This toon is not about sides but about taking sides and not letting go. I think the main issue we have here in the US is all the partisan nonsense. It can come from Republican vs Democrat to Coke vs. Pepsi to PC vs. Mac. I have really become weary of it all. Both sides of every issue, particularly in politics, are at fault. I particularly am tired of what is going on in DC. Neither sides seems to be willing to listen. I do see some small signs of a few on each side seeming to reach. The rest keep making their stands sans logic. I hope you enjoy the cartoon.

  This was Austin Staple weekend. It was a cool event. While I did not have a table there I may have one next year. I got to see one of my all-time favorite web cartoonist Samantha Wikan of Life’s a Witch. Samantha and my family have really become real friends not just interweb buddies. We also saw Rebecca Hicks and her husband from Little Vampires and that is always cool. Rebecca hadsome great things to say about my writing and timing on my comic. I was surprised she rememberd me for DWEX and not only that she reads my comic! Win! Of course I got see and talk to Mike Mareno of Death By Bunny and Thomas Overbeck of Times Like This. Mike and Thomas are 2 of the 3 organinizers of DWEX. I was glad to find they knew who I was too. Over all I really liked Staple but maybe because it was my first Expo it made me really want DWEX to come even sooner. I’m really excited about DWEX in August and hope many of you can make it. DWEX is just a few exits off the highway from where I live so it’s great for me.

   While we were in Austin we stayed with my wife’s Aunt Brenda and Uncle Greg. They had a whole lot of activities planned for us around Austin and UT. We got to go to the observation deck of the tower in Austin. I believe they just recently started having people up there again since the horrible incident there in the late 60s. It was fun seeing Greg and Brenda and they have always beensome of my favorite relatives of my wife’s. Yes, there was a little partisan talk as they are Longhorns and my wife is an Aggie but I’m unaffiliated. It was a lot of fun. the inspiration for the cartoon was from my 8 year old who got out her laptop and started asking for the code to the wireless access. I told her they did not have a wireless network. She insisted they did because she saw the signal and tried connecting and now was being asked for an encryption key. I think my uncle-in-law was impressed by her abilities with a laptop. I did have to explain to her that it wasn’t anyone we knew providing the signal. I explained that your should not just try and connect to some one’s network without permission. I told her she could go the day without being online, of course I was saying this as I scanned the networks to see if there was an open and unlocked one via her laptop. Luckily my cell phone can retrieve email and do some surfing or I would have been shaking by the end of the night myself. I do forget how savvy my girls are with technology and I’m not kidding when I say I could send them on some calls here at work and they could be of use. However those pesky child labor laws get in the way, and they work cheap too.

  This cartoon was taken from a real life conversation with my oldest daughter, and edited for funny. I’m really not as bad as the cartoon implies but I do feel it is all happening way to quick. These kids are growing fast! I’m really trying to savor every moment. I do want them to have great lives once they are out of the house, I’m just in no hurry for that to happen.

   One of my favorite things to tease both my girls on is I ask “When you move out will you call every day?”. My oldest almost always answers yes, as her eyes roll ever so slightly. My youngest, and maybe my future biggest project, will not promise she will call. She says she will probably be too busy to call every day. She is only eight but she usually has things thought out a few years down the road. All things considered, life is good, just going at a rapid pace.

   Today’s cartoon was done on the new HP touchscreen we bought for the kids last week. It is no where near the quality of those Wacom touch screens, but is is fairly responsive. While I still mostly used a mouse to draw I was able to lay it all out with the touch screen and a screen pen. I’ll have to experiment more but I do think I could draw it all out with it if I laid the screen down flat. It does not have pressure sensitivity but I don’t utilize that much even with my drawing pads and my regular method. I do see my future though in just doing the quick sketch though with it. For a rough sketch it was great. I’ll keep you posted if any one is interested. Once again I don’t feel like I spent enough time on this toon. I wish I planned out better but I don’t. I do think though have a Tuesday and Thursday solid schedule helps, even if the product is sometimes not great. The more I do the better I get, at least I hope.

   We are working on preliminary budgets. I won’t go into great detail mostly because it is boring. For the last several years we have had to lower our budgets but do more. Probably a common scenario most everywhere.

