Here’s one sent by two readers, Boise Ed and James Riendeau:
Ed limns the puzzlement for us: “Grimm appears to be writing on a notepad. Goose is on a landline call. Is ‘sneaking notes’ some kind of cell-phone thing? I’m totally lost here, and none of the [GoComics site] commenters got it, either.”
Comics I Don't Understand 
Sneakernet? Still doesn’t make sense…
Yes, sneakernet. He wants to send messages, text messages, but has to do it by sneakernet because clearly there isn’t a phone around capable of text messaging.
With either good wifi or a cell phone he could electronically send messages. The house has neither.
I’m old enough to have used sneakernet for moving programs and data – on tape – between computers. I’ve never heard this process called sneaking. And better wifi? Any wifi can handle a note that could be handwritten. It is not like Grimm is watching a movie. Not to mention, who is the note for?
Still a CIDU for me.
He’s snooping on her phone call, (why??) and he has to do it old-style because the wifi won’t work
At Megacorp, up until I stopped being a productive member of society, we were still using that method. They probably still are, depending on the status of the project. The lab system was not on any network except its own, so we’d work on updates with various test beds using our regular computers, then put them on flash drive to hoof them down to the lab.
In one of Randall Munroe‘s books, he demonstrated that the effective bandwidth of [loading a station wagon full of (…pick one, according to era: tapes, floppies, hard drives, USB sticks) and driving to the target destination] is much higher than anything a comparable network wire could transmit in the same amount of time as the road trip would take.
@Kilby — yeah, I made the same observation in 2000 when a customer needed to move a 100TB disk array from Japan to the U.S. If disconnecting it, flying it across the pond, and reconnecting it could be done in under 24 hours, that’s effective bandwidth of over 10Gbit/sec–fast/expensive for the day. Of courrse there’s a small risk that the plane crashes, but that’s what backups are for. Or you just send the backups, but the restore of that much data WILL take a while, and so your effective downtime is greater…
I remember the bandwidth comment from Andrew S. Tanenbaum, who was one of our computer science textbook authors in my Prentice Hall days. But even he apparently got it from someone else.
I met him once, when he demonstrated Minix on our stand in one the of the big mid-80s computer fairs in London, probably at Earls Court. A photo of us on the stand (with another colleague, Odette) appeared in our corporate newsletter.
“Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes hurtling down the highway” – Computer Networks, 3rd ed., p. 83. (paraphrasing Dr. Warren Jackson, Director, University of Toronto Computing Services (UTCS) circa 1985)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Andrew_S._Tanenbaum
Discounting speed – sometimes it is just easier to copy it to a USB stick and take it downstairs to the laptop (or upstairs from the laptop to the desktop.
Kilby – left out Zip drives. We have been attempting to figure out which computer any one of several zip drives can be connected to (parallel port) so we (meaning me) can make sure that all data was transferred to USB sticks and/or hard drives (and of course backed up) so I can destroy the Zip disks and get rid of them. (We have 3 different Zip drives which are available for us to try to attach to any of our old computers/laptops – just need to block out some time to go to the basement and go through the “box of old computer hardware” to find what we need and hope it will work.
@ Meryl – Even if I had remembered ZIP drives (and disks), I wouldn’t have included them in that list: too obscure, and too ancient. The funny thing is that I actually still have a ZIP drive (and a stack of disks), but there’s nothing on them worth saving, and I should just dump them all.
Kilby – My problem is that the zip disks have client info on them (including Social Security numbers) and I can’t just dump them. I have read an article on how to destroy the disks (basically breaking them apart and shredding the inside actual disk), but we never seem to have a chance to do so.
I also had a later version of Zip drive which used small disks (“Pocket size”) which drive was small enough to bring to business clients with me and had a disk for each with their data on it. (Now of course I use a USB stick for my remaining business client’s records and others of same for general use, plus multiple backups – with a monthly backup to alternating external hard drives.)
@ Meryl A. (11) – There are utility programs that can “wipe” a disk (multiple times) to ensure that the information can never be reconstructed. However, this depends on both the disks and the drive being in good enough condition to address the entire disk. In addition, it would be very time consuming.
A much quicker “brute force” solution is to line a cookie sheet with foil, and cover it with a layer of ZIP disks. Bake the disks at 200˚F for 15 to 30 minutes. Once the cases warp a little, you can be sure that the plastic disk surfaces inside them will never be readable by anyone or anything. (If the cases don’t warp, try 250 or even 300 degrees, but do NOT leave the oven unattended!)
P.S. Note that you may need to air out the kitchen for a couple of hours afterwards.
Belated thank you. (Did not get on comics last week – busy dealing with Robert and his looms – info about same in a different post.)
@ Meryl (13) – Several days after writing that comment I thought of (but forgot to post) a much simpler answer: a power drill will render a whole stack of floppy or ZIP disks unreadable in a matter of seconds. (For floppies you could use a hole punch, but ZIP disks are too thick to fit into a household punch.)