Don’t get me wrong I do like puns, but I don’t like using them in toons. I thought of this after a funny conversation with one of my co-workers. It was when Vala said something about not being able to “carry a toon in a bucket”  that the pun came to mind. Knowing my wife’s sense of humor I knew it would be a hit with her. My lovely wife love’s puns, cornball or not. I have to be careful using my wife as a litmus test for humor because I know how to make her laugh. The fact she thinks I’m funny is only one of the many reasons I love her. The problem comes in the fact when she reads my jokes she can hear my voice and hears it how I would say it. So where someone else reads a toon there is more to it when you know the “voice” of the person creating the toon.

  This is a bit of an odd cartoon as it has two sides to it. If you get the NFL preseason side you may not get the trial software. If you can relate to the trail software side of the gag you may not get the football reference. So this gag may only appeal to the football fan with a lean towards tech or the geek with a lean towards football.

   For myself I can’t wait until the real season of the NFL starts. Preseason just does not do it for me after the first few drives. I understand the need for preseason but I just want some real foorball that counts.

   Also, on the trial version of software. It really is sometimes like preseason football. The software may say it is full featured but many times you find it is a hampered version of the software and most times you cannot save what you produce or it has some sort of watermark. Sometimes it does give you a basic idea of what it can do but many times not. I much prefer if they let me have a fully functional program but limit the time not the functionality.

   Anyway, I hope you all enjoy the upcoming NFL season unless you are a Packers fan or a 49ers, Steelers, Eagles, or a Saints fan. Go Cowboys and Bears unless they play each other then I have to go with the Cowboys, sorry old friends and family.

   There is a balance on passwords. The password needs to be complicated enough to be secure yet not so complicated you constantly lock yourself out. On our Active Directory system you get three tries at your password then you get locked out. It is not uncommon to have to unlock accounts a few times a month. That’s not just where I work now, but at every job I’ve ever worked.

   One of my biggest pet peaves is when users write down their passwords anywhere. If I ever see a password written down I immediately change that users account password. We can set the system to make users reset their passwords often and require them make them mostly different. The danger with doing that is that users will write down their passwords somewhere. You already know how I feel about that.

    Hope you like the toon.

   The Dallas Comic Expo was fun. The cartoon above did not happen, I just thought it would be funny if it had. My best bud Sam came out and stayed for several hours. He was the only person beside my girls who showed up that I invited. He and I always have fun hanging out. Sadly I’d don’t think I got a picture of us hanging out though. Here though is me with my lovely wife:

   I got to see some of my old cartoonist buddies like Samantha Wikan of Life’s a Witch and Rebecca Hicks of Lil Vampires. I love those ladies and it’s always fun to hang out with them and be hassled by them both. They also both love my wife and kids, which is easy to do. I also finally got to meet Tim and Tom Engstrom of The Legendary Boys of Floyd. I have been chatting back and forth for a long while with them and even got to sit in on a panel with one of the brothers. It was the webcomic technology panel and was at the end of the day, so attendance was extremely low, but still fun. Also on the panel was the lovely and talented Amanda Harpold of Salt the Holly.

    I also had the good fortune to meet Austin Rogers of Red Beard Comics and his excellent wife. He has some great art work and I really enjoyed getting his insights on the whole comic thing. I also met David Wilborn of Urban Jungle. I finally met Mark Largent of Wannabe Pirates. I also met and had a great talk with a new comic buddy, Mark Stokes of Zombie Boy comics.

    Also, I got to talk with the great Joel Watson of Hijinks Ensue and bought his book. I’m enjoying the book, but my kids are never allowed to read it. He drew a really cool evil Wil Wheaton sketch for me inside the book.

   I’m sure I have forgotten a few people. All in all it was a good show. It did reveal to me I still have much much work to do to get my comic where I want it to be. I’m going to do some serious re-evaluation of my comic form top to bottom and try and figure out where I’m going wrong.

***UPDATE***: Speaking of forgetting people, I actually forgot our illustrious hosts! Jonathan Caustrita of Tiki Cloadas, Michael Morenoof Death by Bunny-Ted & Zed-It Could be more-etc…, and teh lovely and talented Thomas Overbeck of Times Like This. I got to hang out with all 3 at various times and really enjoyed it. They each have a passion for DWEX and worked very hard on the event. I fully expect it to get bigger and better each and every year. Thanks guys for your hard work.

   This is based on conversations between my best buddy Sam and I. Sam and I have been best friends for years, however if you ever heard us together you’d think we hated each other. We give each other grief on everything all the time, yes we are like children. Sam complains that he is not in the cartoon enough and when he is in there he complains about how he looks. He probably is in better shape than I drew him in panel one. He thinks he looks like panel two, which when I met him over 22 years ago he probably did look like that. He is supposed to come hang out with me at the Dallas Webcomic Expo this Saturday, so if you are there you can be the judge. I do have to say that Sam is a pretty good sport about it mostly. He will complain no matter what and I expect no other way. He sure puts up with a lot of my crap from me for sure.

   I hope to see a lot of people at DWEX this weekend. I have stuff for sale and some give-aways. I even have a secret password, so don’t tell anyone. If you say the word “aardvark” I’ll give you a special limited edition DFTG CD. It has a digital copy of my book and my whole archive up to 8-19-10. I only have a few to give away so make sure you come by when you get there. Shhh, it’s our secret. I find the best way to keep a secret is to put it on my website. that way almost no one will see it.

   This toon is not really making fun of my sister Genda, it just seems that way. It was inspired by a phone call from her about her home computer. I was able to walk her through the fix in maybe 5 minutes. It was easy because she is a good listener and followed my instructions exactly. I was rather surprised how easy it was. If only all support calls were so easy. My sister is a very funny person so even this support call had it’s laughs. She is no computer expert but she is savvy. Her one weakness is she does not know any computer terms. So there is a bit of a challenge trying to find a common “language”. So instead of calling her router a router I had to call it the blinky light box under the desk. That was what she calls it and probably always will.

    My fellow IT worker James brought in his dog the other day. he also brought in the crate to keep the dog in. The kennel is still there now. The 2 of us and our 3rd co-worker started joking that the kennel would make a perfect place to put an out of hand user. So the rest of the day we joked who, by their action, should be put in the box next. I suspect it will be a tradition for IT going forward. I just hope I don’t have to take a turn in the cage.

   You may think this toon is weird, and if you do you are right. This was just a toon that hit me after watching several science shows. One show was about black holes, while the other was about explanations of existence. The 2nd show was interesting as physicists where discussing theories of how we were created. For me any explanation defies my limited understanding of anything. My belief is that there is a God and He designed it all. Some of the scientists believed the same as I do, while still others believed it was all a cosmic numbers game with multiple universes. Our universe simply had all the right ingredients to bring about life. 

   Of the more interesting explanation was the scientist who believed that it could be possible we are some sort of “Sim City” time game played by some humans who lives in our far future. He believed computers could be so far advanced that a full version of our planet could exist in a program. All details could be set up to behave like real life. Does your brain hurt like mine does? I don’t think he is right, and I ‘m not sure he believed it to be true either. If it were true I’d sure love to find some cheat codes.

   I had to rush this toon and it’s late to boot. We are still on vacation and have taken a side trip to see some friends from Texas who moved here recently. Matt has a job similar to mine, just on a much much larger scale. It has been great for our kids who really miss their kids.

   I may come back later and clean up the toon a bit.