Having had only limited success freelancing, and having not one but two bosses go flakey on me, I decided that it was time to find something a little more solid with which to pay the rent. I did find a job, but I also found some other things…

• For the three weeks I’m sending out my resume to all and sundry, no one will give me the time of day. As soon as I land a job and am off the market, *everyone* wants me to come in for an interview.
• Women tend to ask more personal questions during an interview than men.
• I have not figured out how to lie well on a moments notice, so I just answer those personal questions truthfully. Somehow, this surprises people.
• Men, on the other hand, are far more likely to make the assumption that because I look younger than I am, they can run me ragged like a college intern and I won’t get grouchy.
• Most places that ask one to fax a resume before they will even talk to you are black holes. You send them stuff and nothing ever comes back.
• Temp services suck.
• They more someone tries to “sell” me on a position, the more suspicious I become of them and it.
• Group interviews suck.
• I am no longer afraid of walking out of an interview if it turns out that it’s just not what I’m looking for.
• Any job listing that uses the words “wild and crazy” or “must love money” is complete BS.
• Summer is a sucky time to job hunt, ’cause employers are looking for easy to exploit college kids home on break.
• When in an interview, they’re not just interviewing me, I’m interviewing *them*.

Today, I needed to have a talk with one of my bosses. (I have three jobs, equalling three bosses, if I count myself as my self-employed boss, which I do.) Y’see, he’s a very smart, fairly nice guy (and I use the words “nice guy” with reason, as will be explained later) who has been laboring under the impression that since I am female; my job includes, and I quote, “taking care of him”.

He advertised for a graphic designer. He got a graphic designer. He also got a web designer, office assistant, errand runner, receptionist, courier, press operator, tutor, and amature hardware support person. Sadly, no where in that list was the term “nanny” included.

But, because I’m female, he often tells clients that I (along with his wife) am in charge of keeping him “in line”. I have also been encouraged to blame any character defects he may have (so not going there right now) on both his wife and his mother. As far as I can tell, women exist in his universe to take care of him. I’ve never seen him away from work, so I’m not sure if he considerers that to be their only role, but considering how often he makes reference to his need for an outside caretaker, I’d say it’s a strong maybe.

So this morning we had a little talk, where certain things were outlined.

1. I am here to make graphics, not to take care of you.
2. I have a boyfriend, family, friends, and two cats. I take care of them.
3. Referring to me as the person in charge of keeping you “in line” is unprofessional.
4. Doing it in front of clients is worse.

He apologized. I believed him. I don’t think it will be happening again.

But then, he had to justify himself. (Remember when I mentioned the Nice Guy thing? this is where it kicks in.) He started to explain how he “was one of the first people to stick up for women…” which was right where I cut him off.

Because, I explained, his previous sterling behaviour with any and all other women had no bearing whatsoever on the current situation. It was neither 1978, 1985, or 1990. It was the year 2003, and I was the woman he was dealing with right now.

The rest of the day proceeded with admirable efficiency, and no annying comments. To me or anyone else. If the job were in a proper office and not a loud, chilly, warehouse, I might even have started to enjoy myself. Sigh.

Like I tell myself at the end of every day, at least it pays the bills.

Y’know, when a client sends something “on disk”, you’d think by now it would be a simple affair. Especially when it’s a client you’ve worked with for several years and have trained assiduously in the arcane science of “how to send your developer files she can use”.

So, when I get the nice, hefty package with full notes and documentation telling me everything she wants done to her site, with all graphics already scanned and copy already typed, I think the day will be a smooth one. Right? Oh hell no.

It’s on a zip disk. Ok, say I – we can work with this. So I spend half an hour hooking up my old SCSI Zip drive to my WinXP system (a trip in and of itself). System and drive are talking? Check. I pop the disk in… and it gets spit right back out.

Oh look – it’s a Zip *250* disk. Which I can’t read. (30 minutes of my life I’m *never* getting back…).

Pondering my options, I decide it would just be simpler to upgrade my hardware rather than attempt to get the files on CD. So, off to CompUSA. (Where I find everything I need, one thing I don’t need but buy anyway, get to see the new Matrix trailer, and have not one but two sales guys try to sell me “service plans” that I don’t need. They get politely turned down.)

Back home, the box gets unpacked. (And I have to admit, the new drive is sleek and sexy – much nicer to look at than the old one.) I install the software. I reboot. I pop the drive into the *last* free USB port on the system. And then? Nothing. And more nothing.

After an hour and a half on the phone with a very nice guy at Iomega tech support, and I can finally access the stinking drive. (Somehow managed to hack an explorer shortcut – it still won’t show up in My Computer.) During that span of time, I pulled out every other USB device, popped them all back in, manually assigned a new drive letter, re-installed the zip drivers, upgraded the drivers for my USB card, upgraded the zip drivers, poked around in the admin tools a whole hell of a lot, uninstalled TweakUI, and came just this close to giving up and taking the whole thing back for store credit.

But at least now I have the files and can actually start working on the project.

Today I got one monster freehand file (we’re talking roughly 100 inches tall and wide) that supposedly contained about four display panels to be tweaked, color matched, and printed. All well and good, but there were no guides or clues telling me how (or if) it should be cut apart. (And seeing as our printer has a max width of 60 some odd inches, it would have to get cut up *anyway*.)

So I’m on the phone with the boss, (at his home office, about an hour and a half away) trying to figure stuff out. The exchange that followed:

“I have no idea how this thing is supposed to get cut up”
“Well, I have a print out of the panels around here somewhere.”
“And that does me a lot of good, doesn’t it?”
“Sarcasm doesn’t suit you.”

He doan’ know me very well, do he? ‘Cause, I don’t think he’d have been so suprised if he took a look at this site once in a while. (It is on my business cards, after all.)

From yesterday’s WD-L. I was tempted to send a response on-list, but others had answered. (Sans flame and smart assed-ness) So, the question that was asked:

I intend to design a site using only css, but I’m not comfortable with the idea that anybody can copy it and make theirs look exactly like mine (yes, it happens!). So my question is: are there any ways to protect the css files (by renaming them, putting them in a password protected directory, using
a php script etc.) and if somebody else has done it (or thinks it’s useful).

My response *would* have been:
1. Boy, are you in the wrong profession.
2. Go read Lemur’s essay on hiding content.
3. You do know that people can steal/copy/plagiarize your table based layout just as easily as a css based one, right?
4. No, I mean it. You really are in the wrong line of work.