1210 Bento.

Time to check back in on John and see what Alex has been up to as well.

I spent all afternoon trying to fix the Teen’s computer, so I’m angry, because I’m not good at tech support.

She’s going on trip with mom to my sister’s town of living. So, there’s that.

Bluh…

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I kinda want them to end up together for her sake.

Sake can go well with a bento.

Me too. Alex seems like she’s sweet and could use the IRL interaction and John, could benefit from not being himself for awhile. Might be good for the two of them…or a flaming fighter jet augering in while the pilot helplessly hammers at the controls because the ejection seat malfunctioned.

I ship it.

I wondered what happened to him. He’s been distant for ages. Did he quit?

Remember, Between Failures time isn’t like real-world time.

Didn’t Crave recently answer a question as to how much time elapsed from strip #1 to the present point in the story, and estimated it might be 4 months or so.

Is it a software or hardware problem? And what Model? I might be of some assistance on the matter, given that working on computers is currently my job.

Windows XP HP, restarts over and over at random.

Is it a recent problem or one that’s been happening for a long time? And do you know if it’s restarting when trying to run a large amount of things at once, or are the restarts completely random and sporadic?

It did something similar when it was still my pc, but rarely. Now it restarts as soon as it gets to the accounts page. Not every time, but if it gets past the login it restarts at a random time minutes after.

Desktop or Laptop? This type of problem is potentially indicative of a bad power supply. I’ve run into it multiple times on my own computers.

A wonderful barometer is booting to a CD and waiting for the system to behave poorly. Any LiveBoot OS like Ubuntu or Knoppix should do. If the issue persists, it’s most likely hardware. Just my two cents. :)

It could be the fan is clogged/cooling system not working , in some computers if your system gets to hot it will auto shut down to keep from burning out.

That’s a possibility. The trick is to check to see if the fan is working, power down and let the system cool off, then do a cold boot to see if it boots before going comatose.

He’s got one chance to get this right or he could end up with an overly attached girlfriend.

So, if an overly attached (gamer/animé nerd, if I recall) girlfriend is the outcome of getting it wrong, what does he get for getting it right?

Cause the only thing I think would be better is a normal gamer/animé nerd girlfriend.

I think the key point tmwka was making was the “overly attached” part.

John doesn’t strike me as the kind of guy who is interested in falling in love at this point. He’s still more concerned with playing the game.

That’s exactly what I want to do: start prowling, find some pretty chicks with tits between C+ and higher, and pork them. Get my freak out before committing to anything, and getting some physical experience.

I don’t even know if we can get bento here, or if you hafta make it yourself. Probably the latter. But I’m not at all artistic. *le siiigh*

You can probably get one. Bento literally means box lunch, or boxed lunch. Any kind of lunch you buy that has 2 or 3 or 4 things in it is literally a bento.
I suspect the only place in America where this is a normal, every day vocab word is here in Hawaii. During a year in Japan, I never saw the artistic kind for sale. That kind of thing is *only* homemade. And I think it is kind of a new custom in Japan. I could be wrong but I don’t think it existed 20 years ago.

I bet you can make one! (trying to sound positive here). I see that there are tutorials on youtube. If you can watch youtube you can do it!!!

The practice of putting “food in box” is not exactly new as it date a loooong time back, but I guess what food and and what they called it is something that is more of the newer kind…..

Aleast as far as I remember which don’t say much xD

That’s all it is? Just the Japanese term for what we used to pick up at KFC on our way to the racetrack?

Making a pretty box lunch isn’t hard. Start with using a cookie cutter on your sandwich. Add some pretty red tomatoes and yellow cheese to a green salad… That’s a good beginner attempt.

I dont use Twitter so i couldnt respond there, you mentioned Game Grumps and the Stick of Truth. It is actually fun from a borderline fan point of view. I didn’t ever really get into the show so i miss a lot of the references, enough so that i am now streaming it from Comedy Central so I can get the jokes. If you have the extra cash for it, it is worth enjoying.

Basically what XP does at that point (accounts page) is finish initilalizing all the drivers and personalised settings for your specific account.

Two service paths exist at this point:

1. Hardware: open up the case and check the mainboard for visibly swollen or leaked capacitors. The capacitors are cylindrical objects, about 2 cm in height. You want to look at those around the CPU socket, memory banks and PCI-ex graphics port.

Another thing that would also cause such behaviour is a tired and worn power supply. Depending on your model of HP, in the BIOS you could have an option like “PC Health” that reports back on voltages (12V +/- 0.3V deviance is ok, 5V, 3.3V the same). If deviance is bigger, you have a problem.

