... DCR Chapter Two is actually In Production. The first page (four strips) is completely finished, and the next two are almost completely laid out.

The goal is to get the first four pages (16 strips, from the beginning through to the title card) completely finished before posting any of them. I want the first five strips at least, so I have a week-long buffer to crank out the remainder. Once that's done I can start leaking strips onto the site on at a time while I grind away on the Daedalus rec area for ATC.

I'll need to do some 3d work to proceed after strip 140, so I figure this will work well with the production pipeline. Model ATC while the non-3d DCR pages creep out, then go back into ATC production while I also work on the modeling for DCR. Then when ATC 3.1 is complete I can take a huge chunk out of DCR chapter 2 modeling and strips while I take a "breather" from color comics production.

It all fits, somehow.

Select images taken on the ride from Waukegan, IL. to Pittsburgh, PA. (approximate drive time : 12 hours)

  

Chicago agrees with my camera in daylight. So do portajohns.

   

Indiana is even more of a hole during the day. What a shock that was.

   

Indiana rest stops are just as crap as the rest of the area around the turnpike; you cannot escape the law of fives; ohio is still flat (damn!); and a sunset shot of the Tahoe at a rest stop on the Ohio turnpike.

Arrival in Pittsburgh : around 2245, give or take. The 'rents made it back to NCPA by 0315 Sunday.

Waukegan, Illinois is a pornography of suburban sprawl. No sidewalks, no walk signs. If these things exist in Waukegan, they are carefully hidden from the casual observer or tourist. I found the racial mix in the service industry - Super 8, Walgreens, IHOP - of interest, if only in comparison to Pittsburgh. The employee mix in the burgh is roughly 50/50 white/black - in Waukegan it was about 50/50 white/hispanic. Waukegan's pedestrian-hostile layout prevented the usual snap-happy runaround. The town is nothing but sprawl, with no discerning features to photograph. I took no pictures of Naval Station Great Lakes, and not for lack of interest - I didn't feel like cheesing off the sailors. They've got enough to deal with!

We took a shuttle from the Super 8 to the base. This turned out to be a real convenience - the security check (such as it was) was a quick walk through a metal detector. I beeped, said "oh, that's probably my camera," tossed my jacket (with camera) to the side and passed through. The sailors on detail didn't bother to investigate the jacket - I could have easily walked onto the base with a grenade, a handgun, or some other form of nastiness. My dad did, by accident - his pocket knife (which he'd left in his pocket) is now in a basket somewhere at NSGL. They were cool about needing to confiscate that, and he was fortunately really cool about giving it up - point of fact, while the sailor who took it told him he could get it back at Drill Hall afterwards (and while I saw her heading into DH as we were leaving), he neglected to pursue the matter. While we got in with great ease, everyone who drove themselves didn't fare as easily - walking to DH, we overheard a sailor or MP on a bullhorn in the parking lot, bellowing along the lines of "PLACE YOUR IDS ON THE DASHBOARD. DO NOT STEP OUT OF THE VEHICLE NOW. YOU WILL BE SEARCHED." Or similar.

   

Very nearly none of the pictures I took in Drill Hall turned out, which is unfortunate. The ceremony - which we waited about two hours for - was awesome and it would have kicked ass if those images were more than unusable smears. The state flags obviously turned out, and the flag bearers were a big part of the ceremony. Fun fact - when recruits were mentioned by name, their home city and state were also mentioned. Think "San Diego, California;" "Philadelphia, Pennsylvania;" and "The Bronx, New York." That last one threw me a bit.

NSGL pushes through roughly 600 recruits a week. Every week. If the divisions I saw were any indication of the gender and racial mix of the fleet, I'd guesstimate that the Navy is something like 60/40 boys/girls and maybe 50/50 white/every other race - black, hispanic, hawaiian, etceteras. I'd venture a guess that demographically, the people of this country are very well represented by the Navy : it's hardly the sausagefest you'd expect of, say... the Marine Corps, and the women of the Navy look very sharp in uniform. I spotted a Marine in dress blues (you want to talk sharp, a United States Marine in dress uniform is the sharpest looking man on the face of the earth), and an Air Force Master Sergeant (what my dad called "zebra stripes"), also in dress blues. While there may have been other servicemen present, they were the only non-Navy military personnel I spotted while on the base.

