We got a dog about the same time (real-life time) as the Pixels did. The Pixels’ dog looks a lot like ours, too. The breed is a “Puggle” — half Pug, half Beagle. They’re pack dogs, which is good considering our house. She likes to be with other people, even at night. She’ll go to bed with me and Michelle, and she’ll be with us in the morning, so we always assumed she spent the night in our bed. Until one morning we had to get up extremely early, and discovered the dog would make her rounds — she would sleep for a while next to each of the children.

So, this is another cute slice-of-life comic we couldn’t resist doing.

Poor Verde. He always has to help the Mayor out, which is difficult because the Mayor’s so stupid. I’ll bet he has to tie the Mayor’s shoes in the morning. His job is basically the same as what Alfred’s job would be if Batman was an idiot.

We went around a couple of times on exactly what was going to happen in this comic. Michelle finally decided on the minimalistic direction to take it. When I saw it, my first reactions was, “Harry really is a lunatic, isn’t he?” I don’t know if any of you are playing along in our Laugh Olympics in the forum, but we did mention that this storyline, and Harry’s psychosis about the paperboy, is based loosely on similar situation in one of our favorite movies. If you can guess what movie it is, post in the forum, or leave a comment here.

When we first started on this storyline, I thought it was a fun way to put Evil Couch into Bitmap World. What I didn’t know would happen is that I would end up loving the character. I’m almost sorry this was just a “cameo.” I think there is so much potential for this character, and want to know what happens next! Of course, there is one small problem–he’s not our character! We did plan to leave the storyline like this, a virtual cliffhanger of sorts. I’ll be honest and will say I hope we see Evil Couch again. Though, of course, that is more up to Couch than us. Still, if he can’t take over the real world, maybe he’ll be content taking over Bitmap World. Or better yet, both?

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.

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.

Okay, the Booyah was late. First it was Michelle’s fault. We were running behind due to yet another doctor’s appointment. She ended up putting the last finishing touches on the strips at work–and then forgot to send them to herself. I had come to pick her up from work, and I offered to turn around, but we were already halfway home so she decided to wait. The decision was fortunate because…

Our second delay was purely technical. Who knew that emails could give a programmer so many fits. Well, not email, per se, but collecting emails for our new contest. I had to modify our BYOC maker so that contestants can give us their contact information, and a form that should have been easy and quick ended up being complicated and time-consuming. I’m sure many a programmer can attest to projects like that.

So, a day late…again. Though, we are proud to say we have never missed an update. Sure, they are late, but we eventually get them up.

Of course, I’ve probably just jinxed us saying that…

Today’s strip (Issue 87) looks like a filler strip. Well, it is and it isn’t. See, we had come up with this idea a while back, and planned to run it at a future date. But over the weekend, a lot of the time we were planning on devoting to creating comics ended up being used for fighting off hackers. Not quite how we like spending our Saturday night.

This strip was actually inspired by watching our kids play a “family-friendly” online game. It was notorious for hanging on the initial load if too many people were accessing it. It was funny hearing some of the comments they would make waiting for the program to pop up, and how they occupied their time before it actually loaded. We thought it would be an amusing addition to the Cosmic Dungeon storyline, considering many online gamers have encountered this type of thing and can relate. As it goes now, it was a quick and easy filler, but very legitimately acts a segue back into Cosmic Dungeon, which we haven’t seen since strip 66.

Note, I DID edit/update this blog entry a bit, because Michelle said the first version was kinda sparce. She’s always getting on me for not making more entries here. Sorry.

Mysteries of the Move. What is really funny is that this actually happened to me. Not quite in the same fashion, and not a cellphone, but when I was a teen, I lost something in my house. I can’t even remember what it was now, but it was important at the time. Me and my mom ended up moving some time later. After settling in the new place, I found the item. But, it wasn’t in a box, it was just lying behind something. The question was, how did the item get packed up, moved to the new house, unpacked, and lost again? I guess that is why it is called a mystery.

When Tess was about seven years old, she was already using the computer. She loved playing around with Paint Shop Pro. One day she loaded all of Michelle’s icons — Michelle is the administrator of a large forum, and has a huge icon collection for it — and began making a picture using them. She started with a field of green, and then placed icons all over it, representing people. She had some of the icons eating a picnic lunch, and some of them playing volleyball, and some just running around. She also had a couple that were walking their dogs. She titled the picture People in the Park. Michelle and I saw that and thought, Wow, that would make a great comic!

We didn’t forget about the idea after that, we just thought that some other webcomic might be better. For four years we tried various comics, before finally returning to the idea of a simplistic-looking comic that takes place inside a computer, with icons for people. So Tess really needs to take the credit for coming up with the original idea.

It’s kind of bizarre. Michelle and I always wondered if Tess would follow in our footsteps, but now we’re following in hers.