* * * * *
                                        
                                    Pressure
                                        
I do not handle stress well.

Wednesday was bad.

Yesterday wasn't that bad, but I fell asleep almost immediately upon coming
home, and still managed to get up late.

Today is bad.

As if osCommerce [1] wasn't bad enough (that site … how can anybody use that
site? It's the most horribly designed site I've come across) I now get to
debug the Dansie Shopping Cart [2].

Woot!

Only 102 warnings when run with /usr/bin/perl -w (and since perl spits out
those warnings when the script runs, it confuses Apache [3]).

Running it without the warnings option gives me:

> ": No such file or directory
> 

I also like this bit:

>  # May not be used without purchasing a license. Do not attempt to run this
>  # script on a site other than which it was licensed for.
>  # Modification of this script other than:
>  # 1. Adjusting the perl path in the first line above.
>  # 2. Or setting the $vars variable below.
>  # May void your right to technical support and subject you to legal action.
> 

And the customer is upset because she paid for this and she doesn't
understand it worked on four other servers and why can't I fix it and … and …
and … and …

According to this, I can't debug their 4,000 line script (technically, it was
one line; all the formatting had been removed to protect the guilty) without
subjecting her to possible legal liability and voiding her warrentee.

The conversation went downhill from there.

The upshot: the customer doesn't care—she wants it working.

So I get the job of debugging some wonderful perl code.

[1] http://www.oscommerce.org/
[2] http://www.dansie.net/cart.html
[3] http://httpd.apache.org/

Email Sean Conner at sean@conman.org

.