This is a slightly shorter, maybe less RARA than the others, but still noteworthy in that it adds more fuel to the fn fire as to why we were RIGHT back in fn SEPTEMBER when we said we’d be better off without our 4th Person. Who is now going to be re-named Nappy, kinda like Sleepy the dwarf - buy why hate on the dwarfs.

So, 2 weeks ago at our senior project team meeting.. Project Manager and I ask Nappy (who hadn’t earned this name yet, but for future consistancy lets go with it) and Lone Male to go around campus mainly outside and around the School of Business hallway and classrooms and take pictures for us to use on the website. They agree with the idea and go off on their merry way.

About an hour passes and then come back. Project Manager and I have been tweaking our layout and putting basic content on the pages from the current website. When they get back, we take turns copying the pictures off of the memory card to our respective laptops so we all have the same pictures. This is fine, this is great, now we can start making new banners and putting images on the pages. So then, Project Manager and I start working on the block that will sit in the side bar that will hold the twitter and facebook widgets. We needed to get the widgets made, so we did that.. took the code from the respective pages and copied into a text doc. Trying to get the block to display properly meant diving head first into the css.. ever so much fun for me. So the 3 of us are looking at code, 2 are offering me suggestings that I try.. and sometimes have success with and other times not so much. But, the point is we try. 3 of us TRY! And our 4th, Nappy, who I could also call F5.. hmm I like that too.. F5. Well F5/Nappy does exactly what F5 does - refresh the page. That worked, that didn’t, nothing changed. Well guess what, don’t you think I’m refreshing my screen too!? About the only help it does is that we can see what it looks like to someone who is not logged in, and using a different browser from the one I’m using. So its like .35 helpful. Maybe.

So, it gets awfully quiet across the table. I glance up and notice her head is down, but I kinda ignore it. A few mins later Project Manager taps me and points in the direction of Nappy/F5 and mouths the words “shes sleeping”. Lone Male peeks over at her (he is sitting or standing off to the side of me  - where I was kinda between Project Manager and Lone Male but we could all see my laptop and the code) and says yeah she is. SO! We’re working, yet.. we somehow missed the nap time memo. Nice. So we keep working, and we’re not even trying to be quiet. Not that we were overly loud before, aside from my random WHAT THE HELL or WORK DAMNIT when something just wouldn’t work right. So we just go on with what we were doing not caring if we woke her or whatever.. debating on just like.. HEY! ARE YOU TIRED!! GO THE FUCK HOME! But decided no.. lets just see how long naptime is.

So time passes, like 30-45 mins and outta nowhere Nappy starts hitting keys on her keyboard grumbling something about I dunno what my computer is doing trying to play it off like no one noticed. We didn’t say a word, but believe me WE FN NOTICED!

THEN maybe like 20 mins after that she goes on her dinner break! OH OH wait, let me go back.. the begining of the meeting she says she had to leave around 7. So naptime is around 4-4:30.. dinner starts around 5:30 or so.. YA KNOW WHEN SHE STROLLS BACK IN!? Around 6 or just about 6. **FUME** You nap. Then you eat. Even though you have to leave early. And you don’t even make dinner quick or bring it back and eat in the room so the rest of us can go. Lone Male had gone and come back in the time she was gone, I think.. or at least he came back soon after.. I forget. When Project Manager and I go to leave to get our dinner (just across campus) we say, are you gonna be here.. so we can leave our stuff and not lose the room. The reply, i’ll be here till 7. Implying she’s out at 7 whether we are back or not and who cares about our stuff. *FUME*

Lets just say there are 3 unhappy campers about this whole situation. VERY unhappy! EXTREMELY unhappy. ANGERR!

So then last meeting, yesterday. Project Manager gets a text message from Nappy/F5 saying she’s sick and won’t be there. Nothing asking if there is anything she can do, nothing. Just. Not gonna be there. FN wonderful. I guess as least we got a message. Whatever. We worked without her. We are scheduling meetings without her.

I would love to know what her status reports say. I’m sure they are more elaborate than “I refreshed the page and took pictures”. But really, thats all she does. Not. Helpful. At. All. But there is nothing we can say. We tried to get her out of our group and the prof basically said no. Under the guise of “your group will be ok because you’re coming to me early”. This is not couples counseling. If it is.. its a strange grouping, and 3 of us want a divorce! But we didn’t get one. What we got is… you’ll be graded individually based on input and I can tell who isn’t pulling their weight by the presentations and work handed in. Which no, I do not want names in the TOC nor do I want an I DID THIS chart.. although it would look nice in the favor of some, I think its tacky and unfair. Don’t get me wrong, its not unfair to Nappy/F5 for it to look like she did nothing. Its unfair to the 3 of us who work together, like at the same time. Only one person can actual edit the code at a time.. and technically because of permissions and whatnot, its always my log in. So I have to be there and logged in even to let someone else edit code. So for the most part, I edit code while Project Manager and Lone Male help me by giving suggestions or hey this worked before, do that again. Its unfair to say, “I did the ccs for our style” or “I wrote code” because while thats true it unfairly implies that no one else helped which is untrue. I always put in my status reports that I had help. Project Manager does some code edits too, even more in the last few meetings because she wants to understand. She was doing some html last night, pretty much on her own with just a little help from me because I was trying to fuss with the css again. I am grateful that drupal has a separate login and that we can be logged into drupal more than once with our login because if not it would be even more difficult.

We got an email from our professor. There are 6 weeks left. HO-RAY! I am proud of this project, it has taken a lot of figuring out of things for all involved. It has been made harder because we are spending more time on things because we can’t rely on one of our members. We would have been better off as a 3 person group, at least then we would know how to budget time amongst ourselves.

And to wrap up, from last post - I mentioned snow. We got over 40 inches of snow between 2 storms, approx 20 each time. So we did miss that wednesday’s meeting back in february. Our project was not thrown off by this. We were able to finalize and complete our paper and presentation on time. And you know what else, another case in point. Spring Break week was another meeting that we didn’t have. We could have, we’re all local and no one was going anywhere before the weekend anyway, but we wanted a week off of everything school related. And we were able to do that. We are not behind. We are pretty much on track for our ‘finish early’ date, so really we are ahead still. We should be finished in time for the walkthrough on April 5th. If not, the week after, so that we can finialize the paper in the last weeks and tweak any last minute things. See how that works. We were doing it right from the beginning. Work hard early so that if things come up the project doesn’t fall behind.

/end rantfnrant