Oddball Update

Today was one of those days — where if somebody were to show up with a sunny smile on their face and say, “Hello!” the first thing I’d be inclined to do is tell them to stow that happy somewhere physiologically unpleasant. Maddeningly, I can’t even give you a good reason why I’m in this craptacular mood. It’s not like I just suffered some permanently debilitating injury, or had my life turned upside-down in some other particularly poignant way. I can take a few stabs at it, though — I’m sure I can come up with a few reasons. Just not good ones, mind.

It isn’t helping that I encountered yet another Flash issue (YAFI) today while working on my yet another Flash project (YAFP) du jour. To oversimplify it, I have to create some banner ads in Flash that employ an interesting interactive twist. Much to my relief, at the beginning of the week, I ran some tests and discovered that the interactive idea for this project was actually going to be easy to implement. With that behind me, I figured it’d just be a simple matter of creating a Flash project that preloads an image, displays some nifty little animations and takes you to our website when you click on it.

Well, I should have known better than to use the word “simple” when discussing a Flash project. The preloader doesn’t work, an impediment for which there is no excuse, considering it’s the exact same preloader I wrote for my last Flash project (wherein it worked fine). The image, also, isn’t loading now, even though it loaded perfectly during my brief test earlier in the week. Oh, and the button you click on to go to our website? It won’t go there. Despite my following every tutorial on the web, which all told me to do the same thing, which never worked no matter how many times I tried it.

I’m quickly starting to consider Flash to be the DotNetNuke of the design world. DotNetNuke is a content management system that we use at my work, and while it’s great if you’re web-stupid and just want to quickly and easily throw up a decent website, the instant you want to go “above and beyond” in any way, you become mired in a stinking, fetid pool of euthanasia-inspiring development hell. Similarly, Flash provides an avenue by which you can create some truly inspiring things, then murders your will to do anything at all with its myriad of bugs, idiosyncrasies and other infuriating issues that all conspire to hamper, maddeningly, the most inane of its functions. Which is why I believe sincerely that regardless of how good I might become at developing in Flash, I’m never going to like it.

Moving on. Oh, you don’t want any more? You’ve heard enough bitching? Then I have just one question: Why are you still here? You have bookmarks, don’t you? Pick one and get out, then.

Another reason I’ve been feeling ticked off is because, for the last two and a half days, I’ve had a really annoying upset stomach, have felt weak and listless and generally just about out of patience with everything. Yeah, uh-huh…on further examination, I’d say that’s a real big contributing factor.

Then there’s the insipid media…I’m really just sick to death of it. I wish there was some way to put a filter on my brain so that I never, ever had to see, hear or even smell the nauseating stench of the American media, but I really just don’t think I can take another day of it. In fact, I’m not sure what’s worse — the media, or the disgusting sacks of sad, sad oxygen thievery they run their stories about, like the guy in D.C. who is suing a dry cleaning company for $65 million dollars because they lost one pair of his pants. The most disgusting, soul-shattering thing of all? The plaintiff is a judge. Allow me a moment of silence while I, you know, just shake my head.

Here in America we’re already all scared to death of looking at or touching another human being for fear of being sued; pretty soon we’ll all be too afraid to do business with one another, either. Eventually the only companies left to do business will be the huge mega-conglomerates, and then they’ll just sue each other until more than half of our bills for goods and services will go to offset the cost of the suits. “Out of control” doesn’t even begin to do this society justice.

Then there’s Paris Hilton’s mom, who made an absolute fool of herself in court today, as her infamous daughter was sentenced to 45 days in jail for violating parole and driving drunk. Mama Hilton was vocally indignant and put-off by the fact that this unfair and shameful sentence was given to her daughter. Because, you know, she and her fancy family are rich, and so they should be immune to the peon laws the rest of us must follow. Actually, I’m surprised Paris managed to drive drunk at all, because a recent paparazzi video proved that she is unable to either fuel her expensive exotic car, nor actually read its fuel gauge. One would think that after the first tank of gas, she’d have to just throw the car away and start over with another one.

Meanwhile, what is Paris Hilton contributing? To, you know, anything? (Besides content for those “Stupid Videos” websites, I mean.) Do you suppose the rest of us Americans could just collect some funds and pay someone at the L.A. county lockup to conveniently — and permanently — lose the key to Paris Hilton’s cell? She could become like a museum exhibit in there; I think it’d be kinda neat. Tourists could come see her and stuff. It’d be fun for the whole dysfunctional family.

So I’m going to work this weekend on a project for my previous employer, who I’m honestly not so enthused about working for anymore, after how I hear he’s been treating his employees lately. I always had a sneaking suspicion that the guy was borderline chump, but like Devon Miles said, “that was a moment ago — now I’m sure of it.” But I had already gotten involved in this particular sortie before I learned of the latest chumpiness and cheapskatiness from that douchecanoe, so I better just wrap it up, collect my fee and be on my way. …To the next job, that I have to do for the next person.

One of the guys I work with had a good idea the other day. He’s done a lot of consulting work too, but unlike me, he’s always worked only with big companies — whereas I usually take jobs with the little guy. I dunno; I have a somewhat altruistic streak. I try to help out the little dudes, the startup companies, the local mom and pop shops with small budgets. I do things gratis, I grandfather in old clients who are still paying 2001 rates, I humor them when they change things umpteen times. In the end, I usually find that these folks will try to take even greater advantage of you than the corporations would, except that you’re not getting compensated anywhere near as much to put up with their bullshit. My colleague suggested, “You ought to start enforcing a minimum project value on your incoming business. Say, if it’s not going to pay at least $1,000, it doesn’t qualify and you turn it down.”

As much as I’d like to help support folks who need help and can’t afford the big dogs, the truth is that I’m not a small fry anymore. I’m no longer a kid fresh out of college like I was when I started this, and let’s face it — there are tons of kids who are fresh out of college, right now, who are competing with me with that same idealistic hope and those same philanthropic rates. Well, the years march on, and I’m passing the torch to them. They can do the charity work. I’ll take the larger companies who want business-class sites and professional-looking portals. I’ll even use DotNetNuke if they want (and I did, for a client last year.)

I will not, conversely, humor people who want a single page with every damn stupid applet, ad banner and animated wackadoo that can be crammed onto it, never write a word of text and then wonder why no search engine will index them. Will I miss the few hundred bucks in revenue I got from clients like that? I doubt it, because I’ll be too busy enjoying the fact that I can actually have a life.

In the end, there are far, far more important things in life than a dollar. And if you disagree, then take a moment and think — because you’re probably living an overcomplicated life.

And now, I’m going back to work. Show yourselves out.

Categorized as Life, Rants, Life/Work