The catch phrase for the project, together with "Do you have a flag?"
Monday, December 22, 2008
The nominations
Me for removing her network cable earlier in the day to work while my PC was renewed. Later Outlook and IE are not working. Tim asks if I have plugged in the network cable, which of course I hadn't. And previously for for stopping Firefly's deletion of the Irish database after the ENGInE launch with the reason that we still need it for the Dealer Websites (i.e. NONAV).
Tristan "Hightower" Knapp, who enjoyed the most comprehensive training of all when joining the club and who always managed to be in the office just-in-time for lunch, for making all FatWire "dementors" disappear by pretending that he understands 3 of the 4 levels of caching, for logging dependencies, where there are none and for his undoubtedly expert knowledge of Bundesliga soccer (although he still keeps putting the ball under the arm and starts running).
Lebas Ludovic and the rest of the FatWire team for mystifying the intuitive, confusing the obvious, concealing the apparent and for four wonderful levels of caching, which we still don’t understand, but impresses us immensely! And no, we still don’t understand the difference between a bug and a limitation.
Christian “who loves you babe, where is my lollipop Kojak” Hausen and Alex “Obelix” M. for proving that "remote access" actually can make employees such as Reiner more productive, especially when exploiting that Window-L hack.
Gerda-Marie "Trinity" for her incredible talent in creating worms, viruses and other very nasty softlets (new buzz word) on development which crash servers intermittently, unexpectedly and mercilessly, confusing other developers, while looking innocuously throughout the room saying “Siggi we have a session issue on Prod Management”. And also for deleting the wrong site and actually deleting the mothersite.
Alex “Boom-Boom” Seyder for secretly setting his layouts and wrappers to cached and un-cached on various environments, rewriting urls and redirecting us to places we no man has gone before. A true trekkie.
Guillaume, "I think we will have wine with the fish", for introducing table manners and dining culture to the FORD canteen, for savoring every experiment of the canteen like it was fois gras, for looking like you understood us when we were babbling german and for winning the "I almost understand FatWire" award.
Maren for improving our job security, by training others for our jobs on an unspecified location on an unspecified continent, which will not be named, but should only be referred to under the code name “India”. Maren – jokes aside – no hard feelings from any of us I am sure – one should never shoot the messenger.
Tim Bailey “the Mechanic”, for screwing up QA and PROD. And for just screwing up. Don’t you know that art is only to look at and that you shouldn’t touch it? And also for setting his alarm wrong and missing his flight, then almost doing it again the following week.
Heike “shortstop” for her capability of streaming information at such an incredible rate that most of us ended with a buffer overflow before even beginning to understand what she was asking us, and still being able to interject “I don’t understand it”, “It doesn’t work” and “I can’t do it” 22 times into a single sentence.
Anke Hoffmann, for promoting, demoting, accessitating (no, that isn’t a word), processing, TD-ing, hmmm… really no reason for nominating you – screw up more often and you’ll have a chance Anke!
Stephan Barfknecht “the Roaster” for asking “läuft das Band”, even though he is reading Wikipedia’s newest entry for “coffee roasting”while simultaneously writing XSS exploits for Heise’s forums. And for mobbing and for his incredible soft-skills. Where is Stephan? Did he mention why he isn’t here today?
Winni, for spending countless hours transferring byte value 0 from DEV to QA, and subsequently to PROD, after tireless testing on QA to ensure that 0 really is 0. Of course, first waiting for Anke to promote the issue, after Anke also was secure in the fact that 0 is 0 and also tested the issue. For suffering through all Ford processes, following them to the letter and number, displaying incredible dedication to the obtuse, frustrating, and but still necessary processes, and being the best Clark Griswald there has ever been…
Ingo, for giving us Achmed (chhh chhh you said Akmed) and “do you have a flag?”, his undying support for the 1 FC Hennes, for his love for multiple individuals for whom he is inspired to say “Schätzelein!” and for his own line in the Ardennes, which he calls “Categories”. Actually, he is the inspirer for the Jeff Vader award and should be respected as such. And yes, the hair color is natural if you were asking yourself.
