Jobs you're glad you never took

Moved to Aldershot because it is soooo far off any known topic that it really doesn’t belong in Code review / Reorganising RTC handling! (^_^)

Await complaint and point back to document.

So long as you have the flexibility to write such a document.

I was going to design a website for an ex-pat. It was to display a catalogue of things, in categories, with an emailed order form. Sounds pretty simple, you could sex it up Amazon style, or you could just have clicky links and keywords (let’s just say these were ‘objects’ so they were their own description).

Anyway, I turn up. He has a bunch of PostIt notes strewn all over a table. His scatter-minded wife is fretting over what she just bought to cook as neither of them bothered learning French, trotting out the “Can’t teach an old dog new tricks” mantra. I don’t have the heart to tell them what “langue de boeuf” actually is.
Anyway, he arranges these little bits of yellow paper like he was laying out cards for Hanafuda, and I’m trying to ignore the rampant use of increasingly crass hypocorisms.
That’s when the fun starts.

He found out that his internet provider gave him free webspace. This was circa 2003. It was about 20Mb. He needed more. Well make all the pictures smaller. I knocked up a few and showed him. Ugh! Horrible. Make them better. Better means more space.
So he looks for the cheapest host he can find. He wants a website, but he doesn’t want to pay for a domain name. Then he says he doesn’t want PHP, it “looks expensive”.
I ask how he wants the site to be implemented without PHP (this was, like, PHP3).
“Oh, you know, just send it all and let their web thingy do it. You’re a programmer right? Make it happen. You know, JavaScript and such.”
I gag, but there is more to come.
“Thing is, though”, he says, rearranging PostIt notes because he hasn’t decided what the basic layout would be, “there ought to be a section of special things”.
“Isn’t that just another category?”, I ask.
“No, no, this is one you need to sign up for.”
“Riiight.”
…
…
“Please don’t mind my asking, but do you have ANY idea of how websites work?”, the sarcasm was kicking in, a sign that I was rapidly losing interest.
“Yes, perhaps more than you, it would seem.” Un-effing-believable.
“In that case, I will take my leave. J’ai d’autres chats à fouetter.”
“You have to feed your cat?”
“Yeah, something like that.” [it’s a French expression]

I knew that this was going to be difficult, and I figured no matter how well I might have designed that site, I would be told “nah, just move this to here and…”. I was already smart enough to figure he’d never sign off on a written specification (with diagrams and such) as that would probably be altered instead of the site code, and even after agreeing, I’m sure the whiny “I didn’t understand all of this” would come into play. I got that already when I attempted to explain why you need something like FTP to put the files on the website in the first place.

I got a phone call a few months later saying that he’d pay twice what was on offer before. Given that minimum wage works out at roughly €250 a week, this was less and would take forever, I declined.
That was followed up with a call begging. I told him I would take the job if he permitted me to choose a reasonable hosting package, it would cost him a subscription, and I would be happy to let him override me with his own host if he could match the necessary features. He reluctantly agreed.
I then said that an absolute definite requirement was that the outline, plan, and general operation of the site and how it is to look must be written down, along with drawings or diagrams, that we will agree to and sign. No more random alterations and post it notes. Once the specification was signed, that is what would be implemented.
He hung up on me, never called back. That’s pretty much exactly what I expected.

I still fix computers, and such, but I do it for friends. For anybody else, there is a €25 call out charge plus €40 per hour or part hour. You can talk about anything as long as you like, and give me cups of tea, so long as you understand that my time in your residence is “working”. You are not paying for my abilities, those I offer freely because I’m a nice person. You are paying for my time. Fixing the Windows box you trashed by downloading every screensaver you saw? Poking your Livebox because you can’t read the instructions written in French? Looking after rowdy children while you down a bottle of cheap red? I could care less, just know you’ll be billed at the end. Oh, and I have to declare this for tax so I do not expect cash in hand. A cheque will be fine. Add 10% if it isn’t a French account.

