Comic for Thursday, February 28th, 2019
Short blah blah. Life’s a little hectic right now. If you will excuse a moment of #lifeblogranting… Being switched projects at work, not because my project had any problems or finished, mind you, but because someone fucked the farm animal so badly the client went crying all the way up the chain to executive staff and somehow this is now my problem to go fix it because for some reason the client had my name in hand specifically as the person they wanted to go fix shit. Never mind that is completely non-standard, as named resources are basically not a thing on SOWs, but who cares about all logic if it will get a problem off some C level plate? If history shows anything, it’s that sending a developer to go deal with irate customers who’s project you’ve gone and cocked up good is… not the best idea anyone ever had. It’s quite a bit more fucked up than all that, but I’ve already allowed myself a lot more ranting than I should have, so… I’ll end it there.
I think Tyler’s story will still get up this Month, but it might be early next month at this point… sorry. Buffer is still… mostly intact. Page will up tomorrow on Patreon.
Lots of drawings and doodles coming… just got a little blind sided by above stuff, still a little sick, and always terrible at scheduling my life in a way that accounts for occasionally doing nothing productive, yet occasionally doing nothing productive.
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@PastUtopia: Is it possible that you’re dealing with one of your readers, here? ^^
“Hey, I wonder if this is the company that [your real name] works for–let’s see if we can get him to fix this.” 🙂
Nah, you guys would be like… “PastUtopia? That person that’s always late and making excuses? Better find someone else.” 😛
No, I’m pretty sure we’d be more like, “Oh, carp, this looks like a lot of work. We *DON’T* want PastUtopia on this or we’ll only get one update a week if we’re *lucky*!”
At least, I hope we’re all in agreement on that.
I’d be like PastUtopia? Can we get someone whose parents were NOT hippies? Seriously, what sort of name is that???
Love,
Glider
I waffled between naming the comic The Far Side of Utopia and Past Utopia for a long time back and forth. Ended up splitting the difference I guess. It’s also called On the Far Side of Utopia some places, as I think that was probably the original name, I decided to shorten it to “Past Utopia”, than I lengthened it back to The Far Side of Utopia at the last moment (after I’d already registered the site and so forth).
I ended up inheriting the PastUtopia name when I suddenly needed something to call myself in all this, as calling myself “The Far Side of Utopia” would be both confusing and sort of unwieldy.
tl;dr – it’s the traditional name of my people. All the site administrators of this site that have ever administratored were named PastUtopia before me, and all shall be named PastUtopia after me….
bonus: pastutopia.com is a shorter and more tab-completion-friendly URL than something beginning with “the”.
Oh wow. This is why English needs more words. It never even occurred to me that the ‘past’ in PastUtopia meant ‘beyond’. I’ve been reading it as in ‘the past’, like harking back to a golden age. Good thing you called the comic The Far Side of Utopia or idiots like me would probably think that about the comic itself rather than just your name 😛
While your reading is sort of an obvious one in isolation I suppose, I think it’s a little funny that you didn’t connect the name to the comic’s name 😀
English *has* more words. There are literally millions of them. But most of them are so hopelessly obscure, they’re not even in standard dictionaries. But most people only know a very small number of them. I’ve heard claims of an average of 10,000 words actually known, but about 1,000 words actively used – the rest are really just words that the person would recognize and understand, though maybe could eventually recall with a specific need.
Those numbers seem too convenient for me, but I would guess that they’re at least somewhere close to the real numbers. I do know that I’m aware of a plethora more words than I actually use, although many of those are words I don’t know because I’ve learned that obscure words tend to be useless, outside of contexts that seem to ask for obscure words. (Like, for example, plethora. Though this particular obscure word was chosen because it’s a somewhat commonly known obscure word, thanks to “The Three Amigos”.)
Here’s a bit of silliness you can contemplate sending to corporate:
Dear corporate, it’s ‘week zero’ and I don’t have enough info. But here is the information you requested:
The new budget estimate is: whatever was already spent plus the original budget.
The new time estimate is: whatever time already spent plus 125% of the original estimate.
The new timeline is (based off a project originally estimated at 3 months):
Week 1: Listen to the customer angrily explain everything that was done wrong.
Week 2: Sit down with the programmers and find out what sections of code can be salvaged.
