Work stuff for this month...
First, the night between fifth and sixth. I couldn't sleep. The visa expires at midnight. What now? The UniJewel guys didn't even move a dick to push my green [card], they posted the pro forma job ad, composed so that nobody but me can apply, and that was it. Not a single piece of paper did they produce afterwards. Now it is what it is, I'm not in a software company anymore, I'm a house programmerr now, which is by far more stable and not prone to investor madness, but again, what if we get discovered and deported... Lena is just finishing the elementary [school] (called middle here, from 6th to 8th grade). And so all the way to midnight sleep won't come to the eyes, I keep shifting and turning, and then I see that it is past midnight. The digital alarm clock from Walmart has large enough digits, and the big window lets enough light in, so I see. And I realize that from this point on I'm illegal, but that's not written on my brow, nothing changed, everything same as it was two minutes ago. Slept like a pigeon suckling.
On eighth I had to connect to Valerie's mchine, because that's the only box from which I can do (whatever there was to do). Which I did, when she was away. I think that's where life became easier, during one of the previous sojourns in the Nyork the m$ from Citrix came by, some russian guy from the firm which sold them the app and installed it, and I found an understanding with him in barely five words, so he left me a password and whatnot, so now I was the maestro and had quite a free hand in that cupboard...
On ninth, I sent some document to David, some plan of work re what Paula asked for... He said he liked my approach, and the only thing left to do is to remove six people who don't work at UniJewel anymore, just erase, no questions asked. Sima and admin also shouldn't be mentioned, but then ask him what he thinks. For anything around the old app, see with Valerie and Ira, they know their way around it.
On thirteenth, another document, looking at how to automate what we did manually so far, to backup the database in Newyork, zip it and post on the FTP, then have it downloaded at Antwerp, unzipped and the database restored from it. So the central would have last evening's data from Nyork. By sixteenth it all worked just right, it's just that the recipient app in Antwerp didn't know how to quit, „kill it when you remember to“.
On eighteenth, just like that, an email from Ford... He went to A-burg with his wife for a footbal match (european football, male, university team) and noticed one player was a freshman from Belgrade, so he remembered us. I replied, not too briefly, and that was it.
I see that on monday, the nineteenth, I mentioned going to Newyork. Ahem... I see there's a chat with David on that day, we postponed it for later in the week, suits us both better. I said I'd need that laptop, says talk with Sima. Aske when do we start work on production tracking, says document the existing system first, the masks and tables and how they connect. Well, I said, I'm not quite clear on what's going on in there, about lots of things. Well exactly, write it until it becomes clear. And while at it, ignore stuff which is not used at all - metal prices, bags.. only what's there in the BOM (bill of materials). Looking at that... I found a heap of stupid stuff, work orders without due date, at least a hundred. I asked how do they check for a workorder whether the material is in stock, he said they simply don't. Ouch, we'll have to dig there a lot if we're supposed to create a system which will take over from that app. He said he knows pretty much all I need to know, but never had enough time to explain. The plan was that we do that when I'm in Belgium, but now fuck that. I even found the manual of the old app, describing 6.3 and the app is now 6.5. And then he went on to explain the difference between a bag and workorder... as a workorder may have 2000 of some item, and a bag fits only 50... The bags are prepared in advance, with preprinted stickers, and the requisition and issuing of materials is literally putting them into bags.
And here's the reason for the visit, bullshit in that old app, as I explained it to Valerie:
„There are about 9000 records in OrderHeader table (which is WorkOrders, actually). Presently, about 4800 of them are unapproved, out of which about 4500 are past the due date + 15 days or have no due date at all. We don't have to delet them to move them out of the way: the form (Orders) shows only unapproved orders. There is a way in SCP to move these obsolete orders out of the way - by assigning them status V (void) in the form. We can emulate this by simply replacing the status of O with a V for all orders which are 15 days past due date, or have no due date but the creation date is past 30 days. The affected orders are also to be copied into a local table prior to voiding.“
With David:
- And the meaning of "line" here is what? Line item in a PO? RS line? Wikipedia has a nice feature: disambiguation.
- Definitely POLIne. Only a sick mind would inclide the RS Line here uh :).
- That's me... I'm sick of the ambiguity and overloaded words :). So whenever I spot a reused word, I ask for its meaning in the current context. You wouldn't believe what sorts of expressions had completely unexpected meanings since I started working in English - resident, fellow, server banking, front load... and the time I wasted trying to figure out what they meant. So I rather ask a stupid question on time.
And in the end I can't decide whether I went to Nyork then or not - there are no photos, and no confirmation email from Today's bus (those Chineses), or did I handle all that from home, via Citrix.
1-VII-2024 - 23-XII-2025