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.)

So I decided to wear my hair in a ponytail to work today. This was such a revelation to my co workers that not only did half the office comment on it, a good quarter of the office felt the need to pet. my. head.

Can I say how very strange this was? I have a fairly solid personal space bubble. I don't like people standing too close to me. The list of people who get to touch me unannounced is incredibly short, but seeing as I have very grabby co-workers (hands, shoulders, arms...) and no desire (normally) to cause a scene, I mostly keep my mouth shut. Not today.

When the third person started stroking my hair in a "oh! what a nice puppy" sort of way. (Because I am not a nice puppy, I am a deeply un-socialized barn cat who will shred your arm up to the shoulder if you even think about petting me.) Then there was the jumping back and yelling to the office at large, "Gah! No touching! Jeezus christ people, I am NOT a PLUSH TOY!"

Granted, I've had stranger work situations. Still, it was one of those days...

For all the folks who've ever asked why I don't want to work from home.

Especially not today, when all I wanted to do was get home a little early and take a nap. But no.... I check my mail before taking a nap like a good girl and find out that one of my sites is serving up old content. Seems the servers got switched (good thing) with no one letting me know (not so good) with some not quite current content then going live (heading towards the bad place) and I don't have stinking upload permissions. (This? This would be the bad place.)

So, no nap for me... I get to wait around for my tech guy to let me back into the server so I can get the correct content back up so the site is back to what it should be.

Maybe I just should have been a bloody journalist....

Sometimes a coincidence just happens. My boss didn't need me to come in today. Ok, so I have a three day weekend. Not to bad (though I'm still putting off doing the dishes) but there's still the lingering guilt over not doing something more... productive. Then I look out the window this moringing and see... snow. And sleet. And now possibly freezing rain. All of which I *do not* have to go out driving in. I've got me a genuine snow day. Doesn't feel too bad.

The only downside? My internal day of the week meter is all screwey, between this and the holidays. Yesterday felt like a monday, and today feels like a saturday. God only knows what I'm going to wake up thinking tomorrow is.

Oof. The sleet's shifting back to snow. Nothing's getting me out of the house now.

Ok, so I accept that it would be (marginally) easier to find acceptable webdev software for the OSX box at work if I had something better than a dial up with which to hunt the internet wilds, but I'm still mighty grumpy that neither CuteFtp nor HomeSite have Mac versions. And with Macromedia owning Homesite now, you'd think they'd port it, but no.

So I'm playing around with Fetch and BBEdit. (I will not use Dreamweaver - too much of a pain.) Not great, but it could suck more. Of course, I'm a great one for comfort items. Comfort food, comfort books... things that make the unfamiliar safe. Software falls into the same category now.

Two weeks of stultifying boredom, and now I've got clients sending me stuff *and* an out-of-house job starting on monday. But, as those of you who've been following along for a while might have picked up (yeah, all three of you :-) it's much better to have me be overworked than bored.

The cat is, right now, sitting quite determindly on top of the pile of classifieds that I brought home. Three attemps at removal have earned me nothing but roproachful looks and a lick on my chin.

So I guess it's time for me to take a break. Sheesh.