Reiner Harth, for his incredible talent for showing up (fashionably) late for almost every Tuesday meeting, with a full cup of coffee and a note from his mother, why he was late; for challenging multiple people with his innovative F+S data model and for that very impressive wide-screen display on his desk. And then of course for his extraordinary efforts operating two keyboards at the same time and his outstanding contributions in identifying the "Windows-L" hack.
Mikheil. For being the most optimistic user of a broken data model, that I have ever seen, defending Java and Eclipse to the point of no return, and to being one of the most capable and chaotic developers I have ever met… With emphasis on capable – ok you are officially disqualified for the Jeff Vader award. Klugscheißer ;)
Paul getting stopped at customs and spending half the day with men with rubber gloves.
Christian falling off his bike
Rainer not telling anyone about getting married
Tristan "Hightower" Knapp, who enjoyed the most comprehensive training of all when joining the club and who always managed to be in the office just-in-time for lunch, for making all FatWire "dementors" disappear by pretending that he understands 3 of the 4 levels of caching, for logging dependencies, where there are none and for his undoubtedly expert knowledge of Bundesliga soccer (although he still keeps putting the ball under the arm and starts running).
Lebas Ludovic and the rest of the FatWire team for mystifying the intuitive, confusing the obvious, concealing the apparent and for four wonderful levels of caching, which we still don’t understand, but impresses us immensely! And no, we still don’t understand the difference between a bug and a limitation.
Christian “who loves you babe, where is my lollipop Kojak” Hausen and Alex “Obelix” M. for proving that "remote access" actually can make employees such as Reiner more productive, especially when exploiting that Window-L hack.
Gerda-Marie "Trinity" for her incredible talent in creating worms, viruses and other very nasty softlets (new buzz word) on development which crash servers intermittently, unexpectedly and mercilessly, confusing other developers, while looking innocuously throughout the room saying “Siggi we have a session issue on Prod Management”. And also for deleting the wrong site and actually deleting the mothersite.
Alex “Boom-Boom” Seyder for secretly setting his layouts and wrappers to cached and un-cached on various environments, rewriting urls and redirecting us to places we no man has gone before. A true trekkie.
Guillaume, "I think we will have wine with the fish", for introducing table manners and dining culture to the FORD canteen, for savoring every experiment of the canteen like it was fois gras, for looking like you understood us when we were babbling german and for winning the "I almost understand FatWire" award.
Maren for improving our job security, by training others for our jobs on an unspecified location on an unspecified continent, which will not be named, but should only be referred to under the code name “India”. Maren – jokes aside – no hard feelings from any of us I am sure – one should never shoot the messenger.
Tim Bailey “the Mechanic”, for screwing up QA and PROD. And for just screwing up. Don’t you know that art is only to look at and that you shouldn’t touch it? And also for setting his alarm wrong and missing his flight, then almost doing it again the following week.
Heike “shortstop” for her capability of streaming information at such an incredible rate that most of us ended with a buffer overflow before even beginning to understand what she was asking us, and still being able to interject “I don’t understand it”, “It doesn’t work” and “I can’t do it” 22 times into a single sentence.
Anke Hoffmann, for promoting, demoting, accessitating (no, that isn’t a word), processing, TD-ing, hmmm… really no reason for nominating you – screw up more often and you’ll have a chance Anke!
Stephan Barfknecht “the Roaster” for asking “läuft das Band”, even though he is reading Wikipedia’s newest entry for “coffee roasting”while simultaneously writing XSS exploits for Heise’s forums. And for mobbing and for his incredible soft-skills. Where is Stephan? Did he mention why he isn’t here today?