I was the only one of our expeditionary force to peg Jen as her division marched in - mom and dad were looking for the distinctive BGCs she'd been prescribed (which she wasn't wearing) - I placed her by IDing the distinctive family nose. That's the down side of military uniforms - they make everyone look so.... uniform. After the ceremony, I was the first person to get to her - I snapped a few pics and we eventually worked our way out of DH, off the base, back to the Super 8 and then to Emily's Pancake House (we drove, but it turned out to be a whopping two minute walk from the hotel). I had my first waffle in a good long time. It compared favorably to the last noteworthy meal I ate outside of Pittsburgh.

Much of the usual family stuff happened - I made quite a few military jokes (of the awful "huh huh. seaman." variety), all of which were taken in the proper context (being "I love my sister. I'm pro military. You can't take life seriously."). I eventually developed a nasty headache I can only describe as feeling like the way butane smells, lay down, and passed out until around eight or nine Friday night. John wandered off to the Sports Bar next to Emily's and watched the Penguins take out the Rangers, 5-4. I finished up the second generation of Robotech on my ancient laptop and posted a couple of pictures to DCR.

   

Saturday morning, temperature 66° and dropping. John and I decided that we were going to IHOP after we picked up Jen at the base. John manages a Denny's in Selinsgrove - we joked about this being professional research on his part. For me, I just wanted to go to an IHOP - mdxi and bda have talked about them enough to wet my interest. The server took the order without a pad and got the whole thing correct, which scored some serious cool points with John and Mom. The food was good but was also unfortunately cold, which didn't score any points with me. Jen (obviously) loved the coffee - after an entire RTC period of shitty instant coffee (black only), the idea of Real Coffee with cream and sugar and everything apparently had some real appeal.

By the time we were done with IHOP, the temperature had dropped even further and the wind had picked up. There's a REASON they call Chicago the Windy City - Midwest lake wind is some serious no-fucking-around wind. It's hard, strong, and unrelenting. Not the pissy weak omnidirectional wind that Pittsburgh has - this wind could easily drive enough turbines to power Waukegan and Chicago. This area of the country already accepts the gaping eyesore they call their power lines - I don't see them having an issue with wind turbines.

  

After IHOP, we took Jen back to NSGL and then bopped around whatever it is they call their PX (Jen mentioned it, it was on the door, I forget) for a bit. Mom and I got into a Battle Of Nice with a fresh group of recruits and their TIs - they insisted we cut ahead in line, we insisted that doing so would be unfair (hey, they got in line first). They eventually won the battle by outmaneuvering us - one of the TIs (a stern looking guy who looked like he ate telephone booths for breakfast) waved us to a freshly opened register and that was that. The sailors I encountered were all incredibly polite - I figured my camo shorts, filthy army jacket, untied combat boots and ponytail would have drawn a few dirty looks, but they didn't. Bonus points for the Navy.

Three things struck me about Naval uniforms while I was at NSGL - (a) The Dress Blues (they're actually black, but they're still called Dress Blues, much like the King Of Sweden is called the King of Sweden regardless of his or her gender) are total hair and lint magnets. We're talking "lint from the other side of the room makes a beeline straight for them" kind of dirt magnets. Most impressive. (b) All Navy clothing - the raincoats, the scarves, the dress blues, basically everything but the shoes - seems to be very poorly made. I think this is most obvious in the case of the scarf above. It may be that these unis are just "fresh" off of the assembly line and still need to be worn in, but it doesn't seem that way to me. It's a bit of a bummer - I'd like to think the sailors deserve better, but I haven't seen their work utilities, and I haven't been close enough to get a serious look at any deployed sailor's uniform. (c) While I thought they looked silly on the internet and in A Few Good Men, I realized that actually like the lids that the women are issued. Maybe they just don't translate well to the screen.

With the Serious Wind threatening to do the job for us, the expeditionary force departed Naval Station Great Lakes at around 1130 hours. I honestly don't remember if it was EST or CST, but it was "around noon" any way you cut it.

