Comic for Sunday, August 25th, 2019
A comic!
I am going to try pretty hard to get another comic up Thursday. I cannot sign that in a blood or anything as this week is still going to be sort of shitty with various hassles, but I think it’s doable and would keep us at least 1/comic a week.
By the end of next week, the time of troubles should mostly be resolved. My next and hopefully last car troubles should be dealt with Monday, the house troubles should be over at the end of month, the personal troubles are mostly related to the house troubles, which should leave only the work troubles… and 1/4 troubles barely even counts as a time of troubles. The work troubles will probably be on going until at least end of September at this point, but on their own shouldn’t be so bad.
Anyway, sorry for all the delays, and I haven’t forgotten about the comic. A lot of the problem this time around is that as part of the house troubles I wanted to replace my desk and my tablet set up to put it on a swivel-arm thing, as that’s how a drawing tablet works best, and my current desk cannot support that weight/balance, so I’ve been trying to switch desks, but with the house troubles I didn’t get a chance to set up the new desk (I have it, I just cannot really swap out furniture for right now for stupid reasons), so I was waiting to set that up, but never got a chance to set it up, so have gone back to my old set up for now and will try to do that next month I guess.
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How could God create the whole world in only 6 days?
Because He didn’t have to worry about an embedded legacy system. /rimshot
So to keep people in the loop… mostly #lifeblogging and ranting so skip this if you don’t care (which you shouldn’t); the tl;dr is that comics are behind, but time of troubled production schedules is nearing it’s hopeful long awaited end.
The time of car-troubles ended on Thursday; that took a longer than expected as when I took it for the rear-ended stuff, they discovered the condenser for the AC was leaking. It ended up being covered in warranty, but a series of somewhat ridiculous events ended up meaning I had to take it in three times (up to and including their freon pump broke while working on my car, so I had to bring it back in two days… for another 4 hours, for reasons that still escape me).
The time house-troubles was hopefully going to end last week, and while it took a step of improvement, trouble continues as getting a new lease signed has proved a very tedious task, that has included moving nearly all of the furniture in and out of the house several times for reasons that even if I explained them would still make no sense and be stupid, so I’ll just say that dumb ones.
My job at work these days involves very little programming, as now I’m supposed to tell other people how to program. It has been… a little hit or miss. For the most part, it’s not really their fault; like most minions (me included) they are stuck between unreasonable client schedule and debatably functional software products that were never intended to do what they are now supposed to be doing, and are just out of their depth with this sort of thing. But I think I reached the end of the rope on sanity, as at least one night last week I decided that being up at 3am to just write all the code people were stuck with myself was a rational thing to be doing. At least we mostly caught up now.
QA recently reported that everything was broken, but apparently that means they had tested exactly one test case, it hadn’t worked, and they then stopped testing because everything was broken. I have, in the distant depths of time, worked in QA. So I try not be exasperated with QA, but I increasingly find myself being on the developer side of this fence. “Everything is broken” != “The first thing I tried did not work perfectly”. Suffice to say that this means I’ve spent as many hours on QA this week as I have development, and neither of them are even supposed to be my job anymore (some might ask what is, and I think that’s a point we are all fuzzy on – my job is the nebulous “uh just make the schedule work and all the technical minions be competent” which, in this business, is sort of like “uh just make the sun go backwards across the sky and rivers flow upstream” because the inevitability that things will be behind schedule and development minions will be out of their depth (considering that actual development minions are hard to find, so they just grab people off the street I assume) is nearly guarenteed.
So all of this is to say that work troubles aren’t probably going to go away until I finally quit, but car and housing troubles are near their end; but I have to move all the furniture in the house and deal with crazy people one last time tomorrow (I am really really hoping for the last time) so Monday’s comic may still be late. I think I have Monday off, so assuming that the troubles tomorrow don’t bleed into Monday and that nothing else catches fire, I should be able to catch up then. My plan is to finally get to set up my new tablet set up on Monday, finish the comic, find inner peace, etc, etc. Of course, offshore teams are not off work monday, so they will probably try to hassle me.
