Heh. Bossyboots and I just had a face-off and he blinked first. I can be tough when pushed. I'm even learning, at this late date in my life, to address things face-to-face before situations deteriorate beyond repair.

Let no one tell you that old people can't learn new tricks. (I won, so I'm entitled to a bit of gloating.)

I'm going to keep beating that fool over the head until he decides that it's easier to document what he does the way he's supposed to than it is to take the abuse I dish out when he doesn't. As long as he's working with 15 clients and I'm working with 150, he has to do things my way.

We had a conference call last Friday where Bossyboots spoke up and volunteered to take on an additional handful of clients. Even then I was thinking, "You can't keep up with the dozen you have, so how is knowing you're ignoring nine more of them supposed to lighten my workload?" but I didn't say it.

The Stooges are in trouble. They're pushing their luck, insisting they have to build custom solutions for problems off-the-shelf software already exists to solve; missing deadlines, etc. My personal suspicion is that they just don't have the time or the expertise to do most of the work they commit to. Only one of them, Moe, seems really to be a certified programming genius. The others seem very capable, but in narrower areas.

Much as I like the boys, and I do, 150 clients have my direct phone number, not theirs. That means these problems have to get fixed or Buehler and the Mad Doctor will have to formulate what response they want me to give to people to explain why what they want isn't materializing. I'm not ducking or dodging the clients and I'm pretty sure no one wants me telling them, "Yeah, I know I work here, but no one tells me anything and I have no idea if they intend to fix the problem or not."

I'm sick of it. I have two major projects to cover, this one with Hell's Own Software and the other one, Darkglass. Darkglass moves by fits and starts, then languishes, depending on how much time Hell's Own Software is sucking up. The split should be 20% Darkglass to 80% Hell's Own Software, but it's more like 1%/99%.

Okay...1% to 54%, if you factor in the amount of time I spend goofing off.

annezo.net <-- Coming soon, prepare to change your bookmarks! (I'd hate to lose any of the six of you reading this.) (And, for those of you who care about such things, I'm having it professionally designed, so you won't be reduced to downloading my graphics, fixing them, and then sending them back to me with instructions to upload the new version and stop looking like such a goober.)