Working with a client...the resident """sysadmin""" hasn't actually been a sysadmin since the early 90s, the last OS he _actually_ managed was SunOS 5 or something. I can't remember what he said. He hasn't kept up AT ALL with modern technologies/terminologies. He's convinced SELinux is a security hardened kernel. We've explained to him several times that it's not but he sees Linux and thinks Linux 1.0 from the 90s. It's downright embarrassing.

Now this would all be well if I didn't have to interface with him often, but the client WILL NOT give me access to their systems. So I have to go through him to get anything done. Which is over webex. So I get to watch this guy type (and mess up) basic commands over and over (he isn't aware of tab completion of any of the bash features that are super useful). So I'm telling him what to type and the delay is always just enough for him to get too far in the command to back out, so its like SSH-over-incompetence with a 500ms ping. It's truly infuriating.

Every once in a while he'll get frustrated enough to hand me control of his webex session, which isn't as painful but once again the delay is bad enough it's still a pain.

Best part is that he looks EXACTLY like Milton from Office Space. So thats one plus to this whole situation!

I tried writing this rant before, but I was (and still am) in too good of a mood so it was lengthy, meandering, and over-specific. so I'll summarize(ish).

summary:
* miscommunication
* working weekends
* incompetence and/or screwy integrations

summary of the summary:
* I can't fix someone else's mess if you don't talk to me!

Summary^3: #TODO: learn telepathy

Shortened rant:
Bossman at work signed up a very lucrative client by promising them something he couldn't deliver because he misunderstood and miscommunicated scope -- anti-fraud, if you've been following my rants.

Their signup (all four...) are screwy and cause issues and nobody knows why. I didn't write the code, have barely even glanced through it, and it uses a third-party (Clover) that's rather screwy.

Bossman has been asking me to do various things concerning the merchant, but has never been around to provide specifics, so I'm left to guess. I've done my best, but due to the aforementioned screwiness, I really have no idea what's going on. I just sort of muddled my way through.

Bossman also asked me, super late on Friday night (after 8:30pm), to rename one of the merchants because there are two with the same name (with different Clover creds, etc.) and that's just confusing. I didn't see the message because late and tired, and he didn't follow up or text/call me until two days later (today, Sunday). I also thought these were strictly for diagnosing and were de-listed. I had no idea the merchant was live and people were actually purchasing things for it. Had I known this I would have freaked out and demanded specifics on Thursday/Friday because wtf? debugging in production? with broken merchants? selling things for real money? scary bad? hello?

Anyway, I didn't see his message until he texted me about it at like 5pm today while I was about 2 hours from my computer. He's understandably frustrated, and I totally don't blame him, but fuck, miscommunication is a serious problem in this company, and that's amazing because it's so freaking small.

But the short version is that I'm likely going to get blamed for all this, Clover screwiness included. Bossman and I set up a call for 10am tomorrow and I'm positive he's going to try pinning it on me. Totally not going to let him, but his social is lv16+ while mine's like. 2 or 3. 😕 I'll see how it goes.

Really though, I should read @rutee07's book and just roast these fuckers.

I'm cry-laughing.

Management wanted us to deliver a completely new feature before the holidays (see my previous rant) and they were acting really sad when we told them it is impossible. It turns out they really want it to be done, and instead of realising it is not going to happen, they are coming up with brilliant new ideas on what we should do and how should we do it on a daily basis. It was just just a little nuisance until today, listening to them and reading their mails for half an hour a day is not a big deal.

So guess what? They changed the whole fucking specification today. I can't even...

I've built a number of apis consumed by internal devs. Then there's one which I consumed in a mobile client–smoothest experience ever. I dogfed myself and empathised with any blind spot or skirmish that would have arisen if there was an external body

The ones consumed by others always end in tears and loggerheads. There was one with this girl who called me names and turned my relationship sour with the guys who contracted me. Our Altercation culminated in her hooking me, going as far as deleting personal media shared. That was my darkest hour supporting an api. Well, it started with her grumpy over broken endpoints, which I maintain were not that many

I wasn't an amateur dev at the time: I used conventions mastered post-suphle. Code was backed by automated tests and well documented. Now that I think of it, our earliest, innocuous argument was brought about by her incompetence. She didn't know some rudimentary stuff like how to build payloads or format to send to an api. Funny enough, the lead who contracted us both strongly vouched for her cuz they once worked together. He claimed she was no noob so I must be the faulty one

I'm about to release another api now. I've had all the time in the world to build it to production standard. Over 200 tests, all passing. In my head, I'm thinking, what could go wrong? Stakeholder introduced a feature breaking fundamental functionality. I refactored, implemented, connected tons of apis stubbed out in tests. Painstakingly began to fix broken tests to both fit integrated api behaviour and ensure system integrity is intact. Shit, software engineering is arduous. This is best case scenario unlike front end web or mobile where there is an unfixable bug or a ui requirement stumping you for literal days

Anyway atp I believe I've done my homework. The only thing that would likely do me in are those damned apis I rely on. One malformed response or missing key is enough to undo my meticulous efforts. I strongly hope not to have a huge fallout with the front end dev and the numerous third party consumers we're expecting

As an aside, On a different project entirely piggybacking off external apis, I'm supposed to write tests to verify their status. I wonder whether this is tenable or a waste of effort. But on paper, it's more reliable than building a postman collection and sending them from there