A friend just sent me this link: It’s a compendium of great client horror stories from the dot-com days. It’s all text, pretty quick, but riotously funny. Reminds me of my days in the saltmine:

Asshole Marketing VP: We want to have a flashy movie on our homepage to showcase how fast the service is.
Me: (considering outside help) Well, OK, how much money do we have to…

AMVP: We don’t have any money. Just do that voodoo thing you do.
Me: But I need stuff like music and video to drop in there…
AMVP: Steal something. Find a song you like and use that.
Me: Uh, that’s illegal.

AMVP: Why are you being difficult? Just get it done.
Me: (pissed.) Alright. When do we need to have it done?

AMVP: Two weeks. And put lots of action in there. Make it edgy.

Me: …
AMVP: What’s the matter?

…I could go on…

CompUSA gave me a full-price refund for an open box return, so I turned around and ordered a FireWire enclosure for the 28GB drive our friend Rob gave me. Plan B is to dump the MP3 collection on that drive and point iTunes to it via the Powerbook. I’ll find a way to get my songs on the iPod somehow.

Fun for the Whole Family. Check this link. The fan-produced Pokemon video for this song is mind-numbingly funny.

Who’s Bad? Why is it the cops aren’t busting down doors and arresting Michael frickin’ Jackson? Why are they “negotiating” his surrender?

My Old School. So last night I was at MICA at 6:30 and the class actually happened. I met up with the two other teachers and we traded histories; turns out I graduated a couple of years after one and designed a company website for the other. We gave our pitches, and after having practiced mine at least five times, I forgot most of it. However, it seemed to go well, and I think I got the students interested in the project. My group told me I was their first choice (the teachers pitch their projects and the students vote for their choices), which made me feel pretty good. So I’ll post more updates to the class page as it unfolds; I’m going to take pictures of the work as it comes in and try to answer all the questions by adding information as it gets worked out.

One of the students was interested in contacting the government to see if we could propose the final comps as an alternative to the current design, which is something I had considered but ultimately had to shelve while trying to find the samples. I’m going to look back into that and see if there’s somebody who knows somebody who knows the person.