1784 Return Of Sink.

by

I’ve always wanted to go to Carol’s apartment, but avoided it for various reason, not least of which is that she has a cat. I don’t think it’s ever been mentioned, but I always intended for her to have one. At this point, with the whole world falling apart around me, it doesn’t seem like it matters a whole lot if I fuck everything up by not being able to draw a convincing cat.

I made a subscription button for the comic for those of you who might be small pledge Patreon users. It’s in the RSS feed link. It’s just a way to stall while I try to find a reputable company to take the place of Patereon, or at least a service that doesn’t hate people who aren’t rolling in money. I’ll still be distributing the content through Patreon until such time that I have a better way to do so. You can follow my account with your account to see my updates.

The breaker that controls power to my room failed completely. Since the Teen has moved to another state I just moved my work stuff back to her room, which was my workspace before she came to live with us. I took my pile of bed stuff and moved it into the closet. Since the walls are close together in there I can brace myself kind of like I did in my bedroom. It’s not perfect, but neither was the way I was sleeping before. I can’t help but think this will give me practice for when I’m homeless if I live into my 60s.

I’m moving my working stuff into the office bit by bit. The space is half as big, so only the stuff I use all the time will move over.

For those of you who care, my grandmother is stable, but she had surgery which is making her recovery very slow. She also understandably depressed. It might be fun if some of you wanted to send her a card. Here’s her room info. I trust you not to be mean to my ailing grandma.

Sara Pepper Room #6091
C/O. Select Specialty Hospital-Wichita
929 North Saint Francis Street
North Tower 6th Floor
Wichita, Kansas 67214

I actually deleted the old amazon list I had for when people asked for one for Xmas gifts. If you absolutely can’t control your holiday spirit here’s my generic one. I stuck a bunch of random small stuff in there. It doesn’t matter how many of the same small Lego sets I get since I use them for parts and not to keep as whatever they are supposed to be. I’m trying to make a Bob’s Burger’s style diner at the moment. I have the first floor essentially finished but am kind of stuck on the next floor. I need more neutral colors to make walls and floor panels that are all one color.

Anyway, I don’t know about you, but this year has been amazingly exhausting. I don’t have a lot of hope for the next one either, but maybe we’ll get lucky. Regardless, if you’re someone who come here, and cares enough to read my blog posts, thanks for being there for me. I’m basically alone most of the time and knowing you guys are out there to talk to makes things a lot better for me than it would be if I was just here shouting into the void.

36 Comments

It’s not so much that Friska is depressed but rather she sees Carol as the warmest sunbeam and pillow ever. I speak from experience.

I looked at the room info and briefly misread the first line as Sargent Pepper Room before seeing it again as Sara Pepper Room. My eyes must be going bad.

you’ll be alright on your own, Thomas? I sink not!

A messy sink never killed anyone that wasn’t already living in a horror movie.

I actually had someone I knew in HS who nearly died due to mold from his sink poisoning him.

So I’m sure that someone *has*.

Dude was fucking disgusting… great friend, brilliant strategist, fantastic at his job… just filthy.

Back in the long long ago of the interwebs, before Patreon stalked the land, small donations were accomplished via PayPal-powered tip jar. A bit inconvenient, perhaps, but small donors can still donate that way.

Never think you aren’t being heard. We hear your shouts and receive them loud and clear. Keep writing and drawing, we love the work you produce.

I’m keeping my Patreon pledge to you, at least for another month until I see the actual result (I support only six or seven people via Patreon so their changes may not affect me much). I ain’t happy with their policy shift, but I’ll be damned if I’ll drop my support of you because of it. I may switch to Paypal but one of the things I liked about Patreon was that the pledges were automated. I don’t know if Paypal allows me to set up a recurring donation.

Hang in there, man.

cheers,
Phil

As per the Google FAQ

Can you set up recurring payments with PayPal?
To get started: Sign up, then start creating Recurring Payments for your customers from your PayPal account “Tools” section. If you want to automatically create recurring payments when customers checkout from your website, download documentation to help your developer or cart provider to incorporate this functionality.

So this looks like it can be set up as an option for the TIP JAR tm
The usual PayPal fees apply…
If you use your credit or debit card, the fee is 2.9% + $0.30.
Sending money to pay for goods or service is free for the purchaser but the cost comes from the merchant end of the equation instead plus a monthly service fee – still cheaper than Patreon but no distribution service.

Donations are cheaper by a smidgen BUT you would have to be a registered charity to benefit from the 0.7% cost saving and no monthly fee.

