krad

being maliciously compliant with an additional flavor of 'so perkily cheerful that it annoys the right people, every time' is so much fun to flex with >:D

addendum: you know, i had a character i rp'd as for a few years at one point who inadvertently taught me that the person to loose composure first in a row is the one that lost. fight cold, if you must fight at all - and all other avenues are exhausted. and i feel like being obnoxiously pleasant/unflappable/placid is absolutely a version of that. might be a ... little unhealthy in some ways (via repressing emotions), but man, the advantages always outweigh the disadvantages to me, especially if you're very good at this.

i'm in this really funny situationship at work where we're technically interviewing a random director.

except that this random director is going to be my new boss. except also: i'm "publicly" not supposed to know that they're going to be my boss. the only reason i know that b/c $currentgrandboss told me and trusts me enough to keep my lips zipped and (there not here lol) and not tell his temporarily secret reorg war plans to the team.

so the mission really is:

(a) interview the new director
(b) (secret objective) show $currentgrandboss i can keep a secret and play dumb the entire time interviewing lol
(c) (secret objective) report back to $currentgrandboss that new director would be good (or not) for the team from an underling's perspective. in his perspective i have a real stake at this so i'm less likely to fake BS an answer.
(d) (secret objective) do a reverse interview back on the director in the sense of making myself look really good so we hit the ground running with them having a favorable opinion of me (and also less likely to call everyone back into office).

... i might be the only fucker that enjoys corporate politics.... XD
(it helps $currentgrandboss is a genuinely good person.)

six month-ish diary update on fidding with AI at the dayjob (i briefly fiddle with new tools like this so i can base my own opinions on lived experiences versus third-handed anecdotes). so far the two use-cases remain limited to: 

* "extend background" tool in photoshop. i don't use this but once every other month, but it's useful when a sales agent sends me a very badly cropped picture that i need to photoshop a rendered display onto, particularly when they don't give me a good amount of "floor" or retail store aisle to anchor it on. I honestly can't help but think this is at least pretty similar to photoshop's old clone too that's been around forever just on a larger scale. personally inoffensive.

* chat gpt strictly for (non-immediate) coworker birthday cards, with human editing afterwards. i happen to be the person that runs the birthday card hooplah for our department and i gotta tell you: i'm not writing individual personal cards for ~50 people every year, half who i've never met in person, though people who i talk to more than once every six months (and thus have some sort of conversation basis to write something personal off on) get a human-written one. personally inoffensive but i can see how somebody might be bothered if they knew.

* does photoshop's clone tool / various brush stabilizers across paint platforms count? i have a feeling a lot of people actually underestimate how common machine learning was even before the whole hooplah.

that's about it. pretty conservative list i think.

i also had a thought the other day i find most 3D animation/video game walk cycles so incredibly jarring to reality because it's not randomized enough (most people don't vaguely float in a repeated and predictable 2 second cycle when talking) and i wonder if there was a way machine learning could augment that for the sheer number of random edge cases, mixed with individual personalities. making a note to check into this.

design as a career is interesting because as long as your working files aren't touched by too many other people in the same pipeline, you can kinda Build the thing however you want to as long as it looks like the way it's supposed to look. it's very hack-y like that.

which gets interesting if you work with a lot of self taught / contractor designers, right! on one hand it's super cool since we learn new shit from each other all the time.

on the other hand

sometimes you get files so unoptimized that it's like staring into an eldritch black hole c̵̢̟̍̇͜ơ̶̡̻̖͍̹͙̥̣̌̂̅̋̄̂͋̋͆͛̾͝͠n̶̤̞̳̱̱͇͚̹̍̋̐̆̋͛̿̆͐̄͋̚͘s̸̡̲̹̖̩̲̦̭͍̘̤̔̿̓̐̑͗̿͘͘ů̶̡̟̣̪̟̤̖̜̯̌̈́͊̒͂͋͐͛m̶̟̓́͌̑̉̀ḯ̷͙̯͙͓̜͆̾̆͐̃̓̇̾̾̋̇͘̚ͅn̸̛̥̂̔́̐͐̈́̈́̓̊ǵ̴̼̗͖̰̱̖̒̽͜ all reality.  :D;;;;;;;;; .... anyway i don't think i've ever been as impressed as a file as the one i just got 30 minutes ago. this shit is like. nested realities. (the tell is usually when adobe illustrator starts throwing out visual artifacts that don't exist which already sounds pretty lovecraftian.)

