The penguin on the poster in panel 2 is Tux, the mascot of the Linux operating system. Linux is open source, which means that anyone who wants can download it and tinker with it, and submit changes back to the project managers to potentially be accepted into the official version.
Back in the late ‘90s, someone — Alan Cox, IIRC — changed a variable name in some of the core kernel code, but missed changing a couple places where it was used, because they were in the i386 software floating point emulation code, which modern CPUs (even then) just didn’t use. And, apparently, I was the only person in the world insane enough to be building Linux development kernels on a 386SX-25 — which was a decade old even then, and, critically, didn’t have hardware floating point. I’d been in the habit of starting development kernel builds before I left for work, in hopes that they’d be done by the time I got home, because they took like eight hours on that ancient 386. But that time I came home to a kernel build that had crashed out with “unknown variable” errors, and I had to compare the new kernel code to the previous (working) version and figure out what had been changed that was breaking it, and then fixed that, got it working on my machine, and sent the patch in to Linus (Torvalds, the original creator of Linux). This was a multi-day process, because it took so long for that machine to build anything, and there was another broken dev kernel version released in the meantime, which meant I had to check to see if the bug was still there in that one and that my patch worked for it too.
I’m not sure if my patches are even still in there. I haven’t used a machine that would’ve needed them in almost twenty years. But anyone who’s used Linux on a 386 or 486SX without a 3/487 coprocessor after ~1999… you’re welcome.
Hope this has been enlightening and/or even more confusing!
This is the Bank of Burgers, where Amy was working in the dark timeline. The waitress here is Melanie Soap, who was Amy’s coworker here in the dark timeline, and it seems still works here in the fixed one. Melanie used to work for Amy at Bric-a-Brac, but, at some point between “Team Spirit” and “Forked Road”, Amy lost her to “the Tackleford artisanal burger scene” (which is where we find her now), thus creating the job opening that Shauna filled.
Back in Scary Go Round, Melanie briefly dated Ryan, after he saved her from the fire that destroyed the original Bric-a-Brac (caused by the old women who were running the place in the dark timeline) in “Chilton Takes Charge” (which was the storyline the flashback at the end of “Forked Road” flashed back to), until the postman-smuggling-ring-pirate-ghost-gunplay incident in “The Cove”, for which Melanie’s father blamed Ryan, despite Melanie being the one doing all the shooting.
According to Lottie herself, in “The Big Hiatus”: “I’ve got a natural way with the young. I command much respeck in their simple minds.”
She also claimed to have taught newborns to whistle, and promised to have Shelley’s baby on her feet and making sandwiches for Shelley within a fortnight.
Lottie being Lottie, I’m not sure how much credence to give any of this.
As detailed in the page that ran June 3rd, Shauna broke her glasses fighting Blossom in the May 22nd strip, and doesn’t have/can’t afford a replacement pair.
Mildred’s a much lighter shade of blonde than Shauna, and has shorter hair. She’s also taller and lankier, Kleenex notwithstanding.
The penguin on the poster in panel 2 is Tux, the mascot of the Linux operating system. Linux is open source, which means that anyone who wants can download it and tinker with it, and submit changes back to the project managers to potentially be accepted into the official version.
Back in the late ‘90s, someone — Alan Cox, IIRC — changed a variable name in some of the core kernel code, but missed changing a couple places where it was used, because they were in the i386 software floating point emulation code, which modern CPUs (even then) just didn’t use. And, apparently, I was the only person in the world insane enough to be building Linux development kernels on a 386SX-25 — which was a decade old even then, and, critically, didn’t have hardware floating point. I’d been in the habit of starting development kernel builds before I left for work, in hopes that they’d be done by the time I got home, because they took like eight hours on that ancient 386. But that time I came home to a kernel build that had crashed out with “unknown variable” errors, and I had to compare the new kernel code to the previous (working) version and figure out what had been changed that was breaking it, and then fixed that, got it working on my machine, and sent the patch in to Linus (Torvalds, the original creator of Linux). This was a multi-day process, because it took so long for that machine to build anything, and there was another broken dev kernel version released in the meantime, which meant I had to check to see if the bug was still there in that one and that my patch worked for it too.
I’m not sure if my patches are even still in there. I haven’t used a machine that would’ve needed them in almost twenty years. But anyone who’s used Linux on a 386 or 486SX without a 3/487 coprocessor after ~1999… you’re welcome.
Hope this has been enlightening and/or even more confusing!