This past week I had planned to have some free time to clean the house up, but instead I got called in to work Monday. Monday was my first official day of being jobless, so that was pretty cool. Then Monday turned into Tuesday and Tuesday became “through Friday” and now I’m booked through the end of next week. It would probably be longer, but I don’t want to basically work fulltime at this one place. That’s what I like about freelancing - change. Scenery, people, work, location - everything is different from place to place. If I don’t like one place (for any of the above reasons), chances are the job is short and I’ll be somewhere else really soon.

The last time I freelanced I had only lived in Dallas for a matter of months. It helped me out tremendously to get to know the city and how to maneuver through it. I won’t say I don’t still get lost, but I’m still finding new places I have never been before. The one I’m at this week is not the kind of place I would have wanted to find - it’s mostly a street of strip clubs with large signs by them that say “FREE LUNCH.” Gross. There are also lots of industrial warehouses around (many of which are vacant). I am in one such warehouse. It might be the dumpiest looking company I’ve ever worked for through freelance, but the people are nice.

I’m the sort of person who prefers to customize key commands, and set everything up so that my workflow is as fast as possible. At this job, there’s a sign on my computer that says “DO NOT CHANGE THE SETTINGS ON THIS COMPUTER. THIS IS A FIREABLE OFFENSE - NOT KIDDING!” When I first read that, I was a little aghast. This computer is pretty much always used for freelance, and from what I’ve been told they have had 30-40 people in and out of there in the last few months. That’s going to lead to some settings changes. Plus, just doing the work we do often requires what could qualify as a setting change: like moving palettes, making shortcuts, or altering a document’s printing preferences. To me, this sign meant: DO NOT USE THIS COMPUTER. I’m basically the queen of changing preferences.

I later found out who made the sign, and then it made sense. People who are not on macs or in the design software 100% of the time are easily stuck by preference changes they either don’t know how to reset, or are so busy they are annoyed at taking the time to do it. The simplest solution in the world would be to make a user login on the computer specifically for this person. But that would take effort, and it’s obvious by the appearance of this place that there’s very little of that around.

So I continue, dragging down menus with the mouse when I could make a key command that would save me a ton of time and them a ton of money. I guess in the end I’m the one who wins there.