They Called My Bluff

Is this typical of private industry? To just keep yanking your chain and adding new hoops to jump through? Second interview over and done with last week and word gets to me that the company has been calling my references. So...it's looking good, right?

Last night I get an email that says essentially, "Koko, you mentioned that you build websites on the side. Do you have any examples you could show. Also, do you have any examples of programs you've written in a language other than COBOL?" Oh boy. Y'see...my "web sites on the side" business has been in a long germinating period. A couple years ago I started a decent sized site but got bogged down in my day job and meanwhile the client's family experieced a long, drawn out personal tradgedy. That site went nowhere. I kept most of the code but, here's the stupid-me part, I've forgotten the password for the Access database that drives the site. And, frankly, that design is so old it would've been redone by now anyway. I've got a church site to which I've contributed heavily (about 80-90% of it) but I've pretty much turned that one over to a fella who is still learning how to wrangle Contribute and his pages are a freaking mish-mash. Then there's my crown jewel which, sadly, is not out in the wild but was an internal site. However, the plug was pulled on that one just two weeks before it's big redesigned launch all due to politics. I'm going to have to do some fancy hunting and gathering to try and pull together a decent portfolio. I know, I know...I should've had this done already but I never expected a job to fall into my lap like this or that I'd go so far into the process.

And a program example, too? Okay, here's the thing. I haven't really programmed all that much in Visual Basic what I did was well over a year and a half ago (save for a refresher course a little while back). I don't think I saved any of that either as it was all ad hoc programs for a particular, immediate need. I do have a collection of macro-intensive Excel worksheets (written with VBA which is like a VB lite) which I contributed heavily to but I'm going to need more. Maybe I can ask him for some imaginary specs and I could work up a prototype from that? Or, maybe I could do that myself?

Oh boy...how to play this hand? It's time to put up or shut up and I'm not sure I've got the cards.