see also: 'western web dev was here'-ahh shenanigans lol

i've always had an irrational dislike of spotify after one time at the dayjob i made a critique on a pamphlet that the three lines felt askew/off center (i didn't know it was their logo) and one of my younger designers had to apologetically say 'krad..... that's their logo......') 

#lolboomerkrad #neverfeltolder

(i mean the no transcripts doesn't help but my ire is reserved for whoever greenlit that logo lol)

[screensharing a project with my $old_director_turned_minon]

me: oh yeah let me find this file for you -
[digs around files on the computer while he's looking on in horrified fascination]
him: ..... why are you looking in your trash..............
me: i uh lol work on so many projects its actually faster to search through shit here than [$enterprise server]
him: [extremely amused irl eyebrow raise]
me: you know how i used to give you so much shit for having the world's messiest desktop
me: i uh
me: owe you an apology
him: [dies laughing]

lmao that is easily the third (fourth?) time i've been asked by the dayjob IT department if i'm sure i haven't worked in IT before.

tl;dr - won an adorable little cybersecurity awareness training codebreaking puzzle (it was so adorable, this vp clearly had some great design skills and had SO MUCH FUN designing the flyers), now chatting with said vp about linux distros. in the stereotypical hacker hoodie naturally. :P

'i'll have to bring you around more to talk shop with my guys!!!!' omg i love them <3

i remember when i was an itty bitty Baby Corporate Designer i used to try to get my hands on every bit of gossip imaginable (there was a reason,  anticipating layoffs especially since i was way more vulnerable way back then and lowkey still traumatized from loosing all of my first year friends in the department coup that happened).

and oh the horrors. the horrors. i swiftly learned there is a thing as Knowing Too Much About How The Sausage Is Made (for mental health).

these days? i don't want to know anything unless if it's imminent and Happening.

it's funny b/c my former intern still thinks i know absolutely Everything when he actually has better ears than me now lol

(tbh, playing dumb actually has its own perks these days because people over-explain way too much tasty shit)

i got the sweetest fuckin email late today omg

> (guy from our mexico team who clearly remembers me well) 'hey so $CEO and his squad are stopping by soon and i want to give them a special gift of my homemade spicy salsa with a custom label with $our_logo_and_stuff, could you possibly have the time to make the label at some point, no problem if you're too busy ;a; ps would you like some of my salsa too?'

> me in less than 20 minutes: OMG heck YEAH i would love your homemade spicy salsa!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! here's the designs, let me know if you need anything else! :D :D 

most days i really love being "the fixer" at work, right

like i've been here long enough that i get curveballs every day like 'figure out how to send absolutely massive .ai files for print by optimizing them to a degree that nintendo's old school video game programmers would be jelly of, and oh u gotta make a complicated background seamless regardless of what order they put them in good luck'

'debug this mysterious pdf error that even IT gave up on (lol)'
'submit this project for this guy over in asia and coordinate a touch base between five different parties across every major time zones lol'
'explain nuanced culturally touchy specifics to somebody re: a photo and figure out a solution that leaves everyone happy without feeling slimy'

etc etc

for one, you never get bored, on another hand, it's all helping people out, and emotionally validating! (on yet another hand it's great job security because if they fire u, the fixer, suddenly it's on upper management to deal with these hairballs and they don't want that lol)

alas, today is one of the rare days when i really wish ""I"" had a fixer to complicated hand shit off to and aueghaghjhg

anyway looking forward to clocking out and making some exceptionally iddy single brain cell fanservice/sex fics lol