Mommy, no, MomAI

 

Don't use AI or you could be next? Not that I use AI very much as a mom. Usually just to convert recipes to use the pan size I have, or find substitutions for ingredients I don't feel like taking a specific trip to the grocery store to procure. Also, now I'm thinking of the song "If I Were a Rich Man" from Fiddler on the Roof but it's now "If I Were an AI" and it's about drinking tons of water and having the quickest but not always correctest answer. 

Explanation: My name is Lauren. It didn't look right to do LAIren as it just looks like I'm shouting the start of my name. And Lairen just looks like a misspelling. 

Text:
M: AI is replacing everything!!!
L: Mom is now AI. LaurAIn.
Kids: *shocked*

Nineties Fashion Explanation

 

Happy New Year! May the new year not bring back super baggy clothing. Loose is nice - hanging off is not. 

Explanation: In the nineties, computers were huge and fashion was super baggy. I have decided these facts are related.

Text:
Title: 90's Fashion Designers
A: I just met a time-traveler who said that in twenty years, we will have computers that fit in our pockets!
B: We need to design pants that can fit a computer in them!!!
C: In! Each! Pocket!

Jira Opportunities

It's actually "Work Item" instead of "Issue" but I like my version better. What Jira Opportunities are you working on today? 

Explanation: Jira is a type of program management software, which is something that teams can use to track what they're creating or fixing, and individual items in there were called Issues but now they're called Work Items. I've heard plenty of quotes about seeing issues as opportunities, to get you to reframe your mindset about a situation. 

Text:
M: Jira is rebranding, so now Jira Issues is - 
L: Jira Opportunities? 

Eleven out of Ten

Happy Anniversary to the love of my life! Wow it's been a while. You're an eleven, unless that will cause issues then you're a ten. A ten plus. Oh no, the stack is overflowing with my love for you!

Explanation: In computer programing, if you try to access something that is not in the set (i.e. if your set is 1-10 and you try to reach 11), then you get an error because that does not compute. But when you're complementing someone, you can say they exceed the scale given and it's a good thing. 

Text:
R: On a scale of one to ten, you're an eleven 💗💗
J: Out of bounds error?

Day of Birth

 

I feel like if you know this answer, you're faking your identity. But now that I've posed the question, you might be curious what day of the week you were born. I know the day of the week for my kids but not for myself. 

Explanation: When verifying your identity, sometimes the questions are rather specific. Most everybody knows what day of the month they were born, but we don't log the day of the week. I considered asking week of the month, but if you're in the first week you probably know that.

Text:
S: Please verify your identity: on which day of the week were you born?
L: ... what?
S: DENIED!
L: Uh, Monday? [How many guesses do I get?]
S: DOUBLE DENIED!!

Gaming Mouse

I'm not sure I like how I drew the mice here - this is a stick figure blog for a reason. But the joke needed mice! So the mice are here. Also this was inspired by my husband getting a gaming mouse with cool colors in it. 

Explanation: A gaming mouse is a fancy computer mouse that has features beneficial for online gaming. Dota and Halo are popular games. A mouse (mammal) that plays games all day could also be called a gaming mouse. 

Text:
A: All he does is play Dota and Halo all day long.
B: What did you expect? He's a gaming mouse.

Weak-End

 

I believe there is a quote from Downton Abbey where the actress who played Professor McGonagall asks "what is a weekend?" (I haven't seen the show but I've seen enough clips to get the main gist of it I think) and after reading something about back-end development vs front-end, I came up with this comic. 

Explanation: In software development, there's front-end and back-end (among many other things). The character in this comic is adding a third option, weekend, i.e. do you prefer not being at work. There is a misunderstanding since "week" and "weak" sound the same. 

Text:
A: Do you prefer front-end, back-end, or weekend? :)
B: What is weak-end?

Alexa Joke Fail

 

As you can see, this comic was not drawn at the same time as the previous one because my Alexa design is a bit different. Oh well, stylistic choice and all that. I don't know the answer to this joke because I couldn't get it from her - so now you all have the same unanswered question as me! I feel like the answer could be something about a chicken. 