Jen's off to Mississippi to finish her training, after which she gets an actual leave as opposed to the highly restricted Graduation Liberty she was on for parts of Friday and Saturday. She says she intends to spend a chunk of that leave in Pittsburgh, so I should see her again in about three months, give or take.

Start point for me : Pittsburgh, Thursday, around 11am. Start point for my parents and John (my sister's incredibly cool ex) : Five hours north-northeast.

  

The first batch of pictures : a wreck in PA, a Moose sighting on the Ohio turnpike, and one for xeno found on a trash can at one of the many identical rest stops on the Ohio stretch of the turnpike.

Through the course of the journey, it was discovered that intelligence is not a requirement for turnpike rest stop employees. It is, if anything, grounds for dismissal. I dealt with a total of four - one was a complete idiot, two were apparently recently lobotomized, and the fourth apparently had no idea he was wearing a work uniform, let alone working, let alone customer service. This wouldn't have surprised me in Indiana. Indiana is a hole. But this was in Ohio. The Ohio turnpike road is a bit crappier than Indiana's (the difference is really obvious right around the state line), but Ohio's rest stops are much, much nicer. Even if the employees aren't. The Ohio rest stops have things like huge plasma displays with weather reports and pollen count; stainless steel bathroom stalls that are actually clean and work, and look and feel reasonably modern. The Indiana rest stops, conversely, look like discarded Cold War relics with Hardee's signs stapled to them, featuring some of the nastiest public toilets I've seen (!) and country music on an ancient PA in place of Ohio's high tech constantly updated AV PSAs.

Indiana apparently elected to put its money into the road itself instead of the accommodations. The state makes up for it by being mercifully short - maybe a third of the Pittsburgh-to-Waukegan drive time, tops.

  
  
  

Ohio and Indiana are flat. Very, very flat. Flat enough to creep me out, flat enough to creep my mom out. The area the turnpike plows through is full of creepy crazyass power lines, cellular towers, radio towers and rotting agricultural and rail infrastructure. Eventually the environment evolves into an orgy of high tension lines and other forms of industrial nastiness as Indiana farmland gives way to pre-Chicago sprawl.

  
  

The Indiana turnpike dumps out onto the Chicago Skyway toll road/bridge - you hit it without so much as an off ramp or a turn. Chicago is the only city we pass through on the trip - the rest of them (Gary, Youngstown, Cleveland, Pittsburgh) are all well off the artery. As my camera can't cope with the idea of Urban Dark, I took a bunch of long exposure blur shots. A few of them turned out, and a couple of them actually look pretty cool. The Chicago skyline is gorgeous.

Things took a turn for the grumpy in the Windy City - the road degenerated into a morass of badly labeled construction routing, then passed on into an hour or so of unlit (!), BADLY labeled ( exit signs the size of my head way up on a pole on the right lane on a road the instructions say you're supposed to stay on the far lefthand side of) road that eventually delivered us to the End Point : Waukegan, Illinois. Home of Naval Station Great Lakes and most emphatically NOT Chicago. Waukegan is Chicago the same way Butler is Pittsburgh - everybody lumps it in because it's "nearby." Total drive time from Pittsburgh : About 12 hours. Total time-in-vehicle for the 'rents and John : About 17 hours.

.... and am in all likelihood going to remain a dumbass, I've created a new category to dump my dumbassery into : Ignorance.

At present this contains a bunch of malformed tech rants that were either shot down or just read like ignorant bitching. I may (but probably won't) go through the other categories and dump bits in as I see fit.

This data structure gets the same listing results under 10.4.11 and 10.5.2, from different Macs and different user accounts with different degrees of fresh/updated OS installs. The directories list in the proper order in the command line and on Windows.

 

What. The. FUCK?!, I ask you. This is almost as frustrating as Safari 3 dropping the sidebar from the file dialogue (on 10.4, which I'm still using as my primary workstation since the install of 10.5 onto the video box completely destroyed elements of my Final Cut Studio install and I'd rather stick with something that works than spend the time to figure out why the new thing doesn't), only with the added advantage of having persisted across multiple revisions of the OS.

