Leviathan

The trouble with leviathan.

I'm a libertarian.  Small L mind you.  So it troubles me that I'm working for the Federal Government.  Not directly, mind you, I'm a contractor.  I'm not sure which is more libertarian heresy.  Working for the beast or working for a company that merely feeds off the teat of the beast.  Probably the former. 


Duffy?  What are you doing?

Optimization.

What do you mean?

I mean, you have all sorts of problems with your schema here and I'm trying to fix it.  That and I'm creating some summary objects which will do the large sums on the repository side and not the application side which will be more efficient.

Who told you to do that?

You did?

When?

When I first started here.  You said many of the problems here are a function of a bad schema and inefficiencies.  So, I'm fixing them.

Stop it.

Why?

We're not funded for that.

Um...what?

This contract is maintenance and support only, not design and build.

But I'm not designing or building anything really.  I'm changing some joins and adding some summary objects...

Can't do it.

I don't understand.

We can only support this, not make any changes.

So, if it breaks I can fix it but that's it?

Yes.

Makes perfect sense.  So I'll just wait for something to break then?

Sure.

Wait, don't I also have a long list of deliverables that are contingent on contract mod?

Yes.

And I can't start those until the mod is approved.

Right.

How long does that take?

I don't know. Should be "soon".

Define; "soon"

We don't know yet. We have to talk to our Contract officer who will talk to the Three Letter Agency Contract officer who will talk to the TLA Project Manager...

Why can't we just call the PM directly?

We're not allowed?

Seriously?

Yes. Only Contract officers can talk to contract officers and only their contract officer may speak to their PM.

Well, that makes sense.

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