Recent Comments

1. 8 days ago on Frazz

   Which, no doubt, he will do while she’s lecturing on math. If he reacts as I would, he’ll write “I I I I …” five hundred times, then “will will will will …” five hundred times, … Such a moronic assignment demands an orthogonal response.

2. 12 days ago on Frazz

   … and let me tell you how much more I learned when I left my 20+ years of post-graduate-OJT and started teaching what I thought I knew to other professionals. That was a tough crowd full of Caulfields.

3. 19 days ago on Frazz

   … or avoiding offending the redoutable Ms. Goldberg …

4. 30 days ago on Frazz

   um… Frank, I’m not quite sure why you are only now commenting on a seven-year-old posting, but as someone who was deeply involved in the “Y2K problem” (supporting IBM mainframe operating systems code from Assembler to HLL’s) it wasn’t as if the issue was a surprise in December 1999. The Y2K matter was real, and as you describe it, but we had been recompiling our application-program code (or installing Y2K-compliant versions from software vendors) for years. So yes, we had been “working the problem”, but in the popular press, it was a hurtling asteroid that was going to kill us all.

   I worked for one of the largest university datacenters on the east coast, with a wide variety of research institution clients. We worked with IBM to ensure that all of the OS code/libraries were tested and compliant. We were running IBM’s VM/ESA in production and an early-access version of z/VM in test, so we were able to easily run A:B comparisons on all the programs/utilities/libraries that could have been affected. All systems stayed up through midnight, and the only anomalies reported the next day were in someone’s private code. So I would call that a “complete success”.

   But the leap year issue could have been a very real “Y2K problem” because we would have had to find every date calculation routine that assumed the year that ended in ‘00’ was not a leap year. That would have been a Sisyphean task.

5. 3 months ago on Frazz

   I have no use for “Heaven”. I’d rather have another chance down here to start over and do a better job.

6. 3 months ago on Jeff Danziger

   If her hand were reversed, it would be taken as an insult in many European countries.

7. 3 months ago on Steve Breen

   I went through my sciatica-inducing wallet and took out everything that was not absolutely required in an emergency. That left several forms of licenses and the credit cards. I pared the cards down to the three I use regularly, and all of it fit into a nice leather business card folio. I took $20 in cash, mostly ones, folded them into fourths, and that fit into a money clip. One goes into one hip pocket, the other goes into the other. Big improvement.

   When I’m paying at a register, I make sure there is a tip jar, and put some cash in there. That’s the only way I have a reasonable expectation that my contribution will actually get to the people who provided the service. If there’s no tip jar, no digital tip.

8. 3 months ago on Frazz

   You might want to check with a doctor (or at least Wikipedia) before you assert “what a tic is”. And yes, many children do that exact behavior.

9. 3 months ago on Frazz

   @Richard S Russell

   You both are ignoring the fact that in the eight panels in which the kid appears, she is pointing in only two. In three of them, her hands aren’t visible. In two, her arms are outstretched, and in another they are supplicant. Sounds like you’re making something big out of what may have simply been the expedience of the artist on a deadline. What’s next, a compilation of the number of times Frazz is shown resting his arm on the handle of a broom or mop?

   I’m sure you both have habitual behaviors (tics) that everyone else sees and ignores as simply normal for you.

10. 3 months ago on Frazz

    Yes. You must not remember being a kid and having an adult point to you to maintain your attention while they make a point they want you to see. Adults do it less to adults because it’s demeaning and a power-play (a judge pointing his gavel at a defendant) but it’s very common to see it used with subordinates. The girl is just using adult mimicry, as kids tend to do. Just one of the subtle observational gems that Mallett employs.