3/2/2002:

Instead of making this strip be a late wednesday, I figured I might as well call it an ontime Saturday strip. Yeah, yeah, we really missed a day, for the first time in a while. Sorry. Hey, you still love us, right?

Great.

Yeah, I've been working long hours in the Computer Engineering lab, all for this computer architecture class. The good part is that it's with a great group of people, and so I thought a strip was in order to tell those friends I've made through class over the years, "Thanks for keeping me sane and on schedule." That goes for the people I work with and my awesome improv team. So, add up biweekly rehearsals, weekly work meeting, and now all this groupwork... who needs a social life? These commitments have become my social life, sad as that sounds.

It was a pretty rough time spent working Wed and Thu nights. When I got home from debugging on Thu, I sat down and wrote a little story. I'm not sure how funny it'll be to people who don't know the lab, but hey, I'm never sure how funny any of my writing is.

Once upon a time, there was a boy named Kip. One day, he met a program called Mentor Graphics. Now, this was not love at first sight, but over time, Kip and Mentor grew closer and closer together, just by virtue of shared experience.
In fact, Kip began to really appreciate Mentor. Late one night in the Wilkinson lab, by the dim light of a Sun, Kip realized that there was love there. And as he gesture clicked his way through obstacles in his path, he voiced his true feelings. And Mentor responded in turn, with a kind beep, and quick Quicksims. While other people in the lab cursed their workload, Kip cruised through, knowing he had a partner looking out for him and his VHDL.
Now, as the years went on, their relationship grew strained. Kip used to prided himself on his knowledge of Mentor's secret little ways. But as he tried to kick their relationship up to the next level, he found Mentor acting irrationally. Before, when Mentor would be a bitch to other people, Kip would defend her flaws. But as time wore on, Kip realized that Mentor was cruelest to those who thought they knew her.
"Why are you treating me so, Mentor?" Kip asked. "This is when I need you the most." But the haughty program wouldn't even answer his inputs. Indeed she was frozen, waiting for him to go away and stop his attempts at communication. Kip knew that he could resort to violence and just 'kill -9' her, but he tried to give her a chance. He gave her time to work through her problems, but Mentor just sat in a loop, without sympathy.
"I don't want to have to do this... I've never done this to you before, just to little programs in the past. Don't make me, please Mentor, please," he begged. But he knew that in the long run, a quick decisive action would be best for both of them. The "Kill -9" command lanced across the terminal like a slap. Mentor closed quietly, shocked at his temerity.
And after that nothing was the same. Mentor would act randomly, without even a dialog for Kip. Kip started falling into routines which before had been pleasant, but now were chores. He wanted to ask what had changed between them, but knew that from Mentor, no answer would come.
He stuck it out until their period of working together ended, and then logged out, knowing that he would never use Mentor again. And as he left, a tear stuck in his eye, not one of pain, but of loss. He ran back to machine, and accessed Mentor.
"One last gesture click for the road."
And with no pressure, the last session was as good as it had ever been.

My personal life has been rocky again as of late, can you tell?

Link time: my brother sends along this store w/ geeky shirts.

The soundtrack of my drive up to Milwaukee this evening was provided by Freezepop. I may have been playing depressing music last night in my funk, but I knew that I needed high energy synthpop to make it through the journey and this badass band from Boston was happy to oblige me.

We got invited to be listed among the Family Friendly sites on Friday, provided that Scrubs:

* Contains no adult-themed or sexually explicit text, images, or
photographs
* Does not accept advertising for alcohol, tobacco, gambling, or
pornography
* Does not promote hate, violence or discrimination in any way
* Does not promote any illegal substances or activities
* Posts and enforces rules in its chat rooms and forums to prohibit
1. Sexually explicit language
2. Profanity
3. Remarks that disparage or ridicule other people
* Links only to sites that share the intent of being family-friendly
* Agrees to remove its family-friendly designation, if the site
itself or any of its links no longer meet these criteria

I think the no disparaging or ridiculing other people is the real limiting factor, as well as the links to only other family friendly sites. I have this vision of a tiny little interconnected web of pure sites, bound in their friendliness to families... and low hit counters. Did I just disparage them? Oh crap. Oh well, the use of "crap" puts us out of the running.

Wow, I'm prickly tonight.

My digital camera finally shipped after a month of backorder. I should have it by Monday. Who knows, perhaps instead of stick figures, I'll start making photo essay comics... The camera should perk me back up, which just proves the capitalist theory that greater consumption = greater happiness. Speaking of econ, Sil and I had our macro midterm on Wed and we both got A's. Go Scrubseconomists!

kip