   I know that everyone has meetings at work, it’s certainly not unique to IT. I really do not mind meetings so long as they have a purpose, an agenda is nice too. Where I work now is not as bad as other places I worked. The meetings are “mostly” productive and have a purpose or a task needing to be addressed. By the end of the week I’ll have had around 6 or 7 meetings. I’m sure by the end of the week someone will call another meeting. My last meeting today was my kind of meeting. there was something specific to talk about. We brainstormed and came up with the best solution between 3 departments.

   It’s OK though, I can keep myself entertained nearly anywhere. If nothing else I can doodle as I pretend to take notes. Another benefit is I come up with cartoon ideas after listening to everyone. Today’s cartoon is a case in point. We discussed upcoming budgets and that gave me a cartoon idea for next week.

   This cartoon was inspired by an old gag I did in my office. I printed out a page that said “IT Suggestion Box” and taped it to my trash can in my office. Someone eventually tore it off by my kids and I thought it was funny while it lasted.

   I got the fresh ideal on Saturday and completed the majority of it late Saturday night. I usually would be scrambling to finish Tuesday’s cartoon right now but it is ready to go. I can enjoy the Olympics and chat with an old coworker while getting this post scheduled.

   Today’s cartoon is not far off from real conversations I have had. I guess people really have a lot of confidence in us computer geeks, as they think we can diagnose problems without any information at all. It never ceases to amaze me when folks will tell me their PC is giving them and error. Me: I ask what is the error? Them: I don’t know. Well, when does it happen, what are you doing at the time? Them: I don’t remember.

Can you imagine going to an auto shop and telling the mechanic and saying there is something wrong with your car but not giving them any symptoms. I don’t know it isn’t running right.

   As usual I exaggerated real work stuff. This kind of thing does happen, if you are an IT guy or anyone type of engineer/technician. I actually do understand how it happens. A user sees something that isn’t that big of a deal and just lives with it at first. As time goes on they find a few more things wrong and it starts to annoy them. By the time they get around to complaining about it they have stewed about it. That are at their last straw the first time they mention it to us.

  I don’t care how good we are we can’t fix things until we know about them. With computers we can try and test many functions but the real world use will sometimes show some flaw and require some tweaking. Today’s cartoon may it be funny to you, it’s probably more about venting for me. I hope you chuckle at least a little. It is meant to be all in fun

   So like many website owners one time or another I have been obsessed with my site numbers. I use several tools to track visits to my site. I use counterize II WP plugin, Google Analytics, and Webalizer along with a few others. I really prefer the counters built in to my host but only because the traffic is much higher. Some of the other counters that are on my site side show much lower numbers. As far as I can tell the host side may be tracking bots and other scripts.

   So regardless of the accuracy the statics do show trends. So I do believe it is useful to check the stats just to see increases in traffic. It has been handy to see what toons seem to connect and which don’t. I have been able to see that Tuesday’s cartoon seems to have many more hits than Thursday’s for some reason. Anyways obsessing over my site numbers is my alternate hobby in itself.

   So is it the program that shows the highest traffic the most accurate? I sure wish that was the case.

    The Senior Pastor and son at the church I work at have an artist friend who volunteered to fly out and do a couple of murals for the new children’s building that was just finished. While expectations were high on what Noah was going to do on the murals the final product far exceeded them. It was so cool to watch him work with the airbrush and do such amazing detail. I’m still not sure how he did it and Iwatched him a lot. He finished both murals in just 2 days. The art work is something that really complements the new build and makes a nice transition from the worship center building to a more kid friendly children’s building.

     In no way did I do justice to the work that Noah did in my cartoon and it should be considered a parody at best. I did make a few wise cracks, as I’m know to do . One of them I said was when a group a people stood watching they would say how great it looked and I’d say “well, if you like that sort of thing”. Luckily everyone laughed ans saw that as a joke. I also made a joke about how Noah being so good you could not even see the numbers where he was painting.  Several folks laughed at that joke and when it was repeated to our Senior Pastor he said in a very loud voice, “BARRY, you’re and idiot!” At least he was smiling when he said it. Chuck has a great sense of humor and it is never lost on him. he himself is a quick wit, I guess that’s one of the many reasons he is so well known around the world. That and he speaks so loud everyone can hear him anywhere in the world.   Just joking…..sort of.

    I may do a separate blog post with pictures of the mural later. I may also give the link to Noah’s website but I hestitate as I’m not sure how he might feel by being linked by a hack such as myself. Noah is a great guy and a supreme talent.