After instituting that policy and giving out some forms outlining this (written a tad more politely), I got called all sorts of unpleasant names (special kudos to the guy that called me “Murray Mint” – I have never heard that one before!], and pretty soon everybody stopped asking me if I “could just pop by after work one day to…”.

Which is exactly what I wanted. I’m (quite) an introvert at heart. I like my time on my own. I do not socialise with the “Beer O’Clock” crowd, not because I am snooty, not because I am shy, but basically because I prefer not to. The thought of getting involved in that scene actually fills me with horror. Over-reliance on alcohol and opinionated asshattery are not a pleasant combination.
[Case in point, one person was openly pro National Front, and the more alcohol was consumed, the more she would talk about throwing out all these damn foreigners and how if she had the right to vote, she’d put her vote down for the French National Front…….this being spoken by a British immigrant in France! Was she actually even fully cognisant of the fact that she was in a different country?]

Given a choice between that and a quiet secluded corner with a book, it is a “no brainer”. Hell, I’d read Enid Blyton. I’d read Tolstoy. I’d even read Stephenie Meyer…

I prefer, for what it is worth, J G Ballard and Carl Sagan, the latter being somebody I would name as an inspiration. With that, you can understand why I cannot sensibly interact with people who argue over who is the better judge on “Strictly” (excuse me, when did we start judging judges? are the performers all that bad? and…strictly what?) and something that I think relates to “Coronation Street”, but I’m not certain. The last time I was interesting in a plot in a British TV programme that wasn’t a guy in a blue box, it was to wonder if there was any female in Holby that Charlie hasn’t dated/married. But, hey, I can talk about “Kyoukai no Kanata” if you like! ;-)

I still fix computers, and such, but I do it for friends. For anybody else, there is a €25 call out charge plus €40 per hour or part hour.

I get calls from the family¹, all others are gently informed that I do network stuff and haven’t done any computer kit stuff since W2000 days so I know nothing… but I can recommend a nice chap that does do PC’s.
I even emphasise things at times by stating that I don’t even own a PC and all my kit is ARM based² so my experience there isn’t applicable.

¹ Always difficult to say no there.
² True, because this laptop is works kit and the desktop unit is works test kit. Sometimes the only way to get an interruption free block of time is to do the work at home.

Many years ago my neighbour, a refugee from Thorn-Ericsson, became a parish councillor. He reckoned our parish council needed a website; something rather new for parish councils then, and that I was just the man to make it. He had attended an extra-mural course on website-making that I had been helping to teach before I retired. It was complicated by the fact that .gov.uk sites, which the parish council thought would be swankiest, can only be hosted by approved providers and there are lots of cabinet-office rules that have to be obeyed. I was canny enough to insist that the content of the site had to be the responsibility of the council’s clerk, and that only he or she could authorize me to upload to the site or remove material. I got paid £20 per hour, with a minimum of 15 minutes for any item. Earlier this year they upped it to £24 per hour; however they have now woken up to the fact that they can get a far more professional job for a smaller outlay with a specialist company ( as opposed to an amateur ), so my days are numbered. I am not sorry, but glad to have had the experience.
The proposed company will be using Python and Javascript; I used Lua and CSS, with no client-side scripting. The chief problem has been long periods with no clerk at all, hence frustrating stasis, or clerks with no idea about what constitutes a precise instruction – put this stuff on the website ( I don my cap of telepathy ). Until I started putting the no-cache pragma into the meta tags of each page I would get why haven’t you put that stuff up yet all the time. Over the years the councillors have become a lot more computer-literate. We have even been told that by 2016 we shall get 2mbps broadband.

Rik
When you were playing with your BBC B
there was a Tv Advert with the jingle

1. Murray Mints,
   Murray Mints,
   The “Too good to hurry mints!” /#

Oops…
Error #710.77345 : Unexpected sarcasm failure.