Bitching

I am exhausted. Today my group turned in the project, but my part of was "frozen" Monday afternoon because they needed to write some lies based on the code. And now, my promised bitching. There is a lot, feel free to skip the end for the summary:

We're all a bit pessimistic about our chances of passing. José and Julio might have a lot riding on this, but frankly, I dont give two shits. José was at the wheel after Ksenia (our original leader, a Russian girl frigid as a Siberian winter) abandoned us. So, we were left with a 4 man team with José in charge. José and Julio are exchange students from Extremadura, so they dont know how things work in this university. I from a whole other country, so I dont know how things work anywhere (not that I'm less obtuse in the US, but they dont know that. "But I'm a foreigner!" is an excellent multipurpose excuse.) And Angel is ski-obsessed jock. He works as a ski instructor and spends all day, almost everyday up in the mountains. This whole "get a cs degree" thing is like a side-project for him. So he doesn't go to class and is rarely available for meetings.

So we're one (wo)man short and the rest of us are idiots. But even with those disadvantages, this project could have been done well and at a comfortable pace because we had TWO FUCKING MONTHS. Oh no, we wanted a challenge! Let's wait till the last 6 days.

So we had 6 days to write a goddamn BIBLE of lies. And I had to write the code. The program is supposed to be this absurd meeting docmentation managment software. It stores Agendas and Actas for each meeting, allows the members of the team to add/modify/delete Agendas and Actas, and takes some statistics based on that data. Oh, and it's password protected such that each team member has a login/password, and everything the users do in the system is logged.

How would you approach this? Imagine you want to write useful software, okay? For this to make sense in the real world, you're going to want a database with a web interface. Some php and mySQL. THAT'S IT, right?

Nope! First, my group decides that we should meet the basic description of this program to its most absurd extreme. First! We throw out the database! Instead, we'll just use a huge amalgmation of unnecessary C++ classes. Hmm..also, no web interface! And let's write it with MFC! Yes! Excellent, now we're left with password-protected, user-logging software to help users share meeting data...that will be installed on each member's personal computer? THIS DOESNT MAKE SENSE.

I told Jose as much one day after he told me to write it in C++ and MFC. I explained that it would be MUCH faster and easier to write in PHP and mySQL, and most importantly, IT WOULD MAKE SENSE. Nope, too bad. They'd already started writing lies on the fact that we'd be writing in C++ and MFC. Oh, and supposedly the others know C++ and MFC so in future phases of this project (yeah, that's right, this is just one phase) they'll be able to help code, too. Here's something fun I found out later: Angel doesn't even know C++ and the other two don't know MFC. Fuckers.

So after telling me that I have to code it in C++ with Microsoft's Fucking Crap, he lets me know that I have to get it finished before Friday in order to allow the others to write crap based on it. So I didn't even have 6 days. Of course, I failed to meet deadline. That's when he tells me that I also need to write 3 "test" progams to test that the 3 gigantic useless classes he made me implement from his crappy documentation. I fail to meet deadline on those, too.

On Saturday I got an angry email from Jose (supposedly on behalf of the team) demanding I finish all that shit before Sunday morning. I'd only slept 6 hours a night that whole week, but I managed to work on that shit for 22 hours straight. Maybe the last HALF of that was USELESS, or at least, very inefficient. Crunchtime is wasteful.

Anyway, I didn't finish it all perfectly, but I sent him what I had along with a response to the angry email. I don't have much tact in Spanish, but I think that's due in part to the fact that I dont have much opportunities to practice. It seems like people are more honest, or at least more direct here. Anyway, I didnt get a response to the email. And when I saw them on Monday, it wasn't brought up. Maybe because it would have been pointless. Though I really wouldn't have minded telling those fuckers to their faces what I told them in the email. Maybe they got the point and saw my point of view.

It sounds like things got ugly between Jose and I, and maybe the did, but presently everything seems to be forgotten, or at least put out of mind. We were able to carry on light-hearted and positive conversation.

Well, that's about it. I think most of the people that read this have already heard the bulk of that. This experience has taught me a lot of things, but they are kinda hard to express at the moment. For one thing, it's too soon afterwards, and for another, I'm really very tired. Things about cruchtime, about working as a team, about delegation, about motivation, about my future career, about dealing with idiots.. A lot of things. I'll worry about turning them into maxims later.

