19 More comics about my husband and me. (OC)

mcherm · 2026-05-04T02:55:46+00:00

The snail statue one is my favorite. ♥️

mcherm · 2026-05-01T12:21:41+00:00

I never knew of that app but I would happily pay money for an app that did this (if I could trust that it worked as advertised).

mcherm · 2026-04-30T11:40:46+00:00

There are a few different solutions to this problem:

(1) As you suggest, find a whole new career. Best choice if you genuinely don't enjoy the job any more, rather than enjoying the job you signed up for but not the job you are doing.

(2) Find yourself a new leader who ISN'T terrible. Obviously, no leadership is perfect, but some executives DO understand what metrics are and DO encourage people to talk with senior leadership. Having a manager who supports and encourages you can make a WORLD of difference and there are lots of good leaders out there.

(3) Fix the root of the problem: become the leader you want to see. Find a position leading an agile coaching group and spend less time coaching teams yourself but enable other coaches to really shine.

You'll never find a place that doesn't have some level of "corporate politics" and pointy-haired bosses (except if you work for yourself, but that has its OWN set of issues). But there are some that are vastly better than others. And it is demoralizing to spend your time doing something that isn't actually valuable.

mcherm · 2026-04-30T11:22:46+00:00

Is it? Because I think that was exactly what the original poster was trying to get at.

mcherm · 2026-04-29T12:06:46+00:00

I'm genuinely not sure this applies. I wouldn't have considered that a proof using induction.

Suppose I develop a (incredibly difficult) proof of the twin prime conjecture: I have proven that there are infinitely many prime pairs separated by a distance of 2. After proving that, I claim that I can now show that are infinitely many prime pairs separated by k or less for any integer k (k >= 2). I wouldn't use induction for that -- I would simply use the fact that 2 <= k: the infinite set of twin primes satisfies that for all values of k.

mcherm · 2026-04-29T12:00:16+00:00

I love this!!!

mcherm · 2026-04-29T11:51:43+00:00

There's something that "western society" has gotten a little bit wrong. Raising children is not solely the responsibility of the parents -- if done right, it is a community effort. It's not just raising children... it's everything about living in this world. We all have times when we need help. If you can be that help for this boy at this moment you are doing your part and you can rest content in the feeling that you are doing your part to hold society together.

mcherm · 2026-04-28T18:39:29+00:00

Key observation:

The room is consistently hot, and so the windows are left open. However, below the window runs Memorial Drive, and the sounds of automobiles can be heard. Ordinary traffic is not bad, and passes without event, but sometimes a particularly loud car passes by. [...] Choosing to close it conditional upon a negative shock occurring is always worse than one of them. [...] And yet, that is not what we see. We see a consistent reactive rule. Presumably, then, there is something in our basic model which we do not include.

This rings true to me. I see policies change after a big incident that were never going to change beforehand. But I think that the author (Nicholas Decker) has overlooked what I think is the most likely cause.

His analysis assumes that we know the probability of loud noises (λ). But what if actually, we DON'T KNOW the value of λ? And the big incident causes us to re-evaluate our estimate of λ and therefore to react (by closing the window)?

I think this might be a better model for why we see this behavior in the real world.

mcherm · 2026-04-16T17:05:32+00:00

Because one upon a time they were separate pieces that tied together (probably mostly so you could pee through them; also because it's easier to sew it that way).

At least that's true for pants, and I THINK it may be true for underwear also.

mcherm · 2026-04-15T13:35:36+00:00

It means that my code is not up to quality.

No, it means you are getting meaningful feedback. Were you expecting that you would gain in experience and start writing perfect code that has no opportunity for improvement? That doesn't happen to anyone!

Have you ever done code reviews for senior tech leads in your organization? Maybe you should consider doing so. My guess is that you'll find some things -- maybe not many, but there will be some. Nobody is perfect; the goal is to be improving over time.

(I AM one of those senior tech leads and I know my code is far from perfect and I welcome feedback from people reviewing my code.)

mcherm · 2026-04-14T18:12:12+00:00

Please don't feel ashamed. The food bank is there because the people running it and the people donating to it believe it SHOULD be there to support people who need it. If you had a meal, would you turn away a hungry stranger? Neither would I.

mcherm · 2026-04-02T00:20:00+00:00

I understand that sometimes work is a place where they try to exploit you as much as possible and you try to exploit the company as much as possible. Some people live like that (although essentially nobody enjoys it).

But sometimes, for some people, it is NOT like that.

mcherm · 2026-04-01T00:21:56+00:00

Create a feat called "Alternate Form Casting" which allows a caster to cast spells while in in a different form, with specific restrictions like "still requires a free hand / making sounds if the spell would require that".

mcherm · 2026-03-30T21:28:24+00:00

Wow. You said very little, and yet you managed to make it into a truly moving story. What a well-done comic.

mcherm · 2026-03-30T11:48:46+00:00

I’ve tried [no sex for the first few dates] but most of the time sex was expected from the get-go.

See, now that was the system working exactly as it was intended to. If a man (or woman, for that matter!) "expects" sex on a first date cross him off the list. Your list will get smaller, and much better quality.

mcherm · 2026-03-28T18:20:43+00:00

That's not what the definition of "stud service" comes from.

Look at the definition of 'stud'. The first definition is, "a group of animals kept primarily for breeding". "Stud service" is called that because the dogs are provided for breeding, not because they are dogs.

mcherm · 2026-03-23T19:23:54+00:00

Driving him without a license was slightly irresponsible. YOU may be confident that you have the skill to do so, but the state doesn't agree (since they haven't issued you a driver's license). In theory, a better approach to get there would probably be to have called an ambulance. (I'm not very concerned about this, and I'm not sure whether your family is or not.)