Week 3: Proofread the salvaged code and send back for revisions.
Week 4: Display partial product to customer’s data entry team to proof workflow.
Week 5: Fix bugs, and redesign partial product to match customer’s actual needs.
Week 6-10: Design and code the sections of the program that could not be salvaged.
Week 11-12: Display alpha version to customers to proof workflow.
Week 13-14: Fix workflow errors and bug test.
Week 15-16: Beta test with customer. Fix bugs.
I tried something very similar to this once.
I still never got budget for the hardware we needed, and two years later I finally ended up piecing it together with duct tape and bailing twine.
I keep a two weeks notice ready in my laptop bag because of this and related incidents. When the time comes, one date, one signature, and I’m out.
Not *all* the pieces are necessarily on the board.
Miko has the possibility of making new pieces.
On the fly
At will
I just did a reread of this a week or two ago, and this is the first I’m remembering seeing or THINKING “Biana sold Malsa to Orin as a back door to Resh.” Is this the first time that notion’s been floated on screen, or did I miss something big?
I don’t recall seeing it explicitly stated, no. It is at least to some extent implied: Otte and Antar discussed how “Biana seems to think she can get a leash on Orin”, and they’ve used Orish warmages and mercenaries. The Orin-Resh cold conflict is well known, as seen in Ryn’s comments when the Resh junior foreign minister confronted the Arpon ambassador over the Arpon special forces’ invasion of Resh, and the director (uh, Brook, was it?) told us Orin had moved troops to the Resh border. And the maps show Malsa and Arpon are on the other side of Resh from Orin, hence the “back door”.
But it still is not spelled out for what she’s selling Malsa. Just insurance? Hardly seems worth it. I expect it’s a more proactive approach. My guess would be relocation numbers, as discussed by Arron and Min way back, but I don’t feel very confident about that guess: It also feels too small, like I’m still not seeing the entire picture.
If I remember the map correctly, Orin is a big country. If the IDS wants settlement land, Orin could probably give it to them. What I read here is that Orin basically is going to conquer Malsa via surprise attack to use as a foot hold against Resh to surround them, and maybe has promised to give Biana Malsa once it is done fighting Resh.
We really don’t know enough about the dimension gates yet though. Like why didn’t the IDS just let the Orish use the dimension gates in Resh for a direct invasion? How much material can be moved through them? Can you go Orin -> Malsa or do you need to go Orin -> Central -> Malsa or even Orin -> Central -> Travel to different gate -> Malsa.
I really love this comic, but it is so ambitious that it is hard for it to cover everything I want to know. It is a political drama, a sci-fi, an action comic, a fantasy comic, a mystery plot… right now I want to know a lot more of it’s sci-fi details. I feel like the dimension gates are sort of a huge background element, but we know very little about how they actually work.
I think the reason to not use the gates more directly is:
1. “Everybody” then knows about the IDS being involved.
2. It doesn’t provide a large swath of land that’s suddenly not controlled by any country.
3. It would result in less bloodshed on Orin’s part.
4. Depending on how bloodthirsty Orin is, it could result in less blood on Resh’s part.
5. It would certainly result in less bloodshed on Arpon’s part.
The reason why 2’s important is I’m not sure the IDS want their people to be Orish citizens.
The reason why 3’s important is there are still people in Orin that know how the IDS were involved, and Biana/Sophie want those people dead. Also, 3+4+5 mean they can move a lot more people into Orin, Resh, and Arpon, too. Remember: Central may have something like a billion people to move.
Named “resources” are indeed a thing on SOWs. They’re just rare.
But the big money is in being a named “resource” on an RFP. I know exactly one guy who pulled that shit off. Once. It was basically “Remember that work you built for us in that new building we moved into last year? We want you to do that again. Except instead of doing it for a new building, we want you to do it for our entire company spread out across 30 different countries.”
The guy worked for the same contracting company I did at the time. And I worked a portion of that contract. Except that I was working on that contract as a sub-sub-sub-sub-subcontractor. I don’t understand how a prime contractor can be the same company as a sub-sub-sub-sub-subcontractor, but it apparently happened. (When I asked how that happened, the explanation I got was “there was a *lot* of money on that contract.)