Summary: My team procastinated. We struggled in vain to do the project at the last moment. There was friction. We turned in subpar work. We will probably fail. I don't care. Also, though I had to suffer, a lesson is learned. But I'm not sure what, yet.

More Software Engineering

This week has been dominated by Engineering of the Software. I have a combination of intense hatred and apathy towards it. At the moment, I am once again in a study lounge. I´ve been here all day. Jose and Angel went home recently. I am left in the company of Julio. Fantastic. I hate his retarded accent from Extremadura. "CHACHO!" Funny, I find it charming in almost anyone else.

That's right you jackass, everyone knows you're a Mongoloid. You don't need to point out your tag.
...
I just got an IM from Isa. I'm going to ditch this shit and go meet up with her. The bus leaves in about 5 minutes so I'm going get going. I'll continue to bitch about this course later.

Software Engineering

Right now I'm sitting in a study lounge with my Software Engineering team. I'm waiting for my copy of Visual Studio .NET 2003 to install. Supposedly, we're going to write a rather large application using MFC with database support. We've had over a month to work on this, and this is due in a week. Naturally, it was just yesterday that we decided what programming language and development tools we are going to use. And today we're kinda sitting around staring into the inky depths of our doom and waiting for things to install.

I am one of two that are supposed to be in charge of the coding. Neither one of us is good at databases and I don't really remember how to use MFC (I tried as hard as I could to forget it). We're supposed to write a piece of team-management software that gives access to team members to all our documents (such as meeting reports, etc most of which we don't actually have), takes statistics on shit I dont even understand and makes graphs and more crap of the same sort. Also it has to log all changes and such. Anyway, we're boned. It would probably take me 6 days just to learn enough MFC and databases bullshit to even start on this!

But the code is only half the work. There are an unimaginable quantity of "documents" and "reports" we're supposed to have done by now. It is beyond the realm of my understanding how we are supposed to fill so many stupid forms with meaningful information. It just doesnt seem fucking possible. Luckily, I'm not on the part of the team that is in charge of making all that shit up. Heh, actually, one of them (Jose) after a long silence, just said "there's no way you guys can code all that and there's no way we can write so many lies. We could concentrate on one or the other." I'm trying not to laugh. This is pretty retarded.

It sounds like I'm upset, but I'm not at all, actually. I dont have much to lose. Worst case: I have to take this course again next semester with Dr. Xia. I think I can handle the chinaman again. Two of the other guys in the group (Jose and Julio) have it rougher. I think they have scholarships depending on their grades throughout the year. Scholarships on which they live. I dont want to make Jose homeless. Fuck Julio, though.

Oh! I have to get going. VS.NET is done installing, and people are getting ansy. We might be leaving. Without doing any actual work! Imagine that!

Updating ... THE THING

Update time! I don't really have a lot I want to say in this medium that I haven't already said in others. This is the cause of the slow updates.

So let's see. The last update was about 2 weeks ago, so I guess I should sum up the last two weeks.

No class! There were two weeks of tests, the last one of which I had no tests. So I spent most of the week taking long walks, reading Kafka, and spending time with Isa (not necessarily at different times). Yes Lane, I also programmed a bit.

Speaking of programming, right now I'm still [not] working on Tank!Game3. There seems to be some guy that wants to do the models. That sounds really vague, but that's the about all I know. Lane gave me the AIM name of some artist he knows through Seth, and I spoke briefly with him. Having an artist-slave would be very motivating but I'm not getting my hopes up. Apart from tankgame, I'm also writing a small pointless "game" about a ball that crashes through walls. I just felt like playing with a physics engine.

I think this is the first time I've written so much about programming on this thing. I always call it that, don't I? This thing. I think of a lot of crap to write about here. Stupid observations and stuff. I always forget about them before I feel like making a post.

Test Week 2

Weather was nice again today so I took another walk. This time, I brought my camera.



There were less old men playing in the park today.


The "throw the metal tube at the stick" game:



I was listening to Ska-P when I found this on a wall in the park:
Incidently, the band broke up last summer.

More graffiti:
It says "Solo los peces muertos siguen la corriente". Translation: "Only dead fish go with the flow." Hm. Where have I heard that before?

On the way back I saw the cutest little gecko. I guess it was warm enough for him to come out and get some sunlight.


Well, that's it. I suppose I could have edited the last post and just stuck the pictures in there, but this is what happened instead.