Anyway, I sincerely hope no one read that, but on other hand I suspect more people than I am comfortable with just read a page of my ranting about mundane idiocy.
Comic will probably be up end of day Monday.
Is it bad if I admit that a page of ranting is about as good as a comic to satiate my addiction? I confess I’d still like there to be a tactical class mage in the mix somewhere, but this is still pretty good stuff.
I’d love to comment, but there’s only a 5 minute edit window. I should sleep first.
Ah, little do you realize, Past is a tactical class programmer, which is kind of the same thing.
I suspect, but he doesn’t really share that. I need to see coffee samples!
I mean code. Code samples. Okay, auto correct is right this time. Code, coffee, it’s about the same thing.
It’s just which side of the programmer you look at it on. Programmers are, of course, machines for converting coffee into code, in much the same way that mathematicians convert coffee into theorems. These are deeply related in a way that’s not always obvious.
In the event something else catches fire, remember it’s just a matter of opinion if you’re making the fire worse or making the fire better.
As a boy scout, I know you can smother a fire if you pile on fuel too fast.
So if something catches fire, just toss a 5 gallon bucket of gasoline on it.*
* Yes, you can tell them I said it was a good idea.
I just feel a bit guilty because I’ve been on vacation for 10 days and checked for a new comic way too many times.
I tend to check frequently, although for new discussion … new comics are bonuses! 😉
*hugs and comforts you* there, there, it’s ok. take all the time you need. you might need to relax and decompress as well.
I take it there’s no Thursday comic?
Maybe. Sometimes they manifest very late in the day. Past lives on Easter Island* and as such has a different circaidian cycle than most of the rest of us.
* I frequently just make stuff up regarding Past.
Yeah, it ain’t going to make it. The car trouble that was supposed to end Monday didn’t wrap up till today, and the monkeys are out of the cages at work again. Not going to make any promises at this point as there is a lot of stuff I need to get done. I would really like to get another comic out this week, but cannot guarantee it at the moment. Pretty sure there’s a 3 day weekend coming up, but that’s also the last weekend of the whole housing mess, so not sure how much of a +/- that will be right now.
I often have to chant “not my circus, not my monkeys”
Seems to annoy my co-workers a bit though.
I just keep a jar of peanuts on my desk.
HR made me get rid of the bananas.
But at the current exchange rate of twenty peanuts to one banana, isn’t that going to need a BIG jar if you are going to get the monkeys to tackle their usual one-banana problems for you?
I know, right?
It ends up not being the huge problem it might otherwise be. Mostly I just expense a couple of jars of peanuts every week.
It turns out, it takes more than twenty peanuts to make a jar of peanut butter. Given the exchange rate you claim, one regular size jar of peanut butter should be enough to solve a 3 banana problem at least. I mean, technically, it should be enough to solve at least a 5 banana problem, but at least some of the monkeys I’ve known have been bad at math.
I have yet to meet a monkey that can do math. But they ALL think they can.
I don’t know all math. When a monkey tells me 1+1 = 5 and 3 + 8 = 2, I generally feel pretty confident that the monkey’s not good at math.
But when the monkey explains 2 + 2 = fzshl, I’m less certain. I don’t even know what fzshl is, so how can I really say that it’s wrong?
We are talking about Code Monkeys here, right? How can they do programing without some grasp of math?
Actually, that would help explain a lot of the spaghetti code everywhere…
The same way they can do programming without understanding the difference between an echo statement and a write kernel call, despite the fact they’re in two entirely different languages.
I once had to debug some program that had a statement that took up more than 2k of text, not counting comments, to set x=2, and also provide lots of opportunities for divide by zero errors. (This was naturally not an environment that solved assignments algebraically before performing them, so all such opportunities resulted in program flakiness. This was not the only thing majorly wrong with this program.)
There are sometimes I’m uncertain whether all of the code monkey code I’ve seen was seriously unintended idiocy or if it was malicious. That said, if I recall correctly, there was no work product that reached me that suggested the people who perpetrated the horrible bit of code I just mentioned had sufficient competency to do better.
