Re: OT: Collection Agency

> I made a few mistakes with this guy.. 
>       * I discounted my rate to get the job.
>       * I let the project start without a hard specification.
>       * I didn't get a firm contract since there wasn't a firm
>         definition of the deliverable.
> For those reasons I said I'd do it on an hourly basis and bill him
> periodically.  Later in the game he wants to shift to a milestone
> based billing, essentially one HUGE milestone that includes half of
> his project.  He already owes me for 56 hours of work, the rest of the
> project if all goes well should take another 20 hours.  It's a lot of
> money to my small company to be at risk.  What really makes me nervous
> is that he doesn't even want to pay half of what he currently owes
> me.  This project has made me realize that I can't take on another
> project before I get some contracts created that spell out my terms.  

> Heres a breakdown of a typical line of code from this code, I sent
> this to the client to explain the issues I was having : 
>         Heres one line from bidding.pm in AccountMgr.pm:
>             $Template =&Translate_File($Global{BiddingList_Template});
>         The above line looks innocent enough until you try to figure
>         out what it's loading:

>         Searching through the code I eventually find this line
>         inConfiguration.pm:
>         $Global{BiddingList_Template} =
>         "$Global{Template_Dir}/BiddingList.html";

>         Looking up $Global{Template_Dir}I eventually find this line:
>         $Global{Template_Dir} =
>         "$Global{Templates_Dir}/$Global{Theme}";

>         Now there are two variables to decode ($Global{Templates_Dir}
>         and $Global{Theme}
>         $Global{Templates_Dir} = "$Global{Data_Dir}/templates

>         Ok.. now I have to look up $Global{Data_Dir}
>         $Global{Data_Dir} = "$Global{CGI_Dir}/data
>         This isn't defined specifically anywhere I can find with
>         grep.. but must be /cgi-bin/auction/

>         Now theres $Global{Theme}
>         $Global{Theme} = $Themes{$Global{Language}};

>         Now theres $Global{Language}
>         $Global{Language} = $Cookies{User_Language}
>         Cant find this anywhere.. but it must be English.
>         That leaves $Themes{English}

>         I finally find this line:
>         $Themes{$Lang} = $Theme;
>         Another line in Configuration.pm: ($Lang, $Theme) =
>         split(/\:/, $Line);
>         and $Line comes from $Global{Themes}
>         And finally in Defaults.pm I find that line:
>         Defaults.pm:    $Global{Themes} = "English:Default";
>         The above line is splitting $Global{Themes} on ':' into $Lang
>         and $Theme.

>         So what file is it loading?? :)
>         It's loading:
>         /cgi-bin/auction/data/tempates/Default/BiddingList.html
>         Then theres the function that's processing the file:
>         Translate_File
>         DisplayMgr.pm: Translate_File  
>         All that does is load the whole file into a string, simple
>         enough once you figure out all the layers of BS to get there.
>         .
>         Thats just one line.
> I hate when people write code like this; it's almost like the author
> purposefully made it obscure though perl makes that an easy task 
> (grin)