Melbourne Part Two

So back in Melbourne we made our way to Mikey and Steph's place, who had very kindly agreed to let us crash there again. Basically the plan was to quickly see if there was anything I could do to help Steph's sister Sally with the sofware she'd tried to have developed to use in her dog daycare centre (basically a place for people who live in the city to drop their dogs in to be minded while they're at work, basically a dog-creche. Needless to say, many of her clients are gay!). If I couldn't get access to the system's source code, or if the software was missing too much functionality, then there would be nothing I could do, and we'd just catch the next bus up to Sydney to continue the travels.

So I pretty much went straight into DogZone itself to have a look at the software. It was hard not to just play with all the cute dogs, but after a couple of hours trying to decipher the various bits and pieces and versions of the software, downloading Java and development
kits (the machine was quite old and painfully slow!), and being distracted by barking dogs, I managed to get the software built from source and running against a database (that had absolutely minimal security, so simply opening the database and looking at the user table gave full, plain-text passwords - that in itself should have been an important clue for what was to come!).

So armed with all that, and a cursory look at the source code itself, I thought I'd have little problem fixing whatever problems Sally was having with the system. Another important piece of information in making that decision was that although the software had initially been developed by college students, Sally had subsequently paid a professional programmer a lot of money to polish it up and make it robust enough to use safely in the daily running of her business. Therefore I thought any problems should be minor and therefore easily and quickly fixed.

How wrong I was!

It turned out to be literally the worst code I have ever come across - and that's really saying something. It was a gradual realisation, dawning slowly as I started looking into the more complex problems Sally reported, and getting more familiar with the code. A lot of the code had a distinct 'studenty' feel to it, which wasn't surprising, but it was hard to detect any evidence of the professional programmer who was supposed to have fixed things up. Eventually I did come across distinctly different code, but it turned out this guy was every bit as clueless as the students! I truly believe this guy totally ripped Sally off, and that she'd have every right to go to the consumer protection agency or whatever and claim all her money back - if the guy had been in the same room as me as I was going through his code I swear I would have punched him.

Anyway, after about a week of fixing bugs and writing large swathes of functionality that had never even existed, the system was largely fixed up and Sally began testing it (I originally thought 2 or 3 days would be enough time - d'oh!). Around this time we moved across to Enda's gaff again, and ended up staying here for another week, kindly minding the house while Tracy was in Brisbane with Flyn and Enda travelled to Las Vegas for a business trip (nice work if you can get it).

But before Enda flew off he brought me down to his local boozer to meet the 'lads' on Saturday. To be honest I got a bit of a fright when I arrived to meet them all - they were all well-hard East -End Londoners with tattoos aplenty and really heavy, thick accents. Enda has collected this motley crew over the years, but they rarely meet up anymore due to wives and kiddies and the like (same the world over it seems). Myself and Enda were the only two paddies, but we still managed to win 2 of the 3 games of killer pool (but then sure, you'll never beat the Irish). They were alright lads really, just a bit rough and ready I suppose, but they were all really friendly, so it turned out to be a great day (we started at 2pm).

So the time spent relaxing in Enda's house just flew by again, and we were still meeting up for dinners with Mikey, Steph, Sally and Baz (and one very entertaining night of charades around the camp fire in Sally and Baz's backyard).

When I finally cycled back to DogZone to install the newly fixed up software Sally slipped me a thank-you card as I was leaving. When I opened it later I found she'd broken our original agreement - we had all agreed that I'd look at the software for nothing (although I'd relented on letting Sally pay for us to get up to Sydney). I had wanted to help out as both Sally and Baz had been really brilliant to myself and Sarah for weeks over Christmas. But here she was giving me a very generous few bob on top of all that, and to be honest I was a little embarrassed - and that bloody software had better hold up now!

But at Sally's request I vowed to use the money to really enjoy some great Aussie culture and adventure, and I reckon I certainly lived up to that promise when we arrived a couple of days later in Sydney.