Winni, for spending countless hours transferring byte value 0 from DEV to QA, and subsequently to PROD, after tireless testing on QA to ensure that 0 really is 0. Of course, first waiting for Anke to promote the issue, after Anke also was secure in the fact that 0 is 0 and also tested the issue. For suffering through all Ford processes, following them to the letter and number, displaying incredible dedication to the obtuse, frustrating, and but still necessary processes, and being the best Clark Griswald there has ever been…
Ingo, for giving us Achmed (chhh chhh you said Akmed) and “do you have a flag?”, his undying support for the 1 FC Hennes, for his love for multiple individuals for whom he is inspired to say “Schätzelein!” and for his own line in the Ardennes, which he calls “Categories”. Actually, he is the inspirer for the Jeff Vader award and should be respected as such. And yes, the hair color is natural if you were asking yourself.
Reiner Harth, for his incredible talent for showing up (fashionably) late for almost every Tuesday meeting, with a full cup of coffee and a note from his mother, why he was late; for challenging multiple people with his innovative F+S data model and for that very impressive wide-screen display on his desk. And then of course for his extraordinary efforts operating two keyboards at the same time and his outstanding contributions in identifying the "Windows-L" hack.
Mikheil. For being the most optimistic user of a broken data model, that I have ever seen, defending Java and Eclipse to the point of no return, and to being one of the most capable and chaotic developers I have ever met… With emphasis on capable – ok you are officially disqualified for the Jeff Vader award. Klugscheißer ;)
Paul getting stopped at customs and spending half the day with men with rubber gloves.
Christian falling off his bike
Rainer not telling anyone about getting married
Jeff Vader Award
We had a bit of a competition to see who made the dumbest mistake or made themselves look the most foolish whilst working on ENGInE. I made it into the nominations but didn't win.
Here's our winner:
Here's our winner:
Sir Lord Siggi Baron Von Vader Ham of Cheem Beisenherz
Nominated by Tristan: Siggi, our fearless lead developer, for never doing anything, cancelling our developer’s meetings, always having a constant stream of assets publishing on some environment to which we have no access where we must acknowledge “oh he is important, very, very important”, not locking his workstation and thereby always being one step away from his sacking, always looking serious even when we are asking the most stupid question, but still understanding everything, accommodating everyone and being the quintessential leader. Oh, and there was that double-click on dev. But we won’t mention that. That was a clear grope for the Jeff Vader award
May the Force be with you!
I name this ship....
We've launched.
Find us at www.ford.ie, www.ford.de and www.ford.co.uk.
It's been a long and winding road, and actually the road is never ending but we are there.
Find us at www.ford.ie, www.ford.de and www.ford.co.uk.
It's been a long and winding road, and actually the road is never ending but we are there.
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
Enough
I've had enough. I just want the project to be over now.
Launch dates slip through my fingers more easily than sand.
The Irish team are demonstrating an admirable level of patience that I will never achieve.
I feel as though every hour that passes brings with it a new problem or issue.
I'm mentally exhausted. My days are filled with too much emotion. There are highs and lows but it's the frustration that is so terribly draining. I'd love to leave work at work but I can't.
I felt I needed an escape, so I went to yoga tonight. As the group was relaxing I was thinking about problems and potential solutions, bugs, screw ups, issues, deadlines and priorities.
My colleagues are sick of me. My family are living with a monster. I struggle to see who the winners are.
I want it to end. I want the vision that we had all that time ago to be a reality. Almost there isn't good enough.
Launch dates slip through my fingers more easily than sand.
The Irish team are demonstrating an admirable level of patience that I will never achieve.
I feel as though every hour that passes brings with it a new problem or issue.
I'm mentally exhausted. My days are filled with too much emotion. There are highs and lows but it's the frustration that is so terribly draining. I'd love to leave work at work but I can't.
I felt I needed an escape, so I went to yoga tonight. As the group was relaxing I was thinking about problems and potential solutions, bugs, screw ups, issues, deadlines and priorities.
My colleagues are sick of me. My family are living with a monster. I struggle to see who the winners are.
I want it to end. I want the vision that we had all that time ago to be a reality. Almost there isn't good enough.