Ugh – Patreon still could have stayed with the old model and just modified things to combat the canceled payment jerks by putting up a payment clearance delay and working with the credit companies anti-fraudsters BUT I am betting some MBA saw an opportunity and damn the client base, to make a whole lot more cash right away. I really hope that the jerks behind this get fired if not hauled in front of a judge for financial shenanigans because we all know these types do this as a matter of course.

What a mess – I will hold out till January before switching to whatever service Jackie decides on or Patreon takes their executives behind the shed like ol’yeller and do whats right.

Regarding Patreon, I read this in the comments section of another comic I read and though it was interesting:

“someone
December 12, 2017 at 8:50 am
The whole Patreon fiasco seems to be motivated by the fact what they’ve been doing until now has been technically illegal since they are not registered as a money serving business. Yes, MSBs are a specific kind of business which have to comply with specific regulations and get oversight from certain specific authorities.
There’s a good article there that explains the facts in more details:
https://subfictional.com/my-theory-patreon-doesnt-want-to-be-a-money-services-business/
”

The comic author replied:

“Myth
December 12, 2017 at 6:20 pm
Very interesting article. I specialize in contracts and intellectual property rather than financial services so this is all new to me. Regulatory fees and legal costs can quickly skyrocket if you’re not careful. Maybe Patreon should have just absorbed the fees instead and kept them all implicit. Like when you buy something at a store, you don’t pay the credit card fee directly, the store does. The store just raises its prices to cover that fee. Patreon could have jacked its percentage to 8% and said it was not paying the fee. Heck, if it could figure out how to make more value added services, they could have gone with 10%.”

Not being intimately familiar with the situation, it would not surprise me if there is more than one side to the story, as is normal.

Anyhow, you aren’t wrong and you aren’t alone, Jackie. Thank you for still doing what you enjoy doing and sharing it with us. It makes life a bit more bearable for all us readers, even if we don’t always mention it. :)

Ya know, if Thomas didn’t mind sharing her lap they could go over to her place.

Plus Thomas could learn how to do laundry.

Patreon announced they are not going to be implementing the previously announced change, so at least Creators will have some breathing room for now!

To All Patreon Backers: Patreon has cancelled its plans to move expenses from content creators to the patrons. Rejoice, and support your favorite creators again!

Any word yet on who in the executive office fell on their sword / was eaten by an allosaurus / put on the bus / taken behind the barn / etc?

CEO Jack Conte gave a public apology, actually. I’ll quote it below.

“Creators and Patrons,

We’ve heard you loud and clear. We’re not going to rollout the changes to our payments system that we announced last week. We still have to fix the problems that those changes addressed, but we’re going to fix them in a different way, and we’re going to work with you to come up with the specifics, as we should have done the first time around. Many of you lost patrons, and you lost income. No apology will make up for that, but nevertheless, I’m sorry. It is our core belief that you should own the relationships with your fans. These are your businesses, and they are your fans.

I’ve spent hours and hours on the phone with creators, and so has the Patreon team. Your feedback has been crystal clear:

The new payments system disproportionately impacted $1 – $2 patrons. We have to build a better system for them.Aggregation is highly-valued, and we underestimated that.Fundamentally, creators should own the business decisions with their fans, not Patreon. We overstepped our bounds and injected ourselves into that relationship, against our core belief as a business.

We recognize that we need to be better at involving you more deeply and earlier in these kinds of decisions and product changes. Additionally, we need to give you a more flexible product and platform to allow you to own the way you run your memberships.

I know it will take a long time for us to earn back your trust. But we are utterly devoted to your success and to getting you sustainable, reliable income for being a creator. We will work harder than ever to build you tools, functionality, and income, and our team won’t rest until Patreon is making that happen.

If you haven’t sent us a note yet, or if you don’t see your concerns listed above, please leave us your feedback here.

Thanks for continuing to create. We are nothing without you, and we know that.

Jack”

Was watching tv one evening when the power went out-I thought. But when I looked in the kitchen, the lights were still on. Spent an embarrassing amount of time tracing the problem only to find that the main breaker on the pole-one leg was burnt and the screw was welded in and couldn’t be tightened. Called the power company to find out if this was their responsibility or ours. They said it was their’s, and they’d send a repairman and replace the breaker. Next day, I get a call on the way home from work. Repairman (who I knew) says he cant get all the wires back in the new breaker, and he has another service call he has to take. So I end up fighting the wires into the new breaker in the rain. Talk about nervous as a cat.

I was going to suggest gratipay as a possibility for a new domain platform, Burt it looks like they’re shutting down sadly. They have a migration to liberapay (https://liberapay.com/) for whatever that’s worth. Thanks for all your hard work on the comic!!

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