Working on somone else's project

We have a big development effort that is due at the end of the week. There are still 34 outstanding errors. And so I've been tasked to help the other programmer with this project. But it is very difficult for me to make any headway when the requirements are still changing and the documentation is 1) bad and 2) 2-4 months old.

If there was at least some level of documentation or comments in the program, I might be able to help. But there isn't. The names for the functions aren't even very descriptive. NWCCalculation is okay, but NWCCalculation1, NWCCalculation2, and NWCCalculation3 which are all various versions of the same calculation with varying parameters and methods of calculation tend to obscure any gains that may have been made with the first function name.

Then there are the series of functions labelled foo and fooForNewProcess. You'd think that all foo functions would be obsoleted, but no - that would be too coherent. Some foo functions are still in use and some fooForNewProcess functions are being used by the new process.

If the other programmer was super dedicated and always around then I'd be able to ask questions and find out answers from apparently the only one who knows the answers. But she tends to take long (~2 hour) lunches, will be away from her desk for long stretches chatting with friends, and go for non-smoking breaks to stroll around the parking lot. Yesterday, I told her straight up that it was not as important to me that this project were to be successful, that while I was happy to help it isn't my project. I think that made something of an impression, but I still had to go find her today when she had been chatting with a friend for a half hour.

We'll just see what the end of the week brings.