I officially took over as lead of my project yesterday. Kind of uneventful because no one is here. I'm in charge, but have no one to be in charge of! My lone remaining full-time software person is on vacation, my hardware guy is on travel at King's Bay, my 50% software guy is swamped with TCS stuff until the end of the week, and I haven't found a new guy to hire yet. I did get my first resume yesterday though, so I'm looking over that today. I'm kind of stalling on it intentionallty to make sure that if I think he looks good on paper, by the time we can schedule him an interview, Jenny will be back so I'm not the only one he comes in to see. The phone calls have already started too. Not just from my customer, but from other groups who need answers from me about things. Most of them are easy, but some of them make no sense and I have to spend 30 minutes on the phone with a guy trying to decipher what it is he's actually trying to get more information about.
Them: "We're thinking about doing away with X-Windows for TI08, how does that affect TSMS?"
Me: "Um, it's required for our displays, but as long as you have some other GUI that supports Java displays, I guess I don't really care. Just a lot more integration effort."
Them: "Oh. No one else said they needed it."
Me: "Who else did you talk to? That's doesn't make any sense; all of sonar runs on X."
Them: "Not on legacy."
Me: "You asked me about TI08, not legacy. All of sonar runs on X. If you take X away, I promise that TSMS will be the least of your concerns."
End result of this roundabout conversation was that they want to remove a specific X library that handles remote system calls that no one uses anymore because we came up with a better implementation in TI06. It took 10 minutes to get this information out of him. At which point my response was simple: I don't use it, don't need it, and don't care if it stays or goes. *sigh* It's hard to answer an incorrect question with a useful response. Knowing is truly half the battle. I can't wait for more of these types of phone calls.
Them: "We're thinking about doing away with X-Windows for TI08, how does that affect TSMS?"
Me: "Um, it's required for our displays, but as long as you have some other GUI that supports Java displays, I guess I don't really care. Just a lot more integration effort."
Them: "Oh. No one else said they needed it."
Me: "Who else did you talk to? That's doesn't make any sense; all of sonar runs on X."
Them: "Not on legacy."
Me: "You asked me about TI08, not legacy. All of sonar runs on X. If you take X away, I promise that TSMS will be the least of your concerns."
End result of this roundabout conversation was that they want to remove a specific X library that handles remote system calls that no one uses anymore because we came up with a better implementation in TI06. It took 10 minutes to get this information out of him. At which point my response was simple: I don't use it, don't need it, and don't care if it stays or goes. *sigh* It's hard to answer an incorrect question with a useful response. Knowing is truly half the battle. I can't wait for more of these types of phone calls.
