New Software for the Bookshop

As things get busier there is a need to maintain some sort of control in the bookshop. As a result we have purchased some new software to print receipts and keep tabs on the books we have in stock. However, the process was not as easy as it was to write the last two sentences. 

It all started in July when the final decision was made that we need to have some sort of control over the stock and move from hand writing receipts to printing receipts. After working through the decision for purchasing a ready made program or getting a local person to develop one we met with a friend to get the program written. Ah, and so the fun began.

The first meeting was with the owner of a computer shop and I explained everything that I wanted the program to do and I left all my notes with him to get on with the job. 

The following meeting was with a guy who was writing the program, so I thought, and he asked me the same questions, which was quite difficult not having the notes from the first meeting and the manager of the shop wasn’t in to give the notes to this new guy.

The next meeting was with the actual person who was going to write the program and so this time I decided it was time to make my own set of notes during the meeting to make sure that if this happened again that I would have the necessary information. 

The next meeting was the first view of the program. It was at this meeting that I was glad to have written the notes of the previous meeting telling them that there were many things that were missing, and it was at this point that I was wondering in the wisdom of getting some young guys to do this. They were asking me questions like, “But do you like the colour?” “Do you like how when you click here that this happens?” And all along I am thinking, am I ever going to get a program that functions or is it going to look good and do nothing?

By this time it was the end of August and I had seen the program once and sent them away with the idea of actually writing the program to do what we had asked. 

Our next meeting was seriously promising, there were a few little issues and bugs to be worked through, however it was doing most of what we wanted and we had a date for installation which was the end August. Exciting, however I am writing this in October and so there is more to the story.

The date came and went and they started the asking for another week to fix this and another week to fix that and then an install date was given to me as next friday. This was then delayed as they were having trouble packaging it for installation (meaning that they wanted a nice file to double click on that self installed, a bit of a waste of time and meant that I was still without a program).

It was at this point that everything came to a crashing end. The guy who was writing the program dropped his computer and pretty much lost everything. A good reminder to those of you who do not do backups, that you should start, as losing your stuff is only one drop away!

As you can imagine I was not very compassionate, being a programmer, one would assume that you keep backups regularly, however we showed some grace and decided to give them some extra time to re-write and get things ready. 

The manager of the computer shop at this stage decided that if the program wasn’t installed in our office by the 7th October we would ask someone else to give us a program. 

Unfortunately the program was not ready and the manager of the shop decided that he would just ask a favor from a friend who had a program that normally costs more than double what we had originally thought, and so on the 6th October we finally had the new software installed and it’s working fine!

Talk about a saga, however the best part of all this was the fact that the friendship between the manager of the computer shop and myself has grown. He is a Christian, and has been for the past 11 years, however he has had numerous questions about the gospel and other things and so with all the extra time we have had some good conversations about the trinity and salvation amongst other things. 

I guess one of the things we continue to realise and one that doesn't change whether here in Ecuador or in Australia is that relationship leads to conversation and encouragement and even at times a willingness to listen to who Jesus is and what he came to do.