Late-Night Project Ass Kicking
I've been working on this murdurous project for a client. Well, the project got finished last night, save for finishing content population and a couple Flash files. This project got screwy real fast. The client gave us the specifications that the site should basically be their existing site, with some design and architecture changes. The site map we got showed 6 main areas of the site, each with 4 or 5 pages below. The site also had an existing "request more information" form which submitted the users contact info to an administrator via email. I quoted them something like 20 - 26 hours to do the site, with the understanding that I would be making the site completely custom-editable for Macromedia Contribute (content management tool) so their guys could push content and post updates.
As of yesterday, the project has been meandering along, with us getting updates to the site map and menu changes every other day or so. The final design approval had come thru only last Wednesday. They wanted something to show to their managers by next Monday. No
problem -- the site would be up with the new look-n-feel, new menus, and even some content by that time.
Yesterday morning, the client calls and says, "People are freaking out over here that nothing is getting done on the site, and I'm getting pressure to pull out with (your company) and re-hire the people who did our old site -- just asking them to make some updates". We're like, "What?!?" So, I sat down with them on the phone and hashed out what needed to happen by their new "go live" deadline of Thursday. That's right -- Thursday. We basically said, "Okay, we'll get it done", and started working like mad. Needing to work from a location close to the HQ, I headed up to the office. They set me up with a Mac (yes, a Mac), because all their software programs were for Macs and the PC they have laying around is from the Clinton administration. So, working like crazy, we all took care of some serious site creation. The 30-or-so pages that the client claimed to have on the site blew up in to 100+ pages after we got word the press releases and news articles on their old site all needed to be moved to the new site under the new template design. Sweet. All the rest of the day, we were getting calls from the client every 30 minutes or so to complain/whine/lecture/comment to us about various aspects of the site.
By 2am, I quit and insisted I should go home because the ability to keep my eyes open any longer was waning. Also, I needed to get out of bed by 6am to head to work. Tim drove me back to the park-n-ride where I had to sit in my ice-covered truck with the heater on full to get the ice sheet over my windshield to break apart. Haven't grabbed the ice scraper from the Jeep yet. I also found a note on my truck from the Vancouver Police telling me I can't drive a vehicle registered in Oregon if I'm a Washington resident. Great. Thanks. I appreciate how quick they
are to get all over my ass to register my truck -- which I had to buy because my Jeep was stolen from that very park-n-ride just months ago. They sure have a lot of time to be handing out little quipping notes on cars, but not so much time to keep the bad criminals from stealing
those same cars.
The others stayed in the office until 4am.
I still wanted to try and take Mario some homebrew, but I think it just might be too much of a pain in the ass. Nolando has some styrofoam containers for hauling/shipping bottles, but I don't have CO2, and we're going to be heavily laden with travel stuff already. So, I'll probably have to forgo the whole deal. Ah, well....
As of yesterday, the project has been meandering along, with us getting updates to the site map and menu changes every other day or so. The final design approval had come thru only last Wednesday. They wanted something to show to their managers by next Monday. No
problem -- the site would be up with the new look-n-feel, new menus, and even some content by that time.
Yesterday morning, the client calls and says, "People are freaking out over here that nothing is getting done on the site, and I'm getting pressure to pull out with (your company) and re-hire the people who did our old site -- just asking them to make some updates". We're like, "What?!?" So, I sat down with them on the phone and hashed out what needed to happen by their new "go live" deadline of Thursday. That's right -- Thursday. We basically said, "Okay, we'll get it done", and started working like mad. Needing to work from a location close to the HQ, I headed up to the office. They set me up with a Mac (yes, a Mac), because all their software programs were for Macs and the PC they have laying around is from the Clinton administration. So, working like crazy, we all took care of some serious site creation. The 30-or-so pages that the client claimed to have on the site blew up in to 100+ pages after we got word the press releases and news articles on their old site all needed to be moved to the new site under the new template design. Sweet. All the rest of the day, we were getting calls from the client every 30 minutes or so to complain/whine/lecture/comment to us about various aspects of the site.
By 2am, I quit and insisted I should go home because the ability to keep my eyes open any longer was waning. Also, I needed to get out of bed by 6am to head to work. Tim drove me back to the park-n-ride where I had to sit in my ice-covered truck with the heater on full to get the ice sheet over my windshield to break apart. Haven't grabbed the ice scraper from the Jeep yet. I also found a note on my truck from the Vancouver Police telling me I can't drive a vehicle registered in Oregon if I'm a Washington resident. Great. Thanks. I appreciate how quick they
are to get all over my ass to register my truck -- which I had to buy because my Jeep was stolen from that very park-n-ride just months ago. They sure have a lot of time to be handing out little quipping notes on cars, but not so much time to keep the bad criminals from stealing
those same cars.
The others stayed in the office until 4am.
I still wanted to try and take Mario some homebrew, but I think it just might be too much of a pain in the ass. Nolando has some styrofoam containers for hauling/shipping bottles, but I don't have CO2, and we're going to be heavily laden with travel stuff already. So, I'll probably have to forgo the whole deal. Ah, well....
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