Explanation: The Amazon Echo Show has a screen that cycles through many topics, but one of them is jokes and she has some very lame but a few rather good ones. She'll show you what to say (literally what I put in the comic is what she had prompted me to say) and then she usually has the prefect answer to what you've asked since she wanted to show you anyways hence her prompt. 

Text:
L: Alexa, why did the egg cross the road?
A: Sorry, I don't know that.
L: Why did you prompt me to ask you, then???

Dinner Tragedy via Alexa

 

So very glad this one is not a True Story, but I had this thought after telling my assistant to set multiple timers and didn't view them right away and later asked to see them and thankfully they were all there but if they weren't then dinner would have been rough because I just "set it and forget it" and move on to other parts of prep and have no cognizance of how long the rice has been cooking or the vegetables have been in the oven. 

Text:
Title: Dinner Tragedy
M: Alexa, show me my timers.
A: There are no timers set.

Input Output Problems

So when I was visiting my family for my brother's graduation, there were some tech issues at church that Sunday and said issues sparked this comic. This is my mom freaking out that there's an issue, me singing a song about said issue, and my brother clapping along to increase the mild panic. Because singing helps just about as much as sarcasm. 

Explanation: There's an old children's song "I’m Inright, Outright, Upright, Downright Happy all the Time" and I adapted this song to be about livestream issues. I don't think this song is theologically sound since happiness depends on happenstance and sometimes life is just sad, but we can always have joy in Christ. Doesn't mean you're gonna be happy when life kicks you down, but you won't be despondent and you will have hope since God is in control. 

Text:
L1: Why isn't the livestream working?!?!?
L2: Input, output, upput, downput, Problems *clap* all *clap* the time *clap*.
L3: *clapping along*

Python Math

A little late, but yay my finger has healed to the point where typing is not painful, so that was only a few days out of commission. Still keeping it wrapped to limit movement and avoid catching the split on anything. 

 Before any panic ensues, the Python in question is a programming language. Why is it called python? That's a great question and I need to look that up. Haha, I NEVER would have guess that. Here's the link. The programming language is named after Monty Python's Flying Circus. As for this comic, I don't recall the article I read that inspired it. I learned Python for some tasks at my last job, and I don't recall having any issues with math in it but I was not using it for math functions - I was retrieving, modifying, and returning data with it. But since I was learning the language, I read a lot of articles on it and somehow this comic came into being. 

Text:
L: The more I learn about Python math, the more I just don't want to know.
R: Snakes can do math now?!?!?

Cookies Deleted

 

An A+ alibi right there, can't do anything once the cookies have been deleted. "Deleting Cookies" is the term used for removing the small tracking tokens that tend to accumulate in your internet browser. These tokens help personalize your experience by remembering previous selections and targeting ads just for you :) It's a good idea to clear them every once in a while, but also if you're having an issue with loading a page then go ahead and clear them. Clearing your cache also helps fix pages, and on Windows machines you just hit ctrl-shift-r to do that. The cache is great for loading pages quickly but it can mess things up if the page has changed and the cache has an older version. 

Text:
A: Where did all the desserts go?!?
B: Someone must have deleted all cookies.
A: ... Someone???
B: *munch munch* *shrug*

 

Well, this will make it difficult to post comics....

It works now! But the child is upset....

And Mark has her so I can schedule a comic! We aren't sure why she's fussy, but that's her default state. Anyways, I received an email a while ago about FeedBurner (how I send out my emails) being retired so I need to find a new way to send them, and I tasked my Mark with finding that way and he decided on MailChimp since we use that in other venues. But I need to get that set up and hopefully the change will be seamless. It will have happened by this point because FeedBurner is closing at the beginning of June. It's currently the end of May so I need to get a move on transferring to the new service. 

Text:
L: Can you set up the FeedMonkey for me?
M: ... MailChimp RSS?
L: Yeah, that. 

Internet of Things State of Security

My talented little brother sent me the "S in IoT" phrase and linked the article mentioned. This same brother, when I sent him this article about the Mars Bar Rover, responded with "the future is here, and it's vaguely disappointing." Also, this same brother is a senior down at PCC and if you're also at PCC (how did you find my blog?) you should go to his Software Engineering Expo which is this week! Go find the info, I'm sure it's all over campus (or there's probably a poster in the AC lobby). Back in my day we made a super cool video and they played it in chapel or student body which was cool. 