I'd have complained sooner, but had I done so my grumping would have encompassed only 10.4.X. And it's not like I have a day-to-day need for the contents of the 2005 directory.

This doesn't happen with my ATC pages, fortunately - they're all named p_$pagenumber for The Dualist, v_$pagenumber for Transitional Voices, and d_$pagenumber for DCR. They all list just fine. The image directories for 2006 list just fine, as do the directories for 2007 and 2008. If I change the 2005 directories to something like 01_200501 02_200502 etc, then they list correctly. It's only 2005 that lists wonky, and it's not just the user-generated directories - it also lists incorrectly in the /Users/$user/Pictures/iPhoto Library/Data/2005 directory, which is generated by iPhoto (an application that phenomenally fails to meet my image archiving needs, but that's another story).

What could 2005 ever possibly have done to piss you off, Apple?

Seriously. Inquiring minds want to know.

Update : Turns out it's not a bug, it's a FEEJUR.

<@ejp> what's the issue with that order?
< solios> it's WRONG is what
<@ejp> how?
< solios> 200504 does NOT come after 20080-anything.
<@ejp> 20050427 does. it's a bigger number.
< solios> likewise, 200510 should come AFTER 200509, not before 200504.
<@ejp> it's alphnumeric sorting, not years
< solios> ...
< solios> if it is it's only for 2005. :P
<@ejp> no, your 2005 directories have more digits.
< solios> I changed 20050427-0429 to 200504 and it listed correctly but the fact is it still ought to be first regardless.
<@ejp> no
< solios> no?
< solios> well why not. :P
<@ejp> 2005010101 is a bigger number than 20089, mathmatically speaking.
<@ejp> finder has no way of knowing it's a year.
<@rjbs> maybe you could use a resource fork
< solios> ejp: neither does the command line or winscp but they still get it right.
<@ejp> yeah, some things use more complex sorts.
<@ejp> *shrug*
< solios> so you're saying finder's giving me bullshit results because it's "smarter" ?
< solios> it makes my brain itch! @_@
<@ejp> na, it's slightly less smart.
<@ejp> or at least does less stuff
< mdxi> that is a weird sorting order, but i see its own, retarded, internal logic
< mdxi> it's not asciibetical because _ is after all numerals
< mdxi> but sorts ahead of "nothing" here
< mdxi> oh, as does hyphen
< mdxi> lesson is be consistent, i reckon
< mdxi> because apple hates you
< solios> MADNESS!
<@rjbs> you'd be better off with yyyy/mm/topic
< solios> 2005 is subsorted like that because it's fully half of my camera images. I suppose I can clean things up so it'll list correctly, but it doesn't change the problem. It just avoids it.
<@rjbs> because everything will sor tthat the same
<@rjbs> use File::LinkTree::Builder :)
< solios> hm.
* solios files this under 'work he shouldn't have to do' and goes back to sorting the Navy/turnpike pics for posting.

Way to go, Apple.

Update : "Fixed" this by altering my naming convention and giving 2005 a thorough cleaning. This doesn't solve what I still see as a bug, it just ignores the problem.

18:08 <@xeno> (Secondhand Lions)++
18:19 <@ILlios> ?
18:19 <@_Lasar> Are you illin'?
18:20 <@xeno> no, he's just gay.
18:20 <@xeno> ILlios: it's a movie about awesome, so far
18:20 <@ILlios> awesome++
18:20 <@ILlios> _Lasar: I'm sick. In Illinois.
18:20 <@ILlios> xeno: you know what's awesome?
18:20 <@ILlios> I forgot about indiana.
18:21 <@ILlios> I thought it went PA Ohio Illinois.
18:21 <@xeno> !
18:21 <@xeno> you should find a way to bottle that
18:21 <@ILlios> Indiana's a complete shithole, too.
18:21 <@xeno> i'll bet there's a huge market
18:21 <@ILlios> hah!
18:21 <@ILlios> sdflkjgh
18:21 <@ILlios> yeah, and that market lives between Chicago and Youngstown.
18:21 <@xeno> yep