I agree. It is a thing, but rare. I’ve never seen it extend into the trenches.
More likely it is the punishment for having done good, reliable work for a customer in the past; word gets around, and customers seeing their project head latrine-wise tend to remember anecdotes about specific staff making miracles happen at inopportune times…
I mean, I was being a tad hyperbolic (I was, you know, ranting… still am, for that matter) but IMO a named resource on an SOW is bad practice (not that they really ask me about these things). And this is probably the first time I’ve seen my company ever do it on a Technical resource (as opposed to an account manager or executive sponsor or some useless fluff). I just think the whole thing is ridiculous and I am grumpy about it. My company has gone through big buyout and leadership change, and I was sort of hoping ridiculous things like this would die off. I got into trouble early on with this company as I used to be (best I could tell) the only developer that the VP of my department knew the name of. I was sort of hoping that by now we’d moved on from that, but no, here we are with client coming for me by name. I just want to do my coding in peace… I hate getting dragged into these grand implementation architecture things as they aren’t going to listen to me anyway when I tell them to stop trying to trying to do stupid things.
Especially when they want to fly me off to go placate a room full of irate clients. Like… what do they even expect I’m going to say? (Again, rhetorical question, they wouldn’t do it if it didn’t work… I will say “okay so what do you actually want”, a question the salespeople skipped, and then answer “okay…… so that has nothing to do with our product, but I can probably make that……….I guess……….” and than my next several months will making whatever bizarre shit we apparently sold someone).
Someone more diligent about converting hassle to money than me would probably like my job a lot more, but I just sort of want them to piss off so I can go draw comics and stuff, not try to renegotiate my salary every few months about whatever the new absurd thing they want me to do is.
Projects that I am on from start to finish are nice and fairly easy and leave me plenty of time for comic drawing and hobbies. Projects that I get sent too because someone has already blown the budget pissing all over the floor cut into my comic drawing time. I am bad enough over-scheduling my life without someone’s failed project trying to eat the rest of my time like an aggressive form of chrono-bacteria.
Is Arron missing a right arm? Given that his left arm is hanging down normally, it seems unlikely to simply be behind his back. Also, there’s a bit of grey instead of green, making it look more like a location where a mechanical arm might get attached. Never before thought he might have an artificial arm.
Edit: Oh, as someone else points out: Tom recommended cutting off the arm to get rid of whatever Atter did. That would make a lot of sense and explain why he never seemed to be missing an arm before now.
Wait… I just noticed. Did Aaron actually follow Tom’s advice and cut off his arm ?!
As someone on Patreon said shortly after this went up there, no. He talked to Nathan, and followed *his* advice. Which just happened to be similar. They went into a bit more detail, but it’s late.
Note: Mium, Tom and Nathan all essentially gave the same advice. That sounds like something that warrants following
I think the interesting take home here is that Atter was able to cause a change in physical matter, in fact a part of sentient (ie high mana interference) being. A permanent change that none of the top level mages was able to revert.
We have debated who has more raw power, more skill, who is more formidable. I think this issue with Atter and Aaron’s arm is a strong argument for Atter outclassing everyone else.
On the other hand, maybe it is like burning a piece of paper. Easy to do, really difficult to undo. I don’t think making an undetected change against the body of a sentient being is easy to do in this universe. However maybe it is much simpler to do than undo?
Or the longer its had to embed, the harder it is to remove, and leaving the arm (and it’s tracker) in a safehouse to fool biana was worth the sacrifice?
I think Atter is very dangerous, but I also suspect that Arron did this on purpose. He wanted to bait Biana into thinking he was in his safehouse, so he cut off his arm and left it there. Maybe Nathan could have fixed it, but they would clue Biana in that Arron was about to go full smackdown on her shenanigans. He wanted her to believe that he wasn’t onto her shit.
Mium first noted the “code infection” and suggested he could cut off his arm (Monday April 16 2018) and also speculated that Atter could at least track Aron through it (Thursday April 19 2018). Tom 2nd the recommendation to cut the arm off. What Nathan recommended is only implied.
However in any other setting cutting off your arm and using it as bait would qualify you for bad-ass of the week. In this universe it merely puts one in the running.