Thursday, August 21, 2008
Mole
The ENGInE team has a mole whose identity must remain a secret.
Today they sent me this:
It inspires confidence don't you think?
Today they sent me this:
It inspires confidence don't you think?
Monday, June 16, 2008
Numpty of the day award
Apologies for my absence, I've been busy.
"About time" I hear you cry. I know, I know. A project of this magnitude, on three days a week, you're thinking it's amazing I find time to breathe let alone blog.
Well a lot of blogging happens in my own time and I have snippets of my own time seven days a week, and this is one such snippet. If you must know, I'm uploading pictures from the weekend to Flickr, and it takes forever, and I'm bored.
Anyway...Numpty of the day:
Large projects don't always run smoothly, rather like the course of true love. We spent most of today locked in a dark room trying to get our heads around a problem and come up with a solution. Coffee was a definite requirement at three o'clock when spirits and creativity were at a low ebb.
Let me explain the problem, without getting too technical.
Component copy was a feature of ENGInE, or so we thought. That's one of the problems with listening to sales people. They tell one things and one foolishly believes them.
Component copy allows one to copy a bit of one site, and plonk it into another site. It's a very handy (some would say essential) piece of functionality.
It appears that the product, as delivered, is missing this funky piece of code.
Today we ran through a million (exaggerating for effect) scenarios involving cutting, pasting, copying, sharing, translating, overtime, double time, triple time, intravenous caffeine, Prozac on demand and the rest.
It was just after we had discounted several of these many wonderful suggestions that Rishi said "Why don't we just copy that and then send it out?" which is exactly what component copy does and which is exactly what we don't have and can't do (right now).
This may not be funny to you, but after too many hours, and not enough coffee or calories, we found it rather too amusing.
So, sorry Rishi. I'm not picking on you, honestly. It's just that today hurt my head, and the laugh was needed.
"About time" I hear you cry. I know, I know. A project of this magnitude, on three days a week, you're thinking it's amazing I find time to breathe let alone blog.
Well a lot of blogging happens in my own time and I have snippets of my own time seven days a week, and this is one such snippet. If you must know, I'm uploading pictures from the weekend to Flickr, and it takes forever, and I'm bored.
Anyway...Numpty of the day:
Large projects don't always run smoothly, rather like the course of true love. We spent most of today locked in a dark room trying to get our heads around a problem and come up with a solution. Coffee was a definite requirement at three o'clock when spirits and creativity were at a low ebb.
Let me explain the problem, without getting too technical.
Component copy was a feature of ENGInE, or so we thought. That's one of the problems with listening to sales people. They tell one things and one foolishly believes them.
Component copy allows one to copy a bit of one site, and plonk it into another site. It's a very handy (some would say essential) piece of functionality.
It appears that the product, as delivered, is missing this funky piece of code.
Today we ran through a million (exaggerating for effect) scenarios involving cutting, pasting, copying, sharing, translating, overtime, double time, triple time, intravenous caffeine, Prozac on demand and the rest.
It was just after we had discounted several of these many wonderful suggestions that Rishi said "Why don't we just copy that and then send it out?" which is exactly what component copy does and which is exactly what we don't have and can't do (right now).
This may not be funny to you, but after too many hours, and not enough coffee or calories, we found it rather too amusing.
So, sorry Rishi. I'm not picking on you, honestly. It's just that today hurt my head, and the laugh was needed.
Monday, March 10, 2008
Best laid plans
No project is perfect. This project is far from perfect. But...
When we hit problems and delays we work our collective backsides off to try and get back on track. We try and catch back time so that we don't compromise the launch date.
I've been presented with numerous change requests where I've said "No. This will delay the project and it's a change that, whilst it's nice to have, isn't essential for launch. Make this a post launch change."
I guess it's all about the leadership behaviours that we all know and love and the Drive for Results motivator is the one that's driving me right now, and throughout this project. I guess that's why it's all the more depressing when something hits us that we can't control.
