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Trenches comic: Tuesday Sept. 27, 2011
Bogey
I'm back, baby!Santa Monica, CAModerator mod
I'm back, baby!Santa Monica, CAModerator mod
Crunch.
09/27/2011 - Anonymous
As the Senior Tester on the team, one of my jobs was to act as the motivational anchor for the rest of the team. This task ended up being more difficult than anticipated when we rolled into our 40th consecutive hour of work during crunch on an FPS we were shipping.
It started with creating a robot made of old printers and wheeling it around to Developers on an old chair. It was around 6AM on Day 2. We wanted his cold unfeeling eyes to burn a hole in their hearts. A few hours later, a monitor was taken out by a rouge football, and the team, after consuming a weeks-worth of soda and coffee in 25 hours, discovered we were out of caffeine and began to revolt.
At this point, the “testing madness” started to hit. One of our testers started cursing out loud regarding waffles and their condescending desire to be like pancakes. One by one I sent each tester home as their sanity became too unstable to control. At one point, I realized I was the only one left and we still had at least 3 more hours of work remaining.
After shot-gunning a Rockstar energy drink with our Associate Producer we cranked out the last of the bug regressions and I finally went home. I remember the following things and ONLY the following things: The first 5 minutes of the drive. Waking up in the car parked on the side of the road. Waking up in bed.
I may not remember getting home, but I do know I worked for 48 hours straight, fell back asleep, dreamed about working, and got up 4 hours later to do it again. Luckily, we passed our Microsoft certification and the game (barely) made store shelves on time.
Bogey on
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I'm fascinated by his balloon hands. I wonder how efficiently he types with boneless, rubbery fingers.
Well obviously they're all giving him "the look" to show that they don't approve of how he got his job. Or they're just cutouts left to make the dimwitted LBB think they're all working when in reality they are off at an amusement park. John and Frank were the only two dutiful enough to come to work that day and look what happened.
It just makes sense.
The jokes are clearly because he feels uncomfortable and is trying to lighten the atmosphere.
Don't you have anything better to do? Like not read a comic you admittedly dislike just so you can tell everyone exactly how much you dislike it and why? Because you don't want anyone else to derive any enjoyment whatsoever from the comic either?
And before you start trying to paint yourself as the victim again, nobody buys it. You deliberately misinterpret every single thing that happens in the comic to make it seem as bad as it could possibly be. Either that or you don't know anything about human behaviour or any kind of literary convention.
The last few have been fantastic, great work guys.
I had a project where we became obsessed with McBain from the Simpsons when OT hit. Specifically the bit where his partner is about to retire on the boat "Live Forever"
To this day we're still not sure why.
The harder the rain, honey, the sweeter the sun.
The man's belt buckle is missing in the third panel. And yet the specks on his pants are the same.
That character is weirding me out.
I think he's wearing a kilt.
This definitely seems like a setting where the chances of a utilikilt sighting are fairly high.
He's a brilliant antihero. He reminds me a lot of Adrian Pasdar's character in Profit. Maybe the whole beginning with him in the rain was that a loved one died as a result of something this company did and now he plans to bring it down from the inside. :-o That would be a fantastic story.
"Out, damn'd spot! out, I say!"
That is totally a utilikilt.
Why not?
All of the albino people that I know (or have seen) irl and that I've seen online have that "blondish" hair color. If there are albino people out there with brown hair that's not dyed, it must be pretty rare.
I daresay you might possibly be reading entirely too much into things. But, meh. Whatever floats your boat I suppose. Also...
Um, you can't see the entire keyboard. Or his entire hand... These theories are entertaining though.
I saw that as part of the joke. It's kinda like, "Yeah get use to it new guy."
Panel 1, first comic, he rolls up in a car that most have pegged as being a very expensive and flashy vehicle.
He then proceeds to flagrantly try to "dumb himself down" to the right level to be hired. As if his primary reason for rejection is being too intelligent. Presumably, this is how he came across the riches with which he bought the aforementioned vehicle.
Then we get the awkward "who to fire" comics.
And now he's literally typing with blood on his hands.
Maybe he's just not a good person, and we're not supposed to like him. Maybe he's the anti-hero? Maybe we're witness to the epic fall from the hubris that will be later examined in the prequel strips?
So far I have giggled a few times, but this one is just too clumsy to make me smile. I would have liked it better if he completely ignored the blood on his hands (typing away with blood flying everywhere) and tried to make smalltalk with his new coworkers giving him the "we're gonna make your life hell"-look. Could have been a way to introduce his coworkers. Him looking at guy #1 going "oh, like your sideburns!" and panel two at the girl he met the day before "a familiar face! Hi!" etc.
He's not an albino, he's just very pale, on account of he's a utilikilt-wearing nerd who spends all his time indoors playing/testing video games.
So you're what, the cartoonist's Mum? I'm sure he can look after himself, someone criticizing the comic isn't going to break his brain. You have to realise that people have had quite a few years of a good comic on this site, so there is a certain expectation that if another comic is put up by the same people it will also be good. But it isn't really, and for now we're still reading it because we figure at some point it will kick in. I hope it does, but at this point I doubt it. We'll see.