Toughest client meeting yet

Hola!

Well, the time now is 1.22 am on a sunday morning. And yes, I'm sitting at home blogging! I feel like such a loser. At the moment, I'm also listening to "Get it poppin" by Fat Joe and before that it was "Shake that ass" by Eminem. Anyhow, I have been at work in the morning (Kmart) and the rest of the day, studying for two unit tests and preparing the infamous tax law assignment. Ohh and of course, I did the minutes for our client meeting yesterday with Andrew and Bill.

Well, yesterday at the meeting, we discussed the issue of normalisation with Andrew and Bill. Everytime we asked Bill (the non-technical fellah) a question about the database, he would point his right index finger towards Andrew (the technical fellah). This 'technical fellah' who is an 'engineer' proved to be extremely difficult to convince, when it came to normalisation. He wanted to keep the way he had the tables structured so badly, that he tended to come up with some sort of negative remark for our approach. In a way, it was good to explore the possibilities by brainstorming the pros and the cons of normalisation, but Andrew just couldn't see the benefits they will receive by dividing the tables up as we had planned, instead of keeping all attributes in one big table. Furthermore, there are sooooo many repeating attributes and attributes with similar names! What's even worse is that Andrew reckons that "[he] needs them all"!!!!!!!! Also, he reckons keeping a whole chunk of attributes (like 25 or so) in one table would be convenient to him when it comes to data entry.

I think the whole issue here is that he just doesn't want to take the time to learn how to do things a little differently, which will derive far greater benefits. He also made it clear that they want to be able to enter data and manipulate data the same way they have always been doing.

I felt sorry for Aaron, who was standing up in front of their whiteboard and drawing diagrams and what not trying so hard to convince them. Me and Tarindra and Ishara also backed him up. At times, I could tell Aaron was getting so cut at Andrew, that he was fidgeting with his ear and gritting his teeth together. (He does this when he's mad, thats how I know...other than that Andrew and Bill won't have realised he was mad!..lol). I was trying so hard not to laugh at certain times...lol!!!!!

Finally, we managed to settle somewhere on the border. We got some things we wanted, and they got some things they wanted. Andrew gave us the 'ok' to normalise some parts of the database, but another half of it we cant touch. In a way, fair trade. Ahh well, at the end of the day, if they dont want our expert solutions, then we wont waste our breath and energy trying to convince them! Not our problem they are plain stupid!..lol. (But dont get me wrong: they are nice people and we dont hate them! :D).

On the way back home from the meeting, I have never heard Aaron swear so much (haha), joined in by Tari and me occasionally. lol... (he gave us all a lift home...nice fellah). Well, the important thing is, we believe if we are persistent, we should be able to eventually get somewhere with the clients with normalisation.

Also at the meeting, we were able to identify what some more of the attributes meant.

Apart from that, the functional spec is being prepared by thusiya and ishara (the rest of us are helping them too!!!)

Anyways, I dont wanna bore you too much more and I shall say 'Hasta Manana' till next time.

L8erz amigos! :)