I find “Not my wicked witch, not my flying monkeys” fits my life slightly better. It captures the same underlying detachment concept while conveying the absurdity of the situation slightly better, IMO.
Heh. “Shit-uation”. I love the way your characters talk. I mean, who else is going to ask about “blazed angel droppings”? XD
Variants of that curse seem common on Central.
I assume it is more or less the equivalent of “holy sh*t”, but for a race of people who no longer hold much of anything sacred.
Why is it always burned? Dunno. Maybe EVERYTHING on Central is at least a little scorched? Maybe it just smells worse when it is partially burnt. I assume if it was completely burnt it would no longer smell?
Maybe it is like dried buffalo and elephant manure, and dried angel feces make excellent fuel? Or at least makes fuel in a world otherwise short on firewood?
It begs the question, “How much burnt angel sh*t can fit on the head of a pin?”
Recently, in Google maps, I saw a pin that covered most of DC.
It would explain a lot.
As one who has lived very near to DC for some time, I am not inclined to argue.
So I’ve been pondering this…. You live near DC? But your handle is Pittsburgh. I find that interesting.
Most people might think I live in, or at least near, Pittsburgh. It is the closest true metropolitan area to me However simply driving there and back is a solid half day.
Of course it is more complicated than that. I grew up in and around Philadelphia. I did my undergrad at University of Pittsburgh, living there a total of 6 years. In the winter I often wear a Pitt fleece and acquired the nickname, “Pittsburgh” which I have also used as an online handle. If I were to ever leave DC (unlikely, gov’t contractor) I would probably return to the ‘Burgh.
The plot thickens!
I have a degree from Pitt as well, though most of the work was done at branch campuses.
I worked a total of 15 months at two government contractors. I couldn’t handle it. Maybe I have more patience now? Not really wanting to try though.
Best wishes!
My Pitt degree is in theater, which was much more appealing when I was young. Eventually, I figured out that I had to go back to school and get a real degree so that I could get a real job. I doubled in Math and CompSci at Maryland. Been working for NASA, DoD, and NOAA since. Still working as a theater lighting designer, doing 6-8 shows a year. Gives me beer money. I do enjoy your commentary on the comic. ” not my circus, not my monkeys” is one of my favorite sayings.
My first degree would have been either Bio or Sec Ed Bio, had I managed to complete it. A few years later comp sci seemed the way to go. It hasn’t been bad. First couple jobs out of school were mil gov contractors, and I didn’t possess the mindset to handle the corporate culture. I ended up in the ISP business, which seems to mostly suit me.
The “not my circus, not my monkeys” is a popular one where I’m from, but posted here by David Howe. David has some good ones, and he clearly pays closer attention than I do. Or his screen has better resolution. Maybe both.
Panel 1: “what are you hoping to accomplish by denying the facts of the matter?”
“Else wise I have a busy day today.” I’m assuming it’s supposed to be “Otherwise…” However, I do like it and it would be cool to keep it as is, or at most remove the space and make it “Elsewise…”
Ashford? I thought he was Ashvalt? Or is this a case of one of the characters belligerently misnaming another character? I guess Mium isn’t the only one who’s allowed to do that, but normally it’s not this subtle.
Nope; you’re right, the name is wrong. This is one of those spellcheck problems I tend to have with names if I click through too fast. I tend to add the names into my spell check dictionary, haven’t added most of these yet. I keeps trying to correct Elmon’s name to random stuff too.
Them’s a lot of troubles. I have it on good authority that your house problems involve your last house exploding. I’m glad you weren’t in it at the time.
That might have simplified them, that’s for sure.
Panel 1 – “claiming the consul is still”
Panel 2 – “some sort of assassination plot”
Fixed, thanks 🙂
Hmm. Not sure. Hard to tell with timezone differences. I’ll check back later, but it’s reading “assassination plotplot” at midnight eastern standard time. (GMT-4)
Aaanyways, I’m excited to see what’s gonna happen next!
Meoi Lass
And fixed. Wow. You are an amazing author.
“Before we knew anything was wrong”
Fixed, thanks 🙂