19::09 <@xeno> i don't know, Obama's not that bad
19::10 <@xeno> and i'm loving what he said about small-town pennsylvanians
19::10 <@xeno>that's just fucking awesome.
19::10 <@xeno> and TRUE.
19::10 <@xeno> and they wouldn't be so fucking uppity and pissed off about it if it wasn't.
19::10 <@ejp> yes
19::11 <@ejp> hillary is the fuckin cylon devil from beyond space though
19::11 * ejp shudders

19::29 <@xeno> solios: remember when it used to be still snowing this time of year?
19::29 <@xeno> fucking global warming
19::29 * xeno blames things
19::31 <@solios> yes, and it sucked.
19::31 <@solios> I'm all for global warming.
19::31 <@solios> it's cheaper than buying more pants. :P
19::31 <@ejp> ...
19::32 <@ejp> fagbot: doot Solios (R)
19::32 <+fagbot> See, I guess I can see how an uneducated person would look at that and say, "Lord God, but that's some weapons-grade dumbass you got there, son!"

15:53 <@solios> So. Apparently a hive of wasps/bees/yellowjackets decided to winter in my air conditioner and are now waking up.
15:53 <@solios> Suggestions?
15:54 <@_Lasar> Uh.
15:54 <@_Lasar> Die?

Of significance for three reasons:

1. My sister is lethally allergic to deathbug stingers. Like, GET THE ATROPINE! allergic.
2. I've never been stung. So given 1, I'm scared totally fucking shitless by deathbugs. Seriously. It's the one thing guaranteed to make me jump clean into the next room.
3. This is the first serious (read : deathbugs) pest control problem I've had in this house in the entire time I've lived here.

Steampunk. Star Wars.

src = bda.

For future use:

10:41 <@ejp> 'cat /proc/net/ip_conntrack | wc -l' will tell you how many connections are active

Disclaimer : I'm a rank amateur when it comes to network mechanics, both in theory and practice. The fact that the problem at hand responds to shotgun debugging doesn't mean I'm necessarily doing anything right, or that I even fully comprehend the options. Frankly, my brain has other problems to work on, and I'm willing to settle for being the only artist I know who can follow a conversation about linux.

====

One of the nice things about being able to ssh to gridlock from work is I can do a little thing that would be a real pain in the ass to do at home - I can drop the interface between gridlock and the home network and See What Happens.

Lately, this is what happens:

A thing I miss about Jen - once I tweaked her limewire preferences, my pipe got useable and stayed that way. Randy, conversely, has been sucking on the thing so damned hard it's a wonder that gridlock hasn't exploded from the strain*. We're talking "I have to physically unplug his ethernet cable to get any degree of downstream" kinds of sucking.

If only the Linksys WAP I've stuck between him and the network could limit downstream as well as upstream :P. I'll experiment with capping flow control when I get home today - hopefully that'll solve the problem**.

Seems like I may be in for a modern version of the "war of the modems" I had with Brooke (my first roommate in the current house), with the difference being it's my money and hardware, and I have more control over the situation now than I ever did then. I really hate the idea of cutting off or throttling internet use. It makes me feel like a complete asshole. But in my mind, there's a difference between use of a free service and brutal assrape of a free service - the former isn't a problem. The latter obviously is, or I wouldn't be ruminating about it on teh intarwebs. I doubly wouldn't be ruminating if my roommate were easier to get ahold of.

13 hours later - hey, looky! : It was the router all along. A hard reset fixed the pipe completely. That's how it always seems to turn out. Kudos to ejp for the troubleshoot (and for adding bwm). All of my above gripes re : the roommate's bandwidth usage still holds, as a high volume of connectivity always seems to make the thing crap out.

20080411 : After adjusting his client and exchanging words (through paper), the problem has yet to resurface. Thank gid.

* It has, actually. And so has the DSL router. An enormous volume of connections has a tendency to make both of them sick. Sick to the point that my connection actually dies. Dies as in "no noise on the phone line for a few minutes." Dies as in "too many connections will cause the bandwidth to collapse from 150 KB/s to 40 or 20 KB/s and stay there until the router is manually reset." Or worse, just trail off to b/s and then nothing. Initially, I thought this was a hardware problem, but after extensive amateur debugging, symptoms and circumstances and evidence all point to user abuse.

