At my last job the big push was to get everyone certified. Honestly, the company really didn’t care if you knew how to do the work, they just like to brag that all of their employees were certified. I took classes, and I boned up with study manuals. I passed tests too. Though, to this day if I had to recall much of it, I couldn’t. I can program. That’s something I can do. I’ve been doing it for 27 years (I’m not that old, I started when I was 11). My last several jobs were programming jobs. Yet, when I went on interviews, I was constantly being asked to take these tests to prove I could code. Granted, I know there are a lot of script monkeys out there who manage to do okay writing little scripts and such, and they want to weed out the casual coder from the hardcore programmers. Still, I hated being treated like I didn’t know what I was talking about when I had done this for how many years. So, what did I have to go and do? Get certified.

I guess my big gripe is not certification in general, but the move Corporate America has made to have *everyone* certified. That whole idea that it’s not good enough for you to do your job, but you have to have a piece of paper to prove it.

Oh, and the fact that all of it COSTS so much. Seriously, thousands of dollars for classes, hundreds of dollars for study materials, and two or more Ben Franklins at a crack just to take the test. Frankly, I think it’s a big conspiracy to make all of these testing companies richer. But, hey, that’s just me.

We actually had a different strip planned for Tuesday, but as fate would have it, Jim needed to put in a water filter on our kitchen sink. He had done this project done before a few years back, with the same filter model in fact, so he expected it to go quickly. His plan was to get it up, and then finish off our scheduled comic. We expected it (the strip) to be a few hours late, but considering we are slowly on the mend from all being sick and playing catch-up in the various areas of our life, we hoped our readers would understand. Of course, as Murphy’s Law dictates, the project which was to take a few hours ended up taking a LOT longer. I can actually report that Jim gave up on it last night, and is in the midst of completing the project as this update is going up. As the project stretched from “I’ll be done in another hour” to “I have no idea when the heck I’m gonna finish this,” I couldn’t let the irony of the situation slip by, so I decided to forego our planned strip and draw one about the situation. Living in an old house, we are used to this type of thing. Though, from what I have heard from others, this is a common occurrence. Even though we come to expect this, every time we hit a big unexpected delay, it’s still upsetting.

On Thursday, we will be starting the storyline featuring our 100th strip contest winner, Evil Couch. Unfortunately, it took us this long to get to it because we didn’t want to simply do a cameo, but wanted to incorporate him into the strip. A real-life incident actually gave us some good material for the arc we’re planning. Be sure to check back.

We had been toying around with giving the Pixels a dog for a while. In fact, just a few months ago, we got our first dog. Our oldest is 12, and up until now we’ve only had cats. When dealing with our own kids’ crushes, I started thinking of the phrase “puppy love.” It spurred this storyline, as well as the diversion in course it takes unexpectedly in Issue 119.
 
In Issue 122, Mr. Smiley comments that the Pixels should move to the “SCSI side of town.” SCSI is pronounced skuzzy. It’s a computer standard, and if you want to learn more about it, you can read more HERE. True to Mr. Smiley’s nature, the comment is an insult. Perhaps that is why the dog attacked. For the kids, it’s made clear the dog doesn’t hurt Mr. Smiley — he just ended up in a tree. Though, admittedly, I think most of our readers agree that he probably deserved a bit more.

In addition to everything else that’s going on, Michelle has come down with strep throat. So you’re getting a rare blog entry from me. When it rains, it pours. Except it’s actually snowing around here.
 
We feel bad when we deliver a comic late. And we feel really bad when a Booyah is late. So, we wanted to put something up.
 
In case you’re wondering, No Rest for the Wicked, MegaTokyo, Absurd Notions, and Nine Planets Without Intelligent Life are four webcomics which are famous for being late or missing updates. Although you probably guessed that already, but mentioning it gives me an excuse to link to all of them.