Repeatable Lack of Failure

Posted on Tuesday 06/24/08
Today marks the launch of a series of images loosely labeled a comic. They are entitled "Results May Vary." A brief history of my comic attempts:

Summer '07

I launch Chronic, a comic concerning a castle located (unnoticed) in the heart of a middle of a major metropolitan area, and it's surprised college aged inhabitants. It is intended to give me the ability to explore whimsical and artistic areas of discussion (the castle not being entirely natural), as well as to discuss politics, philosophy, and technology in a humorous setting (the characters being mostly students).

Late summer '07

I find that it takes 8+ hours to make one comic, and run into the "crap, I have classes again" wall as fall hits. Chronic gets abandoned.

Fall/Winter '07-'08

I start Original Blend, Not Included, and Single Use, as places to post individual drawings with no intention of regularity.

Spring '08

Chronic is relaunched (informally Chronic 2). I manage to do the first comic in just over an hour through a combination of improved skill with my tools, and a drastic scaling back of the art. The intention being to start out with minimal drawing and, over the course of time, improve them. This fails since, by the fifth comic, it's taking me 5-6 hours to do a comic, as my instinct to at least try to draw well prevents me from skimping without a conscious effort. This work is put on hiatus.

Summer '08

Results May Vary is launched, with the intent of drawings at the level of stick figures. I've found that my whiteboard doodles are moderately popular, so I'm moving them to the web. The main motivation, though, is more to just put something, anything, up on a regular basis. Hopefully I can someday migrate to something better at some point. Don't expect much quality, or more than marginal amounts of humor. Some may be hilarious, some may be well drawn. Many will not be. This is an experiment - Results may vary.

One thing to note: you will not likely see anything else concerning RMV here, as minor updates are not the purpose of this blog.

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Why can't we be friends?

Posted on Tuesday 06/03/08
I'd like to point out the relatively new Friends link section. These are the sites of a few of my friends and fellow Software Engineering students:

George

His site's been around a while, and is pretty simple. He picked a good css template. This was the inspiration for me finally rebuild my site into something moderately respectable. George is a decent guy, plays soccer with me, and has been on a number of my team projects.

Sam

Another nice css template, along the same lines as George's. Sam's been getting into web design a bit, and he's going to be living in the same rented house as me for the next 12 months or so.

Jason

Props to Jason for being the only other one besides me to tackle actual web design and do his own layout. Jason's a year behind me, but he's a ridiculously hard worker. He studies for the classes that no one bothers studying for. He sees the profs after class. He gets his answers double checked. He does reasonably well in terms of grades, but he friggin' earns it.

Tony

Another guy who's been on a number of team projects with me and (like all of these guys) hangs out in the SSE lab. I wish I could review his site, but it's down right now; I believe it was a simple rails affair. It's hosted off his laptop, so expect it to be down a lot until he finds some real hosting. So, those are my friends. Not all of them - just the ones that I know have websites and are SE's. Don't worry, you can still be my friend without those two things, but you probably won't get a link from the friends section.

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Guerilla System Administration

Posted on Monday 06/02/08
The 'Nothere' server (running this site) has once again taken it's rightful place in the world. It is now stashed in a facility that doesn't know it's there, and will be maintained remotely. If it dies on me, I'll have to sneak back in and repair it under cover of darkness.

Speaking of sketchy things, I should introduce myself. I'm Kevin M Kuchta, a software engineering student at the Rochester Institute of Technology. I work part time at the RIT IT department, though I'm currently interning nearby at GE MDS with a software development gig. This information will get out of date pretty fast, so look for an about page (should one ever exist) that will be a more-or-less accurate summary of me.

This blog will focus on updates in my life and on this site. I will do my level best to avoid discussing:

• Politics
• My love life
• Advice

I will, on the other hand, be posting:

• New projects in the code section
• Significant site changes
• New job/School/etc

In all honesty, this will probably not be a blog that one reads on a regular basis - it's more of something you can check to see the last few big things that've happened to me or the site. I'll probably have more readable blogs in the art (accompanying the images) and writing (ranting/adivce) sections.

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