** The problem is that we're on diametrically opposed schedules, so I can't exactly knock on his door and yell STOP RAPING TEH INTARWEBS PLZ. I've laid eyes on him twice since Jen left for RTC, which means indirect methods are going to be necessary as a stopgap until I can actually talk to him.

From this Science Fiction & Fantasy Media article:

Although there were doubts about whether Paramount would obtain the rights to Frank Herbert's science fiction classic Dune, it does look as if a big budget movie with Peter Berg directing is going ahead after all. This will be the second big screen adaptation of arguably the greatest SF novel of all time [...].

Most promising of all is that the producers are apparently looking for writers to create a faithful adaptation of Dune. In David Lynch's 1984 adaptation there were numerous differences with the novel; some would probably go as far as to say that the plot was mangled. While I thought there was a great deal to like about Lynch's version, it would be great to see a big budget, big screen version that was faithful to the text.

Of the three existing versions of Dune, the Sci-Fi miniseries is a steaming pile of unwatchable shit, the Alan Smithee cut of the Lynch version is passable but not as good, and the Lynch version is - to date - the definitive adaptation. Yes, it makes a lot of changes to the story. You're not going to bring Dune to the big or small screen without making at least some changes. The Lynch version does a lot of things right that the Sci-Fi version butchers - for one thing, if the dialogue isn't entirely accurate, it is at least appropriate and preserves the overall tone of the book. For another, the actors aren't only well cast, they can actually act.

Dune is (obviously?) one of my favorite books, so I'm hoping this third attempt doesn't turn out to be a third strike. I'm also hoping it's successful enough - and accurate enough - to pave the way for a similar treatment of Dune : Messiah and Children Of Dune. The fantasy genre has already had its most loved standard-setting trilogy adapted into a license to print money - it's time to give science fiction some of that high budget lovin'.

Postscript : In my opinion, Dune is the six Frank Herbert books. Brian Herbert is a charlatan and Kevin J. Anderson is a hack. They are raping Frank Herbert's intellectual remains and I can't endorse that. It make my brain twitch.

01:40 < vai> life is amusing.
01:40 < vai> I'm glad I'm at the point where I can find it such.
01:40 < solios> sometimes.
01:40 < solios> when it isn't, You're Doing It Wrong.
01:41 < solios> (which I have been of late, hence the >.<)
01:41 < solios> black funks typically mean I need to get out more.
01:41 < solios> sort of the downside of my current schedule.
01:41 < vai> get out in order to get in.
01:42 < solios> third shift has FANTASTIC benefits. All of my bills are paid up. I make payday with hundreds in the bank instead of pennies. I can go shopping and do chores without it killing my work schedule.
01:42 < solios> But I'm very, very isolated. And that has a tendency to make the thought proecess become a bit... ingrown.
01:42 < vai> yep.
01:42 < solios> of cours,e when I Go Out, it inverts things.
01:43 < vai> I'm pulling 9h a day + two extra 4 hour sprints to make my month end at the moment.
01:43 < solios> I wind up feeling better, but then I run out of money, the bank account goes negative, work suffers, etc.
01:43 < vai> balance is a horrible thing.
01:43 < vai> (to accomplish)
01:44 < solios> yes

The one bit of Dawn Of Sorrow that always hangs me up, lifted from this kickass FAQ. It took me forever to find the first time, and forever plus ten to refind the last time I played the game. The puzzle is a serious pacing trainwreck, and digging up the solution is even more of a trainwreck, so I'm sticking it here for future reference.

3UP, 13UP, 15RIGHT, 1UP, 9LEFT, 14LEFT, 6LEFT, 7DOWN, 4RIGHT, 10DOWN, 5LEFT, 4UP, 10RIGHT, 5DOWN, 12DOWN, 8LEFT, 4UP, 12RIGHT, 13RIGHT, 11RIGHT, 1UP, 15LEFT, 5LEFT, 13DOWN, 8DOWN, 3RIGHT, 2RIGHT, 1UP
(1 2 3 4 done)

15RIGHT, 11RIGHT, 9UP, 13LEFT, 14LEFT, 15DOWN, 11RIGHT, 14UP, 15LEFT 10LEFT, 12DOWN, 11RIGHT, 10UP, 15RIGHT, 14DOWN, 10LEFT, 11LEFT, 12UP
(9 10 11 12 13 14 15 DONE!)

