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Ugh...Mondays

08:05: So, yeah, apparently, I am doing something wrong on the project I have been working on since Thursday, as most of my software-generated numbers are upwards of 20% off of both my hand-made measurements and the customer's expected measurements, to say the least of the measurements on the print for the part.

09:30: The customer decided that the information they gave initially was not detailed enough, and so they sent an entirely new print, with different numbers, and an entirely new, and different, set of criteria for the project. Everything I have done on this project since Thursday is completely useless.

09:35: Oh, it gets even better--the new print that we got? The one up there, that has different numbers on it? Yeah, the reason that there are different numbers on it is that the print is partially in millimeter units, and partially in thousandths of a inch. Yes, both units on the same print. The difficulty with this?

  1. Remember a few years ago, when NASA sent up a probe to somewhere, but the important parts did not open up and the probe crashed? Yeah, well, that was caused by one team building it using metric, and another using Imperial, and the two not telling each other that.

  2. All the tools that I have created for this project since Thursday are based on the old print, and thus are all in millimeters.

  3. The customer has not specified which dimensions should be displayed in which units, but, if this is anything like their issue with our manuals not being in both English and a different language that their workers speak and them paying us to translate all the manuals, chances are good that I will have to either set up an on-the-fly conversion, adding unnecessary complications to the profile, or I will have to convert everything by hand to make the print entirely in the (as-yet unspecified) unit that the customer actually wants the dimensions displayed in, which will be a royal pain in the ass.

  4. Think about having some gas stations display their price as price per gallon, and some as price per litre...One station displays $3.71, the other displays $0.98...

10:06: Yay...no one is in their office (customer's place, not ours) today. Thus, no phone calls to clarify matters, no emails to ask for direction, no helpful, high-speed, color faxes to get a new take on the project.

11:21: A text message from the main rep at the customer's place:

Yo. Thinking bout $project_name, did u get print? Need change dim214 to 2.53, bye--back 2 beach

11:22: "WTF? Dimension 214 was originally 46.8 mm...that 2.53 makes no sense whatsoever in any unit system currently on the print..."

All in all, this is not shaping up to be one of the most outstanding Mondays I have ever had. Also, if anyone tries to quote a certain movie at me, there will be no apology for repercussions thereafter...

PS: Yes, I will be posting about Berserker at some point, as soon as I get my server up so I can link to the ~500MB of stills and video I took over the weekend.