"We took the hostages..."

I went to his site and looked at a bunch of his jokes. I don't get almost all of them.

I went to his site and looked at a bunch of his jokes. I don't get almost all of them.

Cue Shaidle to stop by and rant how uncultured Simon and everyone is. Oh wait, this isn't musical theater or whatever Buckley used to be into.

Is Simon your real name, or just a very clever inside joke?

Okay, I gave them a second try, and some of them are genuinely thought-provoking and cute. I cannot turn away. I guess originality and intellectual stimulation beat Family Circus any day.

Kate - You are definitely evil. I blame Vitruvius (gotta have a handy scapegoat – I carry spares).

I demand more Dilbert (for the obvious reason)

Day by Day (ironic subversiveness – love the new bar)

Zits (hey, I got teenagers!)

Rose is Rose (ahem, alter egos on bikes shall NOT be mentioned...but you must try the rattlesnake chili)

OK, OK - Blondie, too...but only for the sandwiches and the naps.

Dear me, there are men in white coats at the door. The seem rather insistent...

Haha, excellent.

On the general comics discussion, I will only say that I doubt The Far Side will ever be toppled from the throne.

Comic Strip humour is subjective, like most other art forms. At least these are not gruesome like that other stick people site that shows animated decapiations, gross accidents and some al qaida stuff. However, many people think it very funny - to his credit he does post his hate mail.

http://www.stickdeath.com/frameset.htm

"I doubt The Far Side will ever be toppled from the throne"

Too right!

A friend takes pity on me and passes his New Yorker magazines on so I'll have something to read at the gym (it's that, or I'm forced to absorb speculation about Lindsay Lohan's secret diet tips for making a rehab sex-tape to celebrate Brangelina's divorce. Dammit, maybe women are idiots).

So, cartoon-wise, nothing phases me. These are great.

My reference to "Simon" - Simon Travaglia, the
Bastard Operator From Hell.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bastard_Operator_From_Hell

This story is a lie. An urban legend. A myth from the distant past.

Reality is that I am dealing with the sysadmins on the daily (and nightly) basis.

It's a never ending nightmare. They are in the 3d world countries. Their command of English, work ethics, attitude and communication skills are horrible. Their only concern is to make sure they spend maximum time possible working on the issues. To achieve that they work to the letter when it suits them or invent their own non-existing policies as they go when it does not.

This comic is not funny.

> I went to his site and looked at a bunch of
> his jokes. I don't get almost all of them.

Don't worry, you can still compete in the Special Olympics.

Trouble with comic strips is that every strip I like the cartoonist either dies or retires. Far Side, Calvin & Hobs and don't forget Lil Abner. The stick characters don't take much talent to draw but the message is usually very sharp.

Sysadmins are as easy to spot at a distance as a white crow. When you are ambushed by an elite accountant SCALP (Special Calculations And Ledger Procedures) team, they are sartorially perfect to blend in and things get hopeless really fast. Don't start humming chain gang or other blues stuff while being handcuffed, blindfolded, and dragged to the helicopter or you will regret it.

I disagree with Aaron. In my forty years of working with system administrators all over the world, I have found that they have the same gaussian property and habit distributions of humans at large. As do their customers, that is to say, people like Aaron and me. So though there are some bad ones, so then there are some good ones. On the other hand, perhaps the reason Aaron keeps experiencing problems with everything in his life, at least so far as we can tell from the data we have at hand (namely that all Aaron ever does here at SDA is complain and whine about one problem or another he is having, their notably never being his fault), is due to the single thing that is in common to all those cases: Aaron.

The comic is hilarious. Thanks Kate.

Thanks for the laugh Kate, I found it hilarious. I find xkcd really funny, but then I have been told I have a weird sense of humor. xkcd seems to require a certain minimum standard of computer/technical knowledge to understand the cartoons; when I've shown other people some of the xkcd cartoons that I cracked up over I've gotten blank stares.

"Their only concern is to make sure they spend maximum time possible working on the issues."

My policy as a sysadmin is to get the problem solved as fast as I can and get out. Time is money. My personel pet peave with the people I deal with is they don't seem to have the ability to stop and focus for 2 minutes and figure out a problem for themselves. But then if they did that they couldn't go out for a smoke.

I, like everyone else here, have personally worked at every company Dilbert represents.

I share Aaron's frustrations.
When you get "press one for english"...you press one and then think you just punched the wrong !@#$%^&* button.
When you get somebody who speaks as if he is declining a latin verb......