Comic dialog
Oh shoot, I meant Windows, not Red Hat.
Panel 1
Jacob: Hey, we need a new dev server.
Jase: That shouldn't be a problem. I should be able to get it to you in a week.
Panel 2
Caption: 3 long days later
Jacob: Oh, BTW, I forgot to mention, it has to be Red Hat, not Solaris, but we still need it Friday.
Jase: Uh... OK. I'll see what I can do.
Panel 3
Caption: 48 hours of work later
Jase: @#$@#@ servers! @#$@#@ developers!
Jacob: Oh, did anyone tell you it needs to serve PHP, .NET, Perl, have a JAVA backbone, and run JBoss, instead of our normal JSP/TOMCAT environment.
Panel 4
Caption: 24 more hours of work later
Jacob: Oh, there are a couple more things it needs...
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Gary
Author Comments aka Comic News
Well, it was really lucky that I finished last week's comics when I did, because last week was ridiculous, and I wouldn't have had time to do them otherwise. Basically Sunday through Wednesday was almost straight working, with one break to go train. Most of this was because of a lack of requirements specs. Unfortunately, requirement specs are a careful balance. No specs, and you end up incorrectly estimating the effort and rushing at the end to add everything people assumed was going to be there. On the other end, if you have requirements that are hundreds of pages long, then none of the stakeholders read it, and things are missed. This approach also tends to have the wrong people designing technical solutions. The current instance is because there were no formal requirements, just a set in stone deadline, so things were needed last minute, and so I and QA guy put in ridiculous hours to get it done. Long story short, if I hadn't had the comics done already, there probably wouldn't have been any comics last week. I guess this means that having a buffer is a really good thing. Maybe I'll be able to build it up a little more during the evenings this week. Right now I have today's comic and most of Wednesday's comic done. Tonight (Monday night), I should be able to finish Wednesday's, and hopefully Friday's comic, leaving me an additional evening during the week to work on it.
In other news, I'm contemplating exhibiting at Wizard World in Chicago this year, so if there's anything you want to see/want me to bring to something like that, let me know. It would be the first show I would an exhibitor at, so I'd just be guessing, and as my readers, your opinion matters greatly. Since this isn't really my job, I'd be doing this largely for the experience, and to get you guys some swag. I was thinking of having some posters made up to give away for free, and maybe a book of fake quotes that I'd sell for pretty much cost. I want to put together a collection of comics, but I'm not sure which ones. If there are any suggestions on that, please let me know. Right now this is still a bit in the air. It's a question of if I have time and money to do it, but I'm still hopeful. I know I don't say this much, but thanks for reading, and I hope you still enjoy it.
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