, inept, moronic, dogmatic idiots over the years. But I’ll be damned if I haven’t spent the last week shaking my head (and fists) at the utter stupidity and total ignorance displayed by the current client to which I am employed. Why?

They insist upon using an Excel spreadsheet as an issue / bug tracking tool.

Let me restate that another way, so you’ll understand the gravity of this utterly gigantic failure by management to have the most basic understanding of the problem, and select an appropriate solution.

I, along with every user, is being told to enter bugs, comments, status updates, and track status of issues in a spreadsheet. A glorified text document with columns and rows. Because, you know, databases are just columns and rows. So Excel must be a database! Not only are we using the wrong tool for the job, but we’re using a tool that only lets one person at a time use the tool, despite the fact that over twenty people need simultaneous access to the tool. So instead, we’re copying the tool and giving people access to the tool from certain time. That’s right, they’ve setup a ’schedule’ through some email communication that everyone is supposed to follow.

For Example:

• User A is testing software at 9:15 AM and finds a problem. It’s before 2:00, so they go ahead and update the excel file with a new bug.
• Developer B is sitting at their desk at 9:15 AM, with all known issues resolved. They won’t get a copy of the document until 2:00 PM. So they spend the next 3:45 wasting time, waiting to get a list of issues that’s been growing since 9:15. They then spend the next 7 hours fixing them, working overtime for the day, then deploys updated software with all known issues address, updates the document, and relinquishes control of the document to the testers until 2:00 PM the next day.
• Meanwhile, User C has found another bug at 3:15, that would have been easy for Developer B to fix while fixing another issue, but it won’t get documented until the next morning, when the Users get the file back, and it won’t get fixed until that next evening when the Developer gets the document back from the users….

This approach is beyond just amateur. It’s so bad I can’t even begin to describe it. My vocabulary doesn’t stoop low enough to do it justice. Seriously. Guttural noises like those given off by cancer-ridden dogs in the excruciatingly painful last moments of life would sound like a complement to this miraculously retarded process.

Perhaps it wouldn’t be so absolutely stupid if there weren’t a million better ways to solve the issue of issue tracking. This is not a new problem. It’s been solved before. There are hundreds of software products out there in use by millions of people that fulfill the needs we have in ways that don’t cripple our productivity, introduce absolutely stupid levels of communication complexity, produce simple reports to track process for those too inept to actually use the software to run a query, and will let many people use the tool at the same time. The real kicker is, I can think of at least five products out there that are absolutely, 100% free to use, free to change, free to give away. And I could get it setup at work in a matter of minutes if they’d just let me do it.

I don’t expect this situation to improve for me at this client. I’m beyond that. This message goes out to any other hair-brained idiot project manager, manager, CIO, CEO, or stakeholder that thinks it’s a good idea to pass around Excel files as if they’re databases. This message goes out to those of you with brains that actually function at the analytical level - don’t just sit by and let someone dumber than you make this stupid decision. Take action. Call them out. Give them a demo of any bug-tracking software. Take the time to explain the benefits (like real-time collaboration, reduced turn-around time, lower complexity in clarifying and elaborating upon issues, improved communication and understanding, accountability for issues, etc.) and make it obvious that they’re about to shoot their entire project team in the foot if they try to use a spreadsheet for this.

Don’t let this happen to you. Fight stupidity. Use the proper tool.

Nine times out of Ten, the proper tool is NOT a spreadsheet.

I doubled-down on finishing doors.

Two at a time, baby!

All the doors left to do are small enough that I can fit more than one at a time on the spraying rack.

Totally unrelated, but Poly makes a great lap dog for when I’m taking a break from working. She jumped up in my lap the other day and took a nap for a few minutes while I was cooling off from working on doors.

SourceForge finally got the webspace for shimaging in place.

The Shimaging website is alive! Complete with API (javadocs) & usage documentation, screenshots, class diagrams, etc.

Kylene did a lot of baking today — for a customer. So I didn’t get to stain the two doors yet — I didn’t want the place to smell like stain (or other fumes) when the client comes to get the food. It just wouldn’t be good for business. Besides, the house smells like baked goods right now, and I don’t want to spoil that. :-)