#frannifer lopez

[home-working]

Powerlunching with Fran López

I technically met Fran through my friend/his wife, Sarah (who, coincidentally, I met through an ex named Fran!). About three years ago, Fran and I were both running late to a graphic novel panel discussion in Brooklyn that Sarah was speaking on, and I recognized him from her Instagram feed/comics, so I said “Hi, are you Fran?!” like an inept Internet stalker. We ended up hanging out all afternoon while she signed books and realised we had a lot in common (web development! pastries! Sarah! jokes!), so we became internet friends.

Fran is now a software engineer at Tumblr (coincidentally he is tasked with fixing the biggest problem I have with it), is a cartoonist himself, and has endured periods of homeworking, like when he didn’t yet have a greencard, or when we slowly tackled a year-long freelance project together (in the middle of which he had a baby). I would also like to state that we originally Powerlunched in December of 2017 and I didn’t get these questions back until I harassed him a few weeks ago, a partial cause of which may have been the baby(?).

What is your full name? Francisco Tomás López. In 2003, RFC 3629 established UTF-8 as a standard Internet protocol element. It's 2019 now and I just signed up for the YMCA, but my name is displayed as "Francisco Tomás López".

Where are you originally from? The lovely neighborhood of Villa del Parque in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

What is your legal work status? "Don't ask, don't tell."

What is your healthcare status? "See something, say something."

What do you do for a living? I'm a software engineer that is able to legally work in the US of A, so my work and healthcare statuses are actually pretty good, at least until the tech bubble bursts. Once that happens I'm pretty much useless, but I'm married to very handy woman, she'll protect me.

What do you do for fun? I do many things. Most notable in the context of this interview: I'm an avid baker. (Meaning: last week I made some muffins for the first time. Even though they turned out great, you refused to eat them. Why wouldn't you have my muffins, Christy?) [Editor’s note: Why did it take you so long to finish this interview, Fran?]

Do you miss working from home full-time? Half of the time I do. I think my relationship with homeworking can be graphed in a continuous sine wave that peaks high when I realize I can work in my underwear and peaks low when I realized I've been in my underwear for a week. After that I try to get out more until I remember the comfort of staying home and the cycle repeats.

What's it like also living with someone who works from home? Are there any interesting anecdotes to share? Hot tips? Sarah's work is much more fun and interesting to watch than mine. When we were both working full time from home it was great for me to take breaks and see what she was doing. I'm sure she LOVED the constant and unrequested interruptions. Soon after that we decided to have a kid together, so maybe that counts as "hot tip"?

You have a new-ish baby! Will you encourage your baby to also work from home? You could have a family business! Yes! We could both interrupt his mom, I'm sure she'll love that even more!

Do you eat regular meals when you work at home? ¡Ja! (That's Spanish for "Ha!").

As the first fellow programmer I've interviewed (if I'm allowed to call myself one), tell me why you got into programming! (This is a question sponsored by STEM.) I found a tutorial on Pascal somewhere on the semi-early internet when I was 12 and had a lot of fun with it. I wrote some dumb stuff like a program that would take a text file and use the buzzer in the motherboard to make a short sound for every character in the file (the pitch being a multiple of it's ASCII code). I spent hours listening to that and drove my family crazy. Fast forward to now and turns out I have an employable skill!

Do you prefer drawing or programming? I guess I prefer whichever is not the one I'm doing the most of, so that's always been me wanting to draw more and code less. Capitalism assigned us the role of eternal consumers and to that end trains us to place desire in what we don't have.

If you could make a living off comics, would you drop programming altogether? No, I actually like programming. And doing comics full-time will probably drive me crazy. Maybe I would dedicate my programming time to do personal projects. I have this cool idea about a little program that takes a text a file and then uses the buzzer in the motherboard to...

Do you often get compared to the guy who played Christopher in The Sopranos? Only by the most discerning of persons.

Your Twitter handle is @FranniferLopez. Do you feel you have a personal connection to Jennifer Lopez? Years ago I found this great photo from 1999 of Fran Drescher and Jennifer Lopez hanging out in a club. I've used it ever since as my profile photo in all the different online systems of any job I had. How people react to me using that photo is my way to make sure if I should keep that job or start looking for something else. So yes, I feel very connected to Jennifer Lopez (and Fran Drescher, of course).

What were you wearing when we last hung out A YEAR AGO when I took the picture of you eating fries with mustard? (No, you're not allowed to look at the photo, which is also a pretty horrible photo, I’m sorry I backlit you.) First let me say that I think the English speaking part of North America is a beautiful place with rich culture that I'm taking in with my full, open heart. That being said, you guys could be using mustard for so much more! As for clothes: If I was lucky, I was wearing my favorite sweater, which has a flowery pattern in bordeaux over a dark, deep blue background. I don't remember anything else. [Editor’s note: incorrect, but you can see that sweater below, in a much better photo, partially because it includes me!]

Wearing that sweater; laptops.