I am now officially the Dirty Harry of web development. I won't be going in to the "day job" tomorrow because I got suspended without pay for a day because I "yelled loudly at [my] coworkers and used profane language" (quoted from my reprimand letter). Somehow I really don't feel sorry about standing up and yelling, "I've had enough of this shit, I just want to do my fucking job!" at the Luddite IT manager (who isn't my boss) after him telling me, "We don't do development here" when my job title is Web Developer. There was some more yelling after that but I don't remember exactly what I said other than telling the same individual he was full of "bat-shit". Sorry, but there is very limited number of times anyone gets to say something that downright stupid to me before they get their face ripped off... especially in the context of a job that is nothing more than a safety net while I pursue other endeavours.

The amusing reality of my "punishment" is I'll make about three times as much money tomorrow on contract work and I am utterly relieved to have the extra time since I wasn't sure how I was going to keep my clients happy and still have time to sleep. Meanwhile my actual boss at work is now rightfully concerned that the project I have been working on will not be ready to demo next Thursday. This'd be the very same project the IT manager was telling me I shouldn't be doing, by the way.

Tomorrow I will revamp the navigation for a professional baseball team's website and integrate their stadium point of sale system with the website (if, in fact, the vendor will actually send me the specs I've asked for twice), start on the creating of a user-managed catalogue and navigation system for a new record label, build some tighter integration for 's web store, and maybe futz around a bit with my now 2,000,000-hits-a-month "hobby" website.

And if you are wondering just what this horribly radical "custom" application that has the Crack-Jack IT team spooked that it will be too complex for them to support is: I've set up a blog on the intranet so the city manager can post his council meeting summaries rather than send out an "all staff" e-mail.