Ranty-de-rant

I just wrote a long ranty email that I think I shouldn't send, so I'm posting it here, and sending an expurgated version instead:

[Rebel Alliance],

[The Groundhog] says More Winter. Feh. I hate that little rodent! :-)

As for the report, yeah, the instruction "e v e r y t h i n g owned at [my library] that is [suppressed]"...pretty hard to follow, isn't it?

Unofficially...[in other words, [my director] wasn't in the room when I read the letter last night after the meeting while the technology was being packed up]...The Board wrote a letter similar to everyone else's (presumably) saying that because [The New Software Company] hadn't come up with their end of the bargain, we don't think going live in April is a great idea. It leaves open the option of re-evaluating by 12/31/07 and if [The New Software Company] has miraculously got their poop in a pile by then and can deliver what we already have in [our current software], we can elect to stay with [the current software]. Or something very like that. I'm paraphrasing, since I don't have a copy of the letter to hand.

RE next week's meeting: As someone else whose name I won't pass along says, these wonderful people just don't know how to be firm and say "Up yours!" to [the big muckety-mucks]. I think they really want to not be the Bad Guys, and they really want [Mr. Big] to be nice because they are nice people...hah! HAH, I say!!! And they really expect [Queen of Cataloging] et al. to tell the truth even at this late date. I'm appalled that they don't call her on BS when she says things like "Oops, yeah, that function was supposed to be turned on. I'll do that tomorrow." I wonder it it has been turned on now, two days later?

In a related note, my husband is getting vicarious enjoyment out of all of this. His company spent several million dollars on a new system integrating customer service / production / finance / etc. / etc. / EVERYTHING a couple of years ago. This is a company that finds spending money acutely painful, but they paid over-and-above to make sure the contract was written so that the technology company focused on THEIR demands and timeline. It came in on-time, met all expectations, and has streamlined the communications within and without the company. But, did you see the difference here? MILLIONS OF DOLLARS for a top-quality product, with a hard-nosed contract that was enforced. No delays allowed. No promises, no "we hope we'll be ready", just results.

Meanwhile, here sits [our consortium] with a crap contract that they don't seem willing to enforce, on a product that, well....we're getting what we pay for. The whole point of a contract is so that you can wave it around and say "HEY! You didn't DO THIS PART!" if that should happen.

It's funny. I'm pretty sure [my boss] doesn't trust me; she isn't telling me stuff she's telling others (I found proof of that last night). Oh, well.

Fucking politics. Fucking power-plays. Fucking fuckheads.