> If history shows anything, it’s that sending a developer to go deal with irate customers who’s project you’ve gone and cocked up good is… not the best idea anyone ever had
I mean, if you’re doing good work it makes sense. Sometimes you develop\* a reputation. The key part is to eventually become well known enough that you can switch to a job where you can just work 40 a week.
Depending on your contract and if you have a non compete it might be worth contacting some recruiters. A friend and I just got out of a similar situation, and we both felt so liberated. It’s craziness like super long days that makes me wish developer’s were paid mandatory overtime.
Another option is to do what Howard Taylor does. Try putting out a signed physical book with say an extra chapter at the start/end. A little side story or something that doesn’t impact the main plot, but tells us a bit more about the characters. I’d pay money for a hard copy.
\* Pun totally intended.
Yeah, I’m not really sure who was the genius that came up with salaried developers, but I am guessing most execs in IT/Tech have a literal shrine to them somewhere.
Anyway, I shouldn’t let the ranting get the better of me, I’m just a tad annoyed right now, as I’ve done most of the hard work for my current project, so it should have been fairly easy for a few months, and I’m going to transferred to a full farm animal fornication situation because someone else was dumb ass.
I think “retiring” to work on the comic and other hobbies is probably too ambitious. I have a vague notion that someday maybe I will do that, or do that + contracting work (as it’s really pretty easy to get contracting work for the sort of development I do – without getting into details it’s mostly extremely popular big business cloud software engineering stuff)… but man does the thought of contracting sort of freak me out due to how shitty I am managing schedules and my previous skirmishes with self-employment, and I just can’t really see the creative stuff I do adding up to an actual living yet; adding the main hobbies I have that make money the comic is the most and it’s a fair bit for what it is (really appreciate all that make that so!), but not particularly a job level; if I do a rough estimate that I could do 2-4x as much paid hobby work if I stopped working my job… it’d still be a good fall short.
I guess the other option is my company wants me to go up the ladder, but I’ve been really reluctant as I dislike business travel, meeting clients and
lyingerr… following the marketing messaging. Maybe the grass is greener up there, but I sort of doubt it. I certainly could hop jobs, and I probably should, but egawds that’s a lot of hassle for a maybe better maybe not.Anyway… I’m aware that I’m not really unfortunate. I haven’t dug a lot of ditches in my life, but enough to know that I’d rather bitch about doing software engineer that dig ditches, so… I shouldn’t complain too much. Just in a grumpy mood right now. 😀
Luckily the idea that a salaried employee can be given unlimited overtime to do is illegal here in Europe.. working more than contractual hours (usually 40/week) attracts mandatory overtime payments, and in fact, you have to opt out of one of the directives to even be allowed to work more than those 40.
I will vote for 40 hour work weeks if it gets me more The Far Side of Utopia. Now that’s a campaign issue I can get behind.
What’s this hangup with wanting the poor guy to work 40 hours a week!?!?
Past, go to Amazon. Search for “4 hour work week”.
You’re welcome.
-G-
Didn’t most people conclude his advice boiled down to “write a self-help book on getting to a 4 hour work week -> live off the royalties”? I might be thinking of the wrong book.
PastUtopia’s problem is that I’m willing to bet he already spends more than 4 hours a week drawing The Far Side of Utopia, and I’m not willing to say he should cut back on that part.
I’m a fan of Nikola Tesla, so I’d like to blame Edison for that one. Menlo Park may not have had any programmers on active duty when it first opened, but since a practical fully-automated computer was yet to be invented at that time, I’d say generic inventors were probably the closest people to being programmers, and they were certainly on staff and supposedly salaried there… That said, I’m having a difficult time finding a reference to confirm that.
Menlo Park has been recognized as the first industrialized laboratory, so this at least seems plausible to me.
*hugs and comforts you* there, there, it’ll be ok. I still love the comic strip.
Appreciate the kind words… always appreciate all the readers and the continued support from everyone around here. If nothing else, definitely lucky on that front 🙂
I’d just sort of gotten off the phone from squabbling with corporate when I posted the comic, so I was in a bit of a ranty mood and couldn’t quite restrain the impulse to rant a little. 😐
While ultimately it’s not a big deal in the long run probably, the whole thing is just so… dumb and corporate that it got me a tad riled up.
why don’t you take this weekend to relax? decompress a little.