Original Commentary

I was trying to find a word Miz Taylor could use other than "relations" for what she meant... but neither Terrence or myself could come up with one on the tops of our heads... she is a pessimist after all. Fortunately for Brisbane she's not completely crass; if it was Sofia she probably would have used a much cruder word ("Boink" comes to mind...). There certainly has been quite a bit of suggestiveness within the comic as of late... oh well (of course, Brisbane's dreamy look on his face only helped to feed her worries). -Isabel

Modern Commentary
Does Kimberly have her own office? I think we've been vague about it. But the sales and marketing building has a conference room or two if they need a little privacy.

This isn't initially why Ms Taylor keeps Brisbane and Kimberly in separate buildings, but it's a reason why the situation continues- Terrence

Original Commentary

There were similar issues with this comic as there were with the ND above... I think we're both just exhausted (or, at the least, I'm exhausted while writing and he's exhausted while reading).

I remember hearing a story, years upon years ago... where GE was doing a factory test to see if the lighting they used made a difference in productivity... but they found that anything they did made the workers work better, because they felt they were being watched. Growing up, I always thought what that story meant was that the workers worked harder because they were happy... but now I realize it was because they felt under the gun. I have a feeling Brisbane heard that story too, at least once. -Isabel

Modern Commentary
What we're discussing in the original commentary is the Hawthorne Effect.

Similarly, when we started working from home, productivity went up because we wanted to make sure that it didn't seem like a bad idea... - Terrence

Original Commentary

We had some small problems with Robert's last line- at first the comic called for him looking through a window, but there are no windows in the IT room. At first I was going to have him referencing weather. com, but Terrence thought that was a dead idea. Terrence came up with the final version of the line, thankfully.-Isabel

Modern Commentary
I probably looked up park rental. That number was probably accurate for a nearby park at the time. - Terrence

Original Commentary

The sofa (and the Kimberly ears) shown in that first panel were originally not in the comic... it wasn't until I started inking did I realize that she wasn't in view when she should have been.

Brisbane is a bit frustrated in that last panel... possibly a little mad and stressed out by everything falling apart around him. This is the first project for the company that he has been entirely in charge of and nothing is going as it should be... even the meekest of people can get frustrated when put into a corner. -Isabel

Modern Commentary
On one hand, I dig how Brisbane is doing something. He thinks a picnic will help people, and he wants to help them. Sometimes you have to make things a little magical for people.

On the other hand, it's taking a lot of his personal time and money and, even in a best-case scenario, would just be a handful of people milling about in a park and eating cheap food.

Kimberly is offering to help plan. She is not offering to help pay. - Terrence

Original Commentary

Brisbane has been working on his savings again... the last we heard of it, it had been used to purchase Kimberly's engagement ring. Of course, just how much of that actually went into the ring and how much went into a bank account in his name is unknown...-Isabel

Modern Commentary
The thing about the picnic is that Brisbane is putting this entirely on himself. This isn't a clever plot by Ms Taylor to trick him into this. He's tricked himself. - Terrence

Original Commentary

The weather girl is not Tori- but she sure does look like her, doesn't she?

I'm not sure if I forgot it when I was writing the script, or I forgot to add the caption the first time around, but the yellow caption was originally not in the comic. It wasn't until writing commentary did it hit me that people would have little to no way of knowing what time of day or when this was taking page (the news can air either at night or during the day, after all). -Isabel

Modern Commentary
Who's Tori?

Well, she looks a lot like that weather girl.

Jun and Tori are the mascots/librarians/easter eggs of NamirDeiter.net, our paid bonus site. They'd pop up from time to time, mainly when it amused us. They were also the administrators of Final Battle Adventure Online, and showed up in Namir Deiter once or twice. - Terrence