[theforum] Launch deadline

[Martin Paul Burns]

William wrote on 04/04/2005 13:06:03:

> Martin Burns wrote:
> > [snip]
> >
> > See above. William has the data. John needs to take part in the
> > massaging. Other than that, no-one's saying much and are complaining
> > greatly whenever anyone asks the (I would have thought reasonable)
> > questions "what's going on, what needs to be done, who's doing it and
> > when?".
>
> *I* don't have the data, *evolt* has the data; it's been sitting in my
> staff-readable home directory on tempest since March 19th, at which time
I
> told #evolt that it had been done and where it was.  You, John and others
> were in the channel at the time, so you can't say you didn't know where
the
> data dump was.

Apologies - didn't see that (although I may have been idle at the time),
and no-one else recalled it enough to say "ah, it's on tempest already". A
response to Elfur's email of a week ago might also have been useful.

> The difference between asking who can organise a data migration from the
MS
> SQL dump to the MySQL database on tempest and ordering people to do
things
> when their personal timetable may prevent doing otherwise is marked.

Indeed, which is why I have not been saying "William, get the data into
Drupal" but "AFAIK, William has the data. So can someone involved please
take ownership of the task and put a plan together to get that done." As
far as I was able to see, the 2 people most likely to be involved were you
& John. Given that you'd vanished off the face of the earth (some people
were worried you'd had a nasty accident), no-one had any clue where it was,
and I had no way of asking where the data was, the agreed launch date being
<24h away, you think you can blame me for being a bit stressed about it on
evolt's behalf?

The history is:
"William received the MSSQL dump and (we learn) uploaded it to tempest.
When it's in MySQL, John can get it into Drupal" with absolutely no-one
involved prepared to say how, when or by whom the bit in the middle will be
done other than a general "Not me, guv". This situation has been the case
for the last 2 weeks, with no-one the teensiest bit bothered by it, or that
it shows every sign of staying that way until heat death of the universe.

> I've not had *one* direct email or phone call directly about this,

I have to take the initiative every time? On an area that isn't even
slightly within my skillset? And you complain when I do... and also
apparently when I don't. Punting the ball into the air and running off
muttering "Someone else's problem" is all very well, but if it were me, I'd
have been at least looking behind me to see if it had been caught.

Put it another way: *someone* has to take responsibility for moving the
data. I haven't seen anyone *else* step up to it. If you're saying no-one
can ask questions of the last person seen with the data, then I think
evolt.org should have a problem with that.

> Please do get your house in order before talking about being
"reasonable",

I think you'll find I've taken responsibility for a number of areas and
tasks, and carried them out. And been snarked at for doing so, even by
people who made it necessary for me to do so. If you don't like it, make my
contribution redundant, which is what I'd have preferred in the 1st place.

Cheers
Martin