We always knew that hardware sourcing was a risk on the project. It shouldn't be a risk but it is. It should be as simple as outlining requirements, placing an order, receiving delivery and setting everything up. It's not that simple. Don't ask me to explain why it's not that simple because I'll start to get politically incorrect, but it's not that simple.
(If you detect some irritation then you're very perceptive.)
So we expected hardware on Jan 18th and we didn't receive it. Our new delivery date was February 28th and once again nothing was delivered.
We have received something now and we're going through the process of ensuring everything is as it should be and is to spec but it's almost two months late.
I've been trying to think of an analogy that demonstrates how out of our control this part of the development is, so here goes.
Imagine you plan to launch a car in one factory on January 18th but an earthquake demolishes the factory on January 15th. It takes time to recover and rebuild and it's something you couldn't have prevented because it was an act of God.
I'm not suggesting that our hardware suppliers and God are related, far from it, but both are seemingly out of (our) control.
When we hit problems and delays we work our collective backsides off to try and get back on track. We try and catch back time so that we don't compromise the launch date.
I've been presented with numerous change requests where I've said "No. This will delay the project and it's a change that, whilst it's nice to have, isn't essential for launch. Make this a post launch change."
I guess it's all about the leadership behaviours that we all know and love and the Drive for Results motivator is the one that's driving me right now, and throughout this project. I guess that's why it's all the more depressing when something hits us that we can't control.
We always knew that hardware sourcing was a risk on the project. It shouldn't be a risk but it is. It should be as simple as outlining requirements, placing an order, receiving delivery and setting everything up. It's not that simple. Don't ask me to explain why it's not that simple because I'll start to get politically incorrect, but it's not that simple.
(If you detect some irritation then you're very perceptive.)
So we expected hardware on Jan 18th and we didn't receive it. Our new delivery date was February 28th and once again nothing was delivered.
We have received something now and we're going through the process of ensuring everything is as it should be and is to spec but it's almost two months late.
I've been trying to think of an analogy that demonstrates how out of our control this part of the development is, so here goes.
Imagine you plan to launch a car in one factory on January 18th but an earthquake demolishes the factory on January 15th. It takes time to recover and rebuild and it's something you couldn't have prevented because it was an act of God.
I'm not suggesting that our hardware suppliers and God are related, far from it, but both are seemingly out of (our) control.
Tuesday, February 5, 2008
Trenchcoat required
Monday, January 21, 2008
In the thick of it
OK, New Year, new boss. What's changed?
Well not much actually, but give Dave a chance, he barely has his toes under the table.
Last week I sat in on some Fatwire training. Fatwire is the engine behind ENGInE if that isn't too complicated. It's the platform/software/language upon which ENGInE is being built.
Dee, who took the course, probably got a bit fed up with me. I kept asking questions. I know it's quite difficult to shut me up at the best of times but we kept going off at tangents because I wanted to know about this, that and the other.
The good news is that I wasn't bluffing when I told all of you that the new Content Management Tool would be more user friendly and more efficient.
You see when I told you all that I was relying on information given to me. I hadn't seen the tool, except for a brief presentation from a Fatwire salesman, and we all know how reliable sales people are.
It is far more flexible than Firefly.
Well not much actually, but give Dave a chance, he barely has his toes under the table.
Last week I sat in on some Fatwire training. Fatwire is the engine behind ENGInE if that isn't too complicated. It's the platform/software/language upon which ENGInE is being built.
Dee, who took the course, probably got a bit fed up with me. I kept asking questions. I know it's quite difficult to shut me up at the best of times but we kept going off at tangents because I wanted to know about this, that and the other.
The good news is that I wasn't bluffing when I told all of you that the new Content Management Tool would be more user friendly and more efficient.
You see when I told you all that I was relying on information given to me. I hadn't seen the tool, except for a brief presentation from a Fatwire salesman, and we all know how reliable sales people are.
It is far more flexible than Firefly.
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