To sign an pre agreement before actual quotation or not.
Posted on | July 8, 2011 | No Comments
I realise that there is a need to sign a pre agreement for projects before jumping into research and suggestion of a full fledged solution for the client.
I have a client who came to me via friend’s referral. He wanted an ecommerce website for school supplies. After a couple months of discussion and providing him with suggestions of a solution and showing some website demo for ecommerce website, we reached an agreement to build his website using wordpress with shoppe plugin.
On the very verge, literally, 1 hr after verbal agreeing to mail me the contract and cheque for the payment, he went back on his words because his partner wanted another company which he is having a retainer contract for his software selling website with to do the website.
Most unfortunately, the partner has to butt his way in at the very last second to say no, instead of 3 months ago when we initially made contact.
I have spent time to research, provide website demo with various solutions, suggestions and shared my experience with the client since he was so sincere to engage my service. All without signing any contract or agreement. Now they could very well take my suggestions and use it as project requirements for another company to build their website.
My client, despite claiming that it is most inconvenience for him to re-brief the new company, yet never put his feet down to say ‘NO’. A very feeble effort, and lots of excuses, to brush off his unethical action, handing the blame to his partner.
I guess I should choke it up as one unethical business person or two. And improved my own business processes to prevent such incidents from happening again. Looking on the bright side, it could be a most fortunate for me.
But this incident is most disconcerting. Affecting how people are being viewed.
Working on a joomla project
Posted on | April 18, 2011 | 1 Comment
Sorry to break my blog hiatus with a frustration expelling post. I worked on a joomla migration project. The website is a portal for a community. Nothing that requires cloud networking to function. As far as I can tell, the old website is fast enough for me. Some proMicrosoft company was contracted to do the migration to cloud network Azure.
The reason for the migration was cited as:
“Needed to move the website to a cloud network, and the cloud network only works with Joomla 1.6. We need the whole site moved to Joomla 1.6 from 1.5″
Why would an Azure network works only with Joomla 1.6? I couldn’t get that figure out so far. Anyone who could explain why? And what’s more, all nonstatic files are saved to a blob server. This would impact all modules that does file creation, writing and saving. The modules have to be modified to read and write to a blob server. Not sure if there is any wrapper doing file read write to a blob server instead of filesystem. No mention of this on the Web. This part of the post is lacking in technical details regarding why at this point of time, only joomla 1.6 is supported on Azure. It would be nice if someone could comment with links below.
Joomla 1.5 seems to be working on Linux cloudnetwork. See link here. So I don’t know why is Azure selected instead of a Linux option. If Azure can’t support Joomla 1.5. Most components are not Joomla 1.6 ready anyway. Funny that some decision makers would choose an opensource solution and then a expensive host. I believe that the security of the website depends on the website not the webserver.
The project has a dateline which for a moment elastic and the next firm and finalized. Flicker client are just so hard to please. It is a project that doesn’t make sense. The new website is identical to the old website. There is no need for a speedy move to cloud network if it is not going to work with joomla 1.5.
There is just so much project woes with working with this company.
- Datelines are not fixed, their people lax and then come back expecting things to be completed overnight.
- Expects things to flow beautifully when no instructions are given
- Conveniently forget to update me when payment is due
- Weird management person who just have to have the last word and tells you to move on when their action is demanding an explanation from you. This person turned my explanation to a self defense attack for his reputation. (Is this a sign of self denial of their wrong? Running out of sensible argument?)
- This management person seems to enjoy fire fighting and doing things by means of brawn instead of brain.
I can’t help but feel that the management person is deceptive from the start. Too self promoting but well.. let’s just say that when I checked out brags, they fall thru.
Collective Notes based on similar encounters. Sorry the race is not named to avoid my blog labelled as racist.
They are good persuaders. Too good, think salesperson who made you buy something you don’t want to buy and spend 15 mins following you around and talking to you about the goodness of their product.
“Can even trick the birdy in the tree to come down.” by a cabbie uncle. Cabbie uncles met a lot of people. Most of them are people savvy. Great people to have conversations with and learn from.
From another person, N:
- They can’t keep to their dateline and
- will wring their way out of the situation and try to make it appear it is your fault.
- You must give them a deadline and follow up with them a lot.
- They likes to argue or debate a lot.
- They like to do things without considering the bigger picture.
- They are very hierarchic in nature.
I observed all points in the people I worked with in that company. This person N is spot on!
Having shared the above observation. I must state that I have worked with some who do not display the signs above.
To take away
Better check out a company’s reputation or the staff before start of project. Do not take on projects on a shoestring budget with squeezy dateline from first time clients. It is usually troublesome. Important note to myself.
If the end client is mine, talking to me personally, I would tell them,
“Your website doesn’t needs to be in a cloud network, nothing in joomla is cloud ready. If you want, you are better off getting a network hosted with linux servers. Windows or Linux, both the same, you don’t have any classified information that requires such a big company like Microsoft to support”
So is it Azure or a Linux cloud network you are voting for?
Changing Model’s useTable from Controller
Posted on | August 8, 2010 | 3 Comments
I was struck trying to get the controller to change the table of a model for a while. It turns out that
$this->Payment->useTable = “payment_archives”;
doesn’t work..
Instead I have to use:
$this->Payment->setSource(“payment_archives”);
It seems that useTable is not referenced to when deciding which table to use.
iPhone development
Posted on | August 8, 2010 | No Comments
I have gotten a Mac machine for iPhone development.
My first tutorial: WebView
This is my first attempt for a iPhone application. Making use of WebViewUI to create an iPhone application that will load http://givemecake.dev-work.com.
This application is not signed with Apple Developer’s security certificate, it can be installed only on a jailbreak iPhone. 
To self sign the application or for version iOS4
A .ipa file is essentially a zipped up version of the .app file
Code are not yet released because it have not been tested on a real device.
Beta testers who are interested can leave me a comment with your contact email. Or email me to get the files.
Project Honeypot
Posted on | July 8, 2010 | No Comments
http://www.projecthoneypot.org/statistics.php
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