Database Administration, and fucking idiots...

[Forboding Angel]

This is prolly gonna be a long vent / rant post kids, and probably lulzworthy by the time I get done...

^^ You've been warned ^^

As an IT person, I am pretty much a miracle worker. I am capable of finding solutions to every problem no matter how large, stupid, or petty...

The company I now work for is a small business, and I have already managed to work out solutions for some of the most irritating, petty and idiotic problems that anyone can think of.

Enter database. I'm told that essentially we want a name and address database. I build one from an OS framework (I sure as hell didn't want to code it all by myself.. been there.. done that.. I'll be fucked if I ever do it again). Through the course of time, I start getting inundated with requests that aren't even feasible. Like syncing Quickbooks with a database.

HA, FAT FUCKING CHANCE! Quickbooks can export data to xls or csv, but any custom fields that you use CANNOT be exported with the rest of the data. As far as intuit's explanation goes "Quickbooks treats custom fields like any other customization" which basically means that the program completely ignores it.

I can get over this to an extent (I dealt with that bullshit a long time ago... just getting you up to speed). So anyway, I get all of the text/outlook/whatthefuckever other databases all combined into one excel file and import into our global database that I designed (to an extent). Keep in mind that we are talking about 38 years worth of txt files and whatnot else. That database is now serving it's purpose correctly, which is to be essentially an extended functionality name/address database.

Enter the goddmanit portion... All of a sudden "We want the financial info in there so we don't have to look in quickbooks". Great. Just fucking great. At this point I hop on the phone with my brother who is a great help in the realm of ideas and coding. Together we conclude that the current database would take far to much work to extend, so I start looking around and OS alternatives.

Along my search I started looking into CRM's and came across SugarCRM. Very nice and customizeable crm, and I don't have to code a goddamn thing... This I like.

Here is the problem though. If you've ever dealt with quickbooks reports you are fully aware that quickbooks output to an excel format that is essentially worthless and requires tons of cleaning up before you would be able to import it into anything useful. As I had already put the contacts/businesses into my own db format (which can be ported to anything using a sql backend easily and brainlessly) those aren't an issue. However, invoices must be attahced to accounts. However, the info they want for the invoices is absurd. For example, hwo much was paid to the vendor @ what rate, how much we made from the job, who the vendor was, and the quality of the work that the vendor did. Quickbooks doesn't store any of this information. Apparently it's supposed to poof out of thin air.

Furthermore, apparently there is supposed to be a way (according to my co-workers thought processes) that they should have a button in quickbooks that automagically inputs this stuff into a database... LOLWUT?! These people don't understand peanut butter from horseshit, and to answer that question I have to explain that software applications are compiled, adn therefore the code cannot be edited, furthermore, I can't even fathom how if i was the best programmer in the world, knew every language known to man, and had the uncompiled source sitting in front of me how the hell you would even tie them in to one another with a click of a button.

Apparently there is a software genie and if you suck him off 5 or 6 times he'll make this shit happen.

To make this even better, I have a habit of breaking things down so people can understand in uncomplicated terms, how a complicated process works. I'm very good at it. BUT THEY DON"T FUCKING LISTEN. JESUS CHRIST FFS AND GODDAMNIT ALL THE FUCKING HELL.

OPEN YOUR FUCKING EARS AND LISTEN INSTEAD OF THINKING ABOUT WHAT YOU WANT TO SAY NEXT.

ARUUGHGFSDNFG:DS:NGFDS:LDS"PKJEWPFOJPEWFJ

FUCK!

That said, I work miracles. It won't be as smooth as they want, and they will still have to manually type in some of the info when they do invoices, but they're gonna get (for the most part) what they want. It's going to be complex and eat up time, but if they want to overcomplicate things, fuck me, I can easily make that happen.

Fucking christ.

Maybe I should point out that I have the "patience of Job" (that's a name, google it) with these people, but tbh, over the course of a month that this has been an issue, I'm starting to run out. I have yet to even belie that I am the slightest bit irritated, but unless I get to destroy something beautiful I'm going to explode.


It doesn't help that Ever other IT person that they have hired in the past was a fucking moron who couldn't think past the next time they hire a hooker.

VISION PEOPLE, USE IT! You don't want to create something that is unusable in 10 or 20 years. THINK AHEAD! You want things to be modular and extendable. If extendable, you need to make it in such a way that the important info can be extracted through an open and easy to manage format so that it can be ported over to anything (which is the way my Database worked, and it's proving to be invaluable through this transition).

The words for the rest of your life are: PLAN AHEAD!

[SpliFF]

Funnily enough I feel your pain.

I wrote a fantastic website / database system for a client. It did a completely electronic signup, payment, receipt and creation of a snazzy classified ad for people selling expensive junk.

The thing is the ads cost up to $400 each and my client didn't have to lift a finger or pay a cent through the whole process (the exact figure was 20c per transaction). They were getting paid $400 a pop to do absolutely no work with no expenses. The perfect crime.