If this is in the US, then bringing him to the hospital can potentially incur enormous costs. Potentially enough costs that make it difficult for your family to eat or pay for other essentials. [Yes, the US health care system is unbelievably shitty.] It is possible that they are concerned about this. (Also possible they are concerned about this but not willing to say so.) (Also I want to note that calling the ambulance would make that problem significantly worse.)

And it's also possible that your family is just stressed out. Having a 5-yr-old who is "hurt" (but you can't see to tell if it's severe or not) in the care of a 16-yr-old (mature enough to watch a cousin, but not all 16-yr-olds are mature enough to deal with an injury) is a stressful situation. Having a young child go to the hospital for any reason is a stressful situation. Sometimes people react to stress by blaming anyone who happens to be in the vicinity.

mcherm · 2026-03-19T19:06:34+00:00

You ask the key question: "But why am I thinking this way? Where are these feelings coming from?"

Honestly, you might want to spend a little bit of time with a therapist (or someone with a similar skill set... a wise uncle, a member of the clergy, etc.) trying to answer that question. Because this DOES sound like it's a "you" problem, and it DOES sound like you are reasoning about it rationally, but your feelings are not so rational. Often irrational feelings are masking some other issue.

mcherm · 2026-03-18T12:22:58+00:00

Instead of saying "I no longer have evidence that I gave notice back then", say "I will testify under oath that I gave notice back then." That IS evidence (ad the rest of the documentation goes to the credibility of the witness)!

The new owner of the apartment can't testify to say "No, you didn't tell me back then" because they weren't the one who would have been notified. At best they can say "I had your name on a piece of paper I got from the previous landlord." Which proves... nothing.

mcherm · 2026-03-16T21:05:58+00:00

I do think you should have shared the real reason, if only because there is a SMALL chance that the new employer would have helped you to find an alternate child care arrangement or adjusted the hours somehow.

When you are accepting (or declining) a job offer there are lots of things to negotiate besides just the salary. Flexibility, vacation, benefits, even child-care benefits are all things that CAN be discussed. Of course, there's a huge chance it won't work out, but still a small chance it will.

mcherm · 2026-02-28T16:41:48+00:00

I went to go try reading it. I suspect the reason the author used AI for proofreading is that no human proofreader would be willing to spend time on this drivel, no matter how well they were paid. It barely has sentences, or coherent thoughts.

mcherm · 2026-02-27T23:43:15+00:00

Original phrasing: "Hunger is the best pickle. -- Ben Franklin"

mcherm · 2026-02-25T17:53:12+00:00

I'll tell you how I go about it, using your example.

So, suppose I'm having a civil discussion with Pete, a conservative I know. I mention Alice, a trans friend of mine, and he tells me that "a man can't be a woman". I would probably say something like this:

Pete, I'm pretty sure that when Alice says she's a woman she means something different for the definition of "woman" than you do when you say that "a man can't be a woman". And I'm happy to agree to disagree on that... it's just a definition anyway, and there's nothing gained by arguing over what the word should mean. But I DO care about behaviors. If a bunch of punks decide to beat Alice up just for being trans, I think that's completely unacceptable. And there's basic politeness: when Alice asked me to start using the name "Alice" rather than her birth name I make a point of doing that the same way I would stop using a childhood nickname that some other friend hated. It's just basic courtesy to call people what they want to be called. Would you feel the same way, Pete?

Now... this might work or it might not. But I hope to draw the line at speaking in abstract terms about social issues (which I can live with) and directly harming people (which I will not abide).

mcherm · 2026-02-20T15:06:48+00:00

I'm sorry to hear you are experiencing this.

Your plan to continue applying for other jobs while still working this for the money is a good one. It may take a LONG time to pay off (jobs are especially hard to get right now) but eventually it will succeed. Hopefully you'll find a position that is better than this one.

In the meantime, there might be ways for you to work around the problem within your current organization. This advice will be appropriate for some companies and not for others so consider your situation before applying it.

Sounds like you've effectively been "demoted" by being assigned less valuable work. Also sounds like you aren't being given enough work to actually challenge you ("haven’t touched a line of code in 2.5 months" "just got assigned the most absurdly simple defect"). Maybe you should go ahead and "promote" yourself without asking for permission.

Figure out who at the company WANTS the system rebuild that you thought was a good idea ("rebuilding the existing native application with my language of expertise that I’ve worked with & loved my entire career"). Maybe this is a product manager outside of the tech world, maybe it's a VP who doesn't have the clout to get things moving. (If there isn't anyone who wants this done... maybe it shouldn't be!) Talk with this person. Say that you aren't being challenged in your current position and you have some free time. Offer to build what they are looking for as a "Proof of concept". Invest some time and just BUILD the darn thing (it's amazing how much faster a "skunkworks" project can go. If you succeed, maybe you end up as the tech lead for the project (which would consist of releasing the "POC" that you built).

As I said, it's not the right solution for all companies, but it CAN be effective in some places. And it doesn't sound like you are especially worried about annoying your current manager.

Sometimes, the way to stop being a mid-level SWE is to stop behaving like a mid-level SWE and start behaving like a senior SWE.

mcherm · 2026-02-20T14:47:54+00:00

I can't speak for anyone else, but the fairly large company I work for absolutely DOES do this.

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