They want to do what?

This morning started with an "urgent" message from Christopher Robin. Tigger and and I pondered long and hard over it and then had a good few minutes of repeating the words "what the fuck is he on about" until we felt mildly better.

Basically our current project has been assembled using internal and external resources. The external resources are Vendors with whom we have an established relationship. They are able to deliver services at reasonable rates and can be relied upon to meet Service Levels. After the aforementioned head scratching we think that our prospective client has asked a US Executive to remove one of our preferred vendors as a Supplier in three countries and replace them  with one of their own third party vendors.

Now this is where it gets tricky as all we have is a sentence cut and pasted from an Instant Message that was typed by a very tired American Executive at godawful o'clock in the morning. We haven't a clue who the client's preferred vendor is or what range of services they want us to use them for. Neither do we know whether this is a "by the way" type of question or a DO IT NOW instruction.

All we could do was go back to Christopher Robin and politely point out that we could do absolutely nothing until fundamental questions were answered like who is the vendor?, what is their address?, what is the requirement from them? I outlined a sereis of activites that would be necessary to engage with them and indicated that this was not a 5 minute job in the most positive way I could. We are, after all, delivering an updated price to the client today!

After a brief session of idiom mashing the following phrase is felt to describe this situation; A Blind Man on a Galloping Horse chasing down a blind alley after a gaggle of wild geese.

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Away from work my eye is much improved. I can now tolerate reasonable levels of light and have been able to take T&M out for a walk provided I wear a hat and sunglasses. This probably makes me look a little eccentric as the weather requires neither at the moment being quite overcast.

I also had a rare chat with my younger brother. He was celebrating after being told that he has got his BA in Illustration from Cardiff University. He is obviously very pleased, as are we for him, and I may persuade him to apply his talents to update the avatar I use in The Journal.