Then one day the dipshit client comes to me and tells me he wants the transaction and customer records tied into MYOB. I told him MYOB was a proprietry, closed-shop thing and would almost certainly be a pain in the arse to integrate with. I said once the data goes in, assuming it goes in at all, you'll never get it back out. But he absolutely insisted, telling me he needed to generate reports for tax and shareholders.

I said, fine. Give me the specifications of the reports you need and I'll output them from the server. HTML, PDFs, fancy graphs, whatever - we have libraries for all that stuff. It'll take me a week.

But I just couldn't get through to him. He was absolutely adamant that MYOB was some kind of holy thing, and nothing else would do.

So I offloaded the job to a co-worker. It took him 8 months to integrate and iron out the problems caused by MYOB's bugs and shoddy, half-arsed, non-standard input format (fixed width fields, bizarre limits and completely unnecessary requirements!) - during which time over $100,000 worth of invoices managed to be overlooked or silently dropped. Not to mention the massive cost of its development, the time wasted by secretaries double-handling everything, and the cost of his computer-illiterate accountant charging hundreds of dollars an hour to turn it all back into EXACTLY the same reports I offered him in the first place. My co-worker resigned.

The moral of this story is learn to recognize bad projects and give them to someone you hate.

[smoth]

I laughed at both sides in your story.

[Forboding Angel]

Thank god someone understands what I'm going through here.

Thankfully I get paid very well, but in your co-worker's position, I would have told you exactly where you could import your records and to fuck off. hehehe

Unfortunately, I don't have anyone that I can shovel this onto. It's only me. Life really sucks sometimes.

I laughed at both sides in your story.

Whose?

[smoth]

oh yours, it is funny stuff.

[Forboding Angel]

Feel free to elaborate

[SwiftSpear]

You could probably do some nonglorious hacks that would kinda do the quickbooks thing... But realistically... it's not feasible. You're the computer expert, if you say it's not feasible than peasants should have to listen. Use buzz words like "non trivial". It makes it sound like you've already considered the issue at length and verified that there is no quick easy way of doing it.

[NOiZE]

tl;dr

but yeah, plan ahead.

[smoth]

If I told you why it would just be a long argument and I am not going to bother, can't you just be happy that something you posted made me laugh and not rage? Even if it is at your expense?

[Forboding Angel]

If I told you why it would just be a long argument and I am not going to bother, can't you just be happy that something you posted made me laugh and not rage? Even if it is at your expense?

If you have a solution to an enormous problem... Why would I not want to hear it again?

[BlackLiger]

Personally, I'd just quietly comment "You know, it takes about X (find the actual number yourself, I can't remember off hand) gallons of petrol/gasoline to completely destroy the human body in fire. Now, back to the subject we were talking about, you wanted me to do what?"

[Neddie]

Oye, oye, oye.

You have beef, talk about it elsewhere, people. I'm looking at ye, Smoth and Harrison Forb.

[jcnossen]

This is mostly a communication problem though, I know you can have a idiot boss for an IT project, but if something impossible like that is proposed, you have to break it down and calculate the cost of it. If all else fails, money is the only way to communicate.

[manored]

There will always be someone who will want you to be a saint tough :)

[Archangel of Death]

Man... I can't wait! That sounds so exciting!

[Forboding Angel]

This is mostly a communication problem though, I know you can have a idiot boss for an IT project, but if something impossible like that is proposed, you have to break it down and calculate the cost of it. If all else fails, money is the only way to communicate.

My boss is a 74 yr old German Lady (And she's fucking awesome too... great boss - speaks 9 languages fluently, and translates 12 written languages, she also can do simultaneous interpreting in 3). Our office manager, romanian/german in her 40's, intelligent, but she can't listen for shit. The other girl in our office is my age and she's pretty cool and is capable of listening.

Well I'm about 50% done with the framework. It's not perfect, but the way I'm doing it all it needs is one report to be imported, and for them to fill out a form whenever they write an invoice from here on out, which will prolly cause piss/moan, but I don't really give a flying shit, my boss will tell them to suck it up. The one report contains 5 fields, date, amount, invoice number, memo (of cource shitty ass quickbooks won't export the description of the job), and company that the invoice was written for. By some miracle I am able to import and simultaneously attach these to the accounts in our database. I haven't got it to work perfectly yet, but I think I'll be able to make it work today...

Ungh, what a horrendous mess.

[manored]

Sounds like you are in pain... and needing vacations :)

[Forboding Angel]

Sounds like you are in pain... and needing vacations :)

Not till april. 2 glorious weeks in sunny california. Beaches, women... ungh, beautiful. But that is a long way off

[manored]

Not if you have a mental breakdown :)

[Elkvis]

Sounds like you are in pain... and needing vacations :)

Not till april. 2 glorious weeks in sunny california. Beaches, women... ungh, beautiful. But that is a long way off

you find beautiful women repulsive?