Hard drive corruption could also be an issue – but less likely, the other two are the first likely suspects.

2. Software:

Any recent malware infection? The Teen uses it so all sorts of creepy stuff might have got in there.

Does it start in safe mode? If it starts in safe mode then you have a viable debugging path. What you might try is right click on My Computer, Properties -> Advanced settings -> Enviroment and startup, somewhere there is a setting that means “do not automagically restart the computer if something fails”. So next time it conks out, it will probably give you a nice blue screen, with the offending driver/dll/whatnot listed.

Btw: welcome to the wonderful world of tech support. No wonder we need your comics to keep some measure of mental sanity :)

I cant believe people are still using XP. After this April, support stops for it forever, time to upgrade.

Some of us can’t just buy a new computer every time they decide they’ve moved on. We have to make due with what we have. That system can’t run anything past XP. It’s physically incapable of it.

Hmm, that is a pickle. Just keep in mind, using XP past next month your system will be extremely vulnerable as time goes on security-wise.

My professor still uses XP, and is quite content with it. In all honesty I wouldn’t push Vista or Windows 8 on anyone who can help it, although Windows 7 is decent enough.

Crave, have you considered switching to Ubuntu, or another free Linux distribution? The only real problem with Linux is software compatibility (eg, no Photoshop), but there are some decent free alternatives out there (like GIMP). Then again, I’m not as great of an artist as you are, so perhaps there is merit to using better software.

I don’t want to fuck around with free stuff. It’s not really free anyway. You pay in time lost having to learn how to get shit to work on them, or finding alternatives.

I love that the “A” from the sign bleeds into the tree on the second panel…

I have to admit, that is cute. Might have been a little much, because it look like she put quite a bit of effort into making it. Even though there isn’t many ingredients.

I don’t know about a couple… but I can see these two becoming pretty solid friends.

I don’t know, man. He did mention to Brooksie that her sister’s weight could make two girls, which is plausible. This means that: (A) John loves girls as skinny as Brooksie; and (B) he would have to convince her to go to the gym with him, if they’ll get anywhere close to nookie.

John doesn’t strike me as the kind of guy who’s ever seen the inside of a gym. At least not for a long time.

Perhaps he hasn’t been to a gym, but he certainly doesn’t appear to be flabby, which must mean he had a more physical job/lifestyle before the Megatainment position.

That’s always been my thing about bento and other foods where “design” is a part of it. You just…you put so much work into it, and then you want me to EAT it? Perhaps it’s a good lesson on life in general: It’s pretty, but it’s going to rot one way or another. Why not make the most of it while you have it?

Yeech, that’s corny.

Why not?

Some mothers make themed lunches for their kids. They decorate their sandwiches, draw smiley faces, and so on.

Sure, it’s kinda weird to eat something that’s pretty to look at. But they made it that way because they care, so…

I have no shame for pretty food. Seriously. I’ve spent plenty of time making food, pretty or not. (Normally not, but the bananas foster was definitely a lot of fun!)

So, yes. Pretty food is still food.

I wonder what the color of Alex’s eyes are…

She’s Brooksie’s sister, so unless she got a color from another relative, then Alex’s eyes will look like Brooksie’s undamaged eye.

She’s her roommate, not her sister.

You sure about that? Because I could’ve swore that she said Alex was her sister, and that John could love her sweet personality enough to date her (see some early color clips, before they investigate the abandoned school).

Sorry, to be a pedant … but eye color doesn’t work that way anyway! (search for: eye color genetics, or for more than you probably want to know en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eye_color)

Um, hello — I’ve got two brothers and a sister.

Oldest brother: Light blue.
Middle brother: Dark brown.
Myself: Green/Brown Hazel.
Little Sister: Blue/Green Hazel.

Where did you learn about genetics? They ought to close the school.?

The art has simplified greatly since the last time we saw Alex, her hair was much scruffier. That or she decided to comb it.

And John looks like he got a haircut, and his upper body strength continues to entropy. I swear to god, he used to look manlier body-wise.

Okay, for a minute I though I had read you say you’d fixed the Teen’s computer, but now that I look back on that, you just said you fixed the bleedthrough. If it’s still a problem, I’d like to help. I have lots of experience with tech-support and being on both ends of it and I’ve worked with a lot of varied systems.

I’ll go ahead and attach my email to this post (which I haven’t done before), so if you’d like help with this or other technical problems, I’d be happy to lend a hand. I assume that with admin access, you gain the ability to see what people enter in that field. If not, I guess you’ll have to post something on the actuall current stuff and wait for me to catch up. XD

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