Original Commentary
Yes, I.T. is in the basement of the Lemon Technology building. The I.T. environments I've worked in have either been call centers or cave-like. This is one of the cave-like ones - Terrence

Modern Commentary
I mean, Chobits, Mahoromatic, AI Love You, Video Girl AI, Hand Maid May, Maico 2020, Rozen Maiden, Saikano, I Dream of Mimi, Cutey Honey...
"Robot girlfriend" was seriously a thing in manga back in the day.
Or, magical girlfriend was its own genre and robot girls were a subgenre of that.
There seems to be a lot less of that these days but back in 2005 it was prominent - Terrence

Original Commentary
Robert isn't the only member of the IT department, but he is the only one there who Brisbane feels comfortable talking with. There's probably a junior employee who goes out to fix things in person and a manager who spends his time managing (up on the top floor). So Robert isn't the only person there but he works alone usually - Terrence

Modern Commentary
I stumbled across an unused script that featured Brisbane and Robert that's tangentially relevant. Basically the company had a carpool program and Brisbane needed Robert's help searching for other employees in his area that he could carpool with.
My notes were that they'd get a free car and gas allowance. I'm not sure if that means "access to a company car" or "the company just buys a car if you promise to carpool".
That seems unusually generous. It would have been reasonable if they gave you a couple bucks a month to carpool and hopefully I would have gone with that if I had written the story out fully. But my notes say "free car" so what are you gonna do?

Well, the good news is that he found someone to carpool with. We'll pick that up tomorrow. - Terrence

Original Commentary
Isabel doesn't like it when I use fancy word bubbles, but I dig the third panel, how Robert's word bubble just cuts off Brisbane's - Terrence

Modern Commentary
The employee who lives near Brisbane is, of course Kimberly. She was listed in the employee database as "daughter" with a salary of $30 a year, payable on her birthday. Classified as wages for tax purposes.
So Ms. Taylor was able to deduct her money to Kimberly and, more importantly, charge it to the company. Kimberly got social security withheld from her birthday money. And Brisbane got a free car. Or, at least, a monthly allowance towards a car. - Terrence

Original Commentary
Is Robert allowed to install games? Not really, but Robert is the only guy who actually checks the logs for inappropriate software - Terrence

Modern Commentary
I should have shown Robert handing Brisbane a copy of Final Battle Adventure Online or done more to make it clear via dialogue.
Final Battle Adventure Online is a massively multiplayer game that has shown up in You Say it First, Namir Deiter, and Nicole and Derek. I'm pretty sure this is the first time it's been mentioned in our comics.

You remember what I said a few months ago about using brand names or not? Well, in the first draft of the comic, it was Neverwinter Nights, a video game based on Dungeons and Dragons. It had come out a few years earlier and was rather popular. I had probably just started playing it or, perhaps, had intended to play it real soon.
I enjoy referencing things that I like. It amuses me and sometimes you have to amuse yourself first. But this time I was probably hoping that the name drop would be good for a bit of attention from the Neverwinter Nights community.
Isabel pointed out that folks who came here for Neverwinter Nights content wouldn't find anything of the sort besides an off-hand mention and we really shouldn't tie ourselves to other peoples' intellectual property.

She mentioned this to me after she posted the comic with the new name for the video game. This is good, because you shouldn't pretend to be something that you aren't just because you think it will make you popular. It almost certainly won't work; people can spot a phony.
This silly little computer game will be a larger part of the ND Unlimited universe than we could have imagined based on this humble beginning.

Probably should have had Robert talk the game up a bit more.- Terrence

Modern Commentary
What was the goal here? Establish that Ms. Taylor cares about her daughter - they don't have a great relationship and Ms. Taylor can be bossy, judgmental, and controlling, but they do care about each other.
Also, Brisbane isn't sure how much he should tell Ms. Taylor about the situation. He's willing to talk about it to his friend Robert and even those weirdos in the lounge, but telling it to Ms. Taylor is a step too far. It's not discussing his own business (that Kimberly is involved in) any more. It's flat-out discussing Kimberly's business.

But yeah, if you ask me how I'm doing I'll tell you I'm doing ok. This is entirely regardless of how I'm doing at the time.- Terrence

Original Commentary
Most of Kimberly's job experiences - from being fired unexpectedly to trying to find work in January and competing with all the displaced seasonal workers - are drawn from my experiences at the time. The comic isn't biographical, of course, but you go with what you know. I had just started a new job when this comic aired, but Isabel out-earned me for December 2004. This was before we started NamirDeiter.net, and was because she spent the entire month working on commissions. It was interesting having the comic be our primary source of income, but I'd rather not have to rely on it 100% again - Terrence

Modern Commentary
The whole "waking up at 9:20" that we show in the first panel would have been more effective if Kimberly's work schedule hadn't involved late mornings in all the previous comics.
I'm assuming that Brisbane is working a very, very part-time schedule. Otherwise he's making somewhere under minumum wage. I'm not sure they can afford rent or food. $600 a month was decidedly not a lot of money in 2002.

Yes, Kimberly has a PO Box and gets checks in the mail. Paypal was a pretty new thing and not everybody had it. Nowadays, there are a number of trustworthy digital payment companies and if you want to safely and reliably send money online you have options. Back then? "Trust me, give these internet randos your bank details and everything will be fine" wasn't a great sales pitch.
I'm not sure if eBay wasn't allowing you to send checks directly to the seller back then. They bought PayPal in 2002 and were trying to steer folks towards that when possible. I think the pitch was that if you used PayPal you got protection in case something went wrong but otherwise you were mostly on your own. But Kimberly may be reaching out to some buyers directly or selling things via other websites. Probably knows the big collectors in the Toucan Joe forums.- Terrence