Client Zone, Speed Limit 35 WPM

It is late in the day, almost 6. And I think my brain has just stopped working. I haven't had any coffee today, and have been rather dependant upon caffeine as of late for the main source of what energy I can scrounge up. I'm fairly sure my brain has clocked out already, because while working on my current project, I typed "500" instead of "berry". 500... berry. I'm not sure how the two are related, but I found it a rather interesting vocabular alternative. I also discovered that apparently when I'm tired and trying to type one-handed, the letter "r" never seems to make it into any words. So I end up with a lot of eally oddly spelled wods.

Soo, I think it's time to do one of the things I do best: look like I'm working intently, but in fact be surfing the net. If someone nears me, I can alt+tab it back to PhotoShop, and if they ask me what I'm doing, I'll tell them I'm focusing on reformating the vector frame to include a higher DPI of cross-referencing. Not that that means anything, of course. But then they'll not ask me what I'm doing again.

Last night, the honest answer to the question "What are you doing?" was that I was connecting to the server to ftp a newer version of the external CSS file to the host. Not even a super difficult thing to be doing. But I got a good 30 minutes of quiet after that.

People have a habit of standing over my shoulder while I'm working because, I dunno, they like to watch the process. As much as I'd like for them to sit back and enjoy the show, it always makes me tense (just like most everyone else) because they try to say "move that over there" and "make this another color" and I have no idea what their that's and this's are in referrence to. Sometimes I don't mind a two-headed project, as long as they just keep quiet and let me work, and only talk when I look at them to acknowledge them or their opinions. People have tried to talk over me when I'm really working, to try and be a back-seat driver. But it doesn't work, because they can't keep track of what I'm doing.

I always work with a fair few different programs open, switching back and forth frequently and quickly. I scroll at a rate where I can still see what's moving by, but no one else can catch a glimpse. Plus my habit of combining obscure keyboard shortcuts with using the mouse leaves people wondering just what I'm doing that is causing stuff to happen on-screen. Doing all this in front of a client is really very fun because it shows them just why it is they're paying me to do it. But really it's just a show; give me some good music and a cup of coffee and I'll move a lot faster.