This leaves a few rooms sealed off. The room in the upper right has a mirror - swing by once you've picked up the Paranoia soul to snag Dracula's Tunic.

FairEmma++

Condensing this walkthrough into something that doesn't have to be sifted. I ran into this section of the game by accident, and found it to be a real trainwreck. The walkthrough solution is just as convoluted, so here's the context-free solution.

From the beginning (where you can read the entire sign) :

Aron Doll : UP DOWN UP DOWN (note - you can keep or huck this thing, and the default is huck. If you huck it you'll find it again outside the maze)

Ice Crest : RIGHT DOWN UP DOWN

Getting the hell out : DOWN RIGHT UP LEFT then LEFT DOWN UP DOWN then any direction.

00:00 < vai> [ The annual AFD bs ] #WUT>
00:03 < solios> it's AFD. I'm not clicking links.
00:03 < solios> or using web browsers at all, for that matter.
00:03 < solios> BECAUSE I CAN'T SEE SQUANT
00:03 < vai> AFD?
00:04 < vai> let's just say that's TMBOchan.
00:05 < solios> April Fools Day.
00:05 < solios> :P
00:06 < solios> wherin half the interweb acts like a fucking retard and the other half believes it.
00:06 < vai> a
00:07 < vai> that would explain tmbochan then.
00:09 < vai> and xkcd -> qc.
00:09 < vai> ;kgj adskgl;dsafg
00:09 < vai> UNFUCK MY INTERNET
00:10 < solios> wait a day.
00:25 < vai> no. that sucks.
00:33 < solios> and it happens every. stinking. year.
00:34 < solios> I wouldn't mind if the after effects didn't ripple clear into may.

Global Silly Day? I'm down. Sometimes it actually makes me smile. Every news site thinking they're The Onion for 24 hours? Okay. Not my idea of humor, but fine, whatever. Webcomics circlejerking each other? They do that year-round anyway, so it's not like anyone's going to notice. The hairpulling isn't the internet circlejerk. It's The Long Tail of the internet circlejerk. Stories and links and screenshots surfacing and resurfacing over the next two to eight weeks like floaters refusing to flush, picked up and spread around the porcelain walls of the intertub by the clueless users who haven't bothered to read the instructions on their water wings.

One day of silly? Okay. Weeks and weeks of wannabes trying to relive Silly Day? Check your calendar. It's April First. Not April tenth or May fourth or July thirty-seventh.

Is there a medical term for Hate Exhaustion?

More importantly, is there a cure?

06:20 <@xeno> fuck i hate today
06:20 <@_Lasar> Stop looking at the web.
06:20 <@_Lasar> I do (except for work things), and 4/1 is keeping its head down nicely.
06:25 <@xeno> i can't, it's like a bad tooth
06:25 <@solios> no
06:25 <@xeno> or a train wreck
06:25 <@solios> not really.
06:25 <@xeno> just can't stop looking, horrified more and more, and yet, unable to stop
06:25 <@solios> no.
06:25 <@solios> it's a bottle of mad dog 20/20 at the end of a really shitty day.
06:26 <@solios> you know it's vile.
06:26 <@solios> you know it's fucking horrible.
06:26 <@solios> you know you wouldn't otherwise wipe your ass with it.
06:26 <@solios> but god damn you need a fix.
07:25 <@xeno> i had a nightmare last night that i opened my fridge and the door was all the flavors of 20/20
07:25 <@xeno> for real i did
07:25 <@xeno> it was horrible
07:25 <@xeno> and that's all. there. was.
07:25 <@xeno> so i had the purple one
07:25 <@xeno> :|
07:26 <@xeno> STOP PULLING YOUR ANALOGIES FROM MY DREAMS