INSANITY SETTING IN

This guy at work is driving me crazy. I feel really badly about this, because he's a really nice guy. I seem to have this recurring theme in my working life--there always seems to be one person who I work with who is really nice, but who makes my work life exceedingly tedious.

For several years the "really nice guy" was a terrible programmer. I mean, really terrible. Which would be fine if he hadn't chosen to do that for a living. But when you were put on a project with him, it was like the worst news ever.

This new one is kind of funny in a way.

In case I haven't mentioned it in the last five minutes, what I do for a living is program computers and design graphics. The split is about 50/50.

So this guy is constantly asking me questions about design that are, shall we say, unusual.

I don't think he really grasps what it is that I do here.

For example, one of my duties has been to look at the current software product, and design new icons that fit in with the new style. (I can post that, since the new product has already shipped and this is not anything confidential at this point.)

One day, this guy asked me if I could show him how to convert a graphic to the new look. He literally thought that what I do is open one of the old graphics in Photoshop, hit a button that says "convert to new spiffy look", and then save the new graphic.

This week's questions were: a) if I could show him how to make an "attachment" graphic (answer: draw one), and b) how one goes about taking a picture and then making it look like everything in the picture has snow on it (answer: draw snow on it).

These are the more normal questions. Don't ask me about the "What is it like to be an American?" questions.