My friend Peter Sylwester has bad luck. Specifically, he has the bad luck to know me, because I bear full responsibility for hooking him up with a couple of people who went beyond the average bad-client/employer mark while he was working as a free-lance Flash developer.
In one case, a woman I’d done some Shockwave games for hired Peter to create Flash casino-style games. He wasn’t in charge of the backend programming, though, and when the various people who were supposedly doing that work fell through time after time, Peter was the one getting harassing calls and emails.
Then there was the time I referred Peter to an honest-to-God job. I hadn’t taken it, because the concept looked a little shaky to me. I told Peter up front about that, but he needed something to pay the bills, interviewed, and took the job, developing interactive animations and content for a heavy-media CD-based greeting card company (I told you it was a little shaky). Pete poured his heart and talent into it, though, and they got more than they could have hoped for in terms of quality work under the kind of personally abusive conditions that would have sent me out the door. In fact, they got more than they paid for, because when they eventually closed the doors (in the spring of 2000), they stiffed Peter for about several thousand dollars in pay.
Peter put some of the files up on his site as an example of his work after the original site (which hadn’t been shut down) went through enough changes that it didn’t represent anything he’d done. Then, in late 2001, he and I got a series of wack letters from his old boss demanding that the files be taken down, alleging “very significant fines and jail terms, which may be levied against you and Mr. Plant.” That was, mind you, over five years ago.
So here we are, nearly seven years after the company shut down. In the meantime, Peter’s moved (physically) his site’s moved a couple of times, and yes, he put some of the screens up to show to students and prospective employers, without a link to them. The original site is like one of those parked domains, giving “information” about various vendors on a particular subject. And at the address Peter had the files stored is the letter he got.
Supplemental reading: poetry by the same author.
With friends like me, who needs that guy?