Different drummer?

Many webcartoonists for whom it isn't their day job, maybe most, maybe all but me, feel the best way to emulate professionalism is to put out the best installment each time they can, even if it means missing a scheduled update. But I feel differently. The reason I've gone nearly my first thousand daily updates without missing one - indirectly the reason I developed a working process that incidentally includes elements it turns out most webcartoonists and many webcomics readers sneer at -

(I get some guff from potential readers about the MSPaint and the Comic Sans. But I remember a comment I once read before the world went online from a newpaper feature editor, that no reader ever wrote in to complain that a comic strip's art had declined.)

- is that I feel the best way to emulate professionalism (and I articulated this while I was watching Studio 60 last night) is to put out the best installment each time I can, without missing a scheduled update. It's always at the top of every commentator's best practices lists for webcomics to pick a schedule you can stick to and then stick to it. (Plus, part of my motivation in creating AKOTAS was to bring the Arthurian characters into people's lives on a daily basis so that people might, as do I, know and love, and live with, them as Captain Kirk and Harry Potter are loved and lived with.) Updating to schedule's always been my top priority. I always genuinely work to write a good joke and draw it well, and I do contend that every strip I've updated with has been the best work I could have done that day; but updating every day with something is my top priority.

Am I the only one who feels this way, rather than the other?

Crossposted to webcomics and snarkoleptics.

Puts the "stall" in "install"

So I mentioned Hourly Comic Day that I can't install the Visual Studio 2005 I'm 'sposed to use for Windows Programming in C# homework.

The professor directed us to the MicroSoft webpage where our university's comp sci majors get to download selected MS products for free. First it wasn't clear to me that you can't just burn an .ISO file to a CD, it has to be decoded during burn by software such as Nero of which I therefore downloaded a trial copy.

So I started the install, the install wizard warning me that the install would leave only a gig free on my laptop PC. Then I discovered it hadn't been made clear to me that there were two VS05 .ISOs I needed to download and burn.

So I rollbacked the install. So I downloaded and burnt the second disk. So I started to install again, and the wizard told me it'd now leave -34 meg on my laptop PC. So much for rollback. So I decided to try it anyway. Then partway through the second CD I get the message:

"Error 1305.Error reading from file [file directory path and name]. Verify that the file exists and that you can access it."

I did verify that the file existed, and there can't have been permission issues because on the home network we're all administrators. Then I rollbacked the install again.

So, reasoning that the problem may have been too little free gigs, I tried to install on the desktop PC. Then I got the same error message, for the same file, and rollbacked. Lather, rinse, repeat.

All this time I've been e-corresponding with my professor. He googles the error and emails one of the fixes he finds: fiddle with msconfig to keep there from being any other processes running. So I try that. The same message pops up, for the same file. Lather, rinse, rollback.

So I guess the problem is with the download or the physical CD, so I go back to the MicroSoft download page to start over with CD2. Except you can't download their .ISOs twice without applying first to technical support, and there was no point in that because they take 24 hours to respond and my trial Nero was to expire at midnight. Meanwhile the professor has offered by email to lend me his CDs. This is as far as it'd got Thursday, Hourly Comics Day evening. But he doesn't have office hours again till Monday.

So Monday, yesterday, I pick up the CDs he offered to lend me, including install CDs for VS03, which he lends me though warning me that it's "a hog" and will slow the PC down. Last night I looked over the CDs he lent me, and couldn't tell from the handwritten labels on the half a dozen or more of'em if there were VS05 install CDs among them, so I started installing the VS03. Then I got the same error message, this time for a file on the first CD.

So today I brought the professor's CDs back to him, and said I'm going to have to go to MS tech suppt. He said, "Don't do that, they never get back to you. Google the error. The fix I emailed you was only one result, see what other fixes come up." He also said, "Here, no harm in trying these again," and handed me back three of the CDs he'd lent me. One is labeled "Visual Studio 2005" and "CD1", and the other two aren't labeled. I thought VS05 downloaded onto two CDs.

So tonight I google "error 1305" and the most commonly suggested fix is to copy the files from the CDs onto your hard disk and install from those copies. So I go back to the desktop PC and start the copy operation. Of course you know that you can't trust the estimated time offered by Windows operation dialog boxes, and all through all this every time I've going off and done something else while these operations are going on. This time I didn't even get out of the room before the copy operation failed on a file because "parameter is incorrect". The file will not be copied in Windows, and it will not be copied at the MSDOS prompt.

When class meets Thursday it'll be the one-month anniversary of its first meeting, and I'm still not capable of doing homework at home.

So let's review, what options remain at this point:

• Try other fixes from Google results
• Try the install CDs the professor wouldn't let me return
• Do all my homework at the campus computer lab

Did I mention that I alone in this class took Intro to Programming long enough ago that I learned C++ instead of Java? I was in the very last C++ class. Not only haven't I done any coding in four to six semesters, I started out behind everyone else. And I can't download C#. And the homework assigned today and due in a week is converting a page of Java code into a C# program.

Never, ever tell me that I write fanfiction and draw webcomics because I don't have a life.