To explain the comic, IoT stands for Internet of Things and references how so many smart items are now able to connect to the internet but are not at all secure so bad people can do unfortunate things via these items (hence there is no 'S' in the acronym 'IoT'). When in doubt, don't put it on or allow it to connect to the internet. We had to shop specifically for a baby monitor that just communicated from the camera to the tablet, no internet needed. I have no desire to have internet cameras in my house. If you do have IoT items, please change the default passwords to something secure (you can tape it to the item since those trying to hack in shouldn't be in your house, if they are then you have bigger issues). 

Text:
La: Did you hear about the casino that was hacked via their fish tank's smart thermometer?
Lu: Well, the "S" in "IoT" stands for "security."

Happy Little JUnit Test

 My husband and I were talking about testing and this scenario came to mind. The purpose of a JUnit test is to test a small area of your code. It should only pass if the code is doing what it is suppose to be doing - you should be able to change the input and see the test fail. Then you can design extra tests to verify that giving wrong or garbage input throws the expected exception. But if your happy path test passes no matter what you input, that's not really doing anything for you. 

Text:
L: Your JUnit test is useless - it never fails, no matter the input.
C: It's a happy test!

CoVid Screening for Telehealth Visit

 I have to complete a CoVid screening before any in-person doctor appointments and it's just a short questionnaire about do I have it, am I waiting to know if I have it, do I live with someone who has it, etc... But I was going for a telehealth visit and it said I needed to fill out a questionnaire and I thought up this comic because that'd just be ridiculous but the questionnaire was actually about my health and family health pertaining to the visit so it was not ridiculous. But I still made a comic about my first impression. Also my doctor couldn't figure out the telehealth system so he ended up just calling me which worked fine because it was a consult and you can do that over the phone, no extra technology needed. 

Text:
L: I have a virtual visit with my doctor today.
M: Have you completed the CoVid screening?
L: Right, because computers can transmit viruses. 

Cloud Issues

 A classic what you say vs what they hear. I do think it's humorous to draw parallels between physical clouds and data clouds. If it's raining when you have a cloud issue, clearly the two are related. Also using the word 'nebulous' to describe cloud concepts is peak humor. Which reminds me of a word jumble game that we use to play (can't remember the title but it was on the original iPad) and we had the letters "bmnii" and could not figure it out - it was nimbi, the plural of nimbus. Well, I learned a new word that day and now maybe you did too!

Text:
What you say: The site is experiencing a cloud issue
What they hear: The data is out of alignment... due to the storm. 

Phishing Trip

I am a software engineer who has worked in security for years and I have nearly been caught by a well worded phishing attempt (when you get a malicious email that looks nearly legit and you desire to click the seemingly innocuous link only for it to do nasty things to your computer), possibly more than once. They sometimes are super easy to spot (spelling errors, pretending to be from a company with whom I do business but not from that email, pretending to be from a company with whom I don't do business, ...) but other times they either seem like they're from a legitimate source or like the comic, they have a touching or heartwarming story that makes you want to read more or give to a cause. 

Text:
A: So this unsolicited email tells a heartwarming story and there's a link to the video at the bottom - 

B: NO

Resource Hog

I thought this one up a while ago, pretty sure it was related to a work issue. Probably was searching through logs to find the culprit. I'm not a fan of hunting in real life - I'm fine with others doing it but if I had to kill my own meat, I would probably be vegetarian. I remember as a kid, we had a neighbor who was a hunter and this one time I saw a deer "hanging out" behind his house and I was like IT'S BAMBI'S MOM.

Text:
Hunter: What are you nerds tracking?
Nerd 1: A resource hog.
Nerd 2: Should be huge!

Binary Fairy

Haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaappy Birthday to my amazing husband! You make my life more magical every day <3 As annoying as this quarantine/lockdown/stay home order thing is, I'm glad I'm stuck with you :)
I think I came up with the idea of the binary fairy in college, as a way to explain why sometimes the code wasn't working, you don't change anything but you rerun the test, and it then is working. Rather than being alarmed by the non-stability of the code base, just put your trust in the pixel dust!

Text:
M: This didn't work last time I ran this test but now it works - how???
F: The binary fairy. Sprinkling her pixel dust over the code base.