On March 31, 1996 the web magazine OS/2 e-Zine! published a poorly-drawn clip art comic called "Help Desk." 14 years later I've studiously attempted to maintain those standards, and it remains a poorly-drawn clip art comic called "Help Desk."

The last few years have been difficult times for the comic. The Cartoonist's chaotic personal life has made updating difficult, economic woes have put continued publication in peril, and currently it's fighting against a design flaw that causes the database to crash the entire site, as well as the Cartoonist's severe lack of time to spend on updates due to a month-long crunch time that has required him to stay at the office till 11PM, and sometimes not bother going home at all. The lack of time is so severe that there isn't even a comic today, just this quick post briefly noting the milestone. This milestone is met with a whimper rather a roar, but it's here.

With luck, time, and the proper application of resources, hopefully the 15th anniversary will be more interesting.

Thursday the site crashed again. I'm pretty sure it's a mysql problem, which is unfortunate because I don't have enough experience with mysql to figure out how to prevent it from happening. However, after looking at my database after the last few crashes I found something interesting. Maybe one of my considerably-more-experienced readers can suggest some way to avoid this problem in the future? Read on.