Man, Wednesday is here already. I guess for once I’ll start off by calling attention to the various support links. I haven’t been for a while and I need to remember that things cost money. Hopefully people will be having more money soon and will want to keep their statistically 5th favorite webcomic going. I managed to just barely make it through the last 4 years by leaning heavily on the savings I had amassed the 4 years before that. Hopefully numbers will go back to trending upwards when it comes to earnings and downwards when it comes to costs again. At the time I didn’t realize how good I had it when things were going well. Life decided to alter my perspective in a pretty mean way and most everyone else went along for the ride. That’s probably enough to remind anyone who comes down to the blog. The ones who don’t? Well I’m not sure what to do about them. Ad rates are complete ass so getting ad revenue isn’t really a path to success anymore. Although I feel like I’m better off not having intrusive ads because I just stopped going to sites that had them and I never want that to happen here. People should stop coming here because of questionable creative skills and/or personal beef started with me on social media, not because the site experience is off putting. XD

What else is going on in my exciting life? Several relatives came to Grandpa’s “party”, so that was nice. He pretty much was only concerned with getting cake and cupcakes. There was a big clock on the wall in the room where they let us gather, but it was dead. I thought that was a little on the nose symbolically. I also realized that I haven’t used analog clocks for so long that I can’t read them at a glance anymore. I now realize that the clock had stopped at 12:55, but I had to look at the stopped clock on my wall for a minute to work it out from my memory. The clock on my wall stopped at 4:42, in case you were curious. I haven’t changed the battery in at least a year because I keep piling things in front of it then remembering that I was going to replace the battery. It’s not a priority since virtually every device in the house has a digital clock in it.
I was actually thinking about this the other day. It would probably save a lot of money if the microwave and stove didn’t have clocks in them. If they powered down when not in use it would save power. I know that the power draw from a clock is minimal, but over the course of the operational life of a stove or microwave I bet it ads up. Of course since we have a million other things plugged in all the time it probably doesn’t matter all that much.
That said, if energy prices don’t come down and money stays tight we might have to turn off all the dumb crap we have running all the time just to save a few pennies that they aren’t going to make anymore.

On a coin related note, I found 3 coins on the ground today. One was a new penny in the cold food section of Walmart, one was a quarter at the checkout, and one was a nickel in the ground of the parking spot when we came back home. For some reason old coins just sort of appear in the yard right there from time to time. They used to just bury trash in the yard at one point before we moved in and sometimes things just come out of the ground like that. I’m not sure how that process works, but I’ve seen it happen for so long that I know it does. Sometimes there’ll just be some old thing sticking out of the ground, like an ancient toy, or a handful of deteriorated pennies, or whatever.
Anyway the point is that it was weird that I found 3 coins on the ground when normally I find none coins on the ground.

After my nephew visited this last time I started to sort my LEGO by color again. The various disasters made it impractical to keep up the sorting so I ended up dumping parts into bins at random for however many years it’s been. In the process of sorting my other things I rediscovered all the various containers that had been dispersed. So when he came to visit I put them all out to be available. He wasn’t really interested in building things though. He pretty much just wants to play with things I’ve already built. At home he apparently does build on his own but my stuff is more exciting and already built. I sorted almost the entire time he was here while he strung LEGO all over the designated play areas. It was quite a scene when he went home. Seeing these epic adventures, frozen in time, are like looking into a little window on his mind. I’ve seen how he leaves things enough times to notice patterns in how he tells stories to himself. In fact I used these findings to make little environments that I knew he would enjoy. They all fit on the standard baseplates so he could move them around as he saw fit. The one he seemed to like most was a jungle/cave/swamp combination that had two rock bridges suspended over “water” which I placed alligators and sharks in.
The red castle I made wasn’t as much of a hit because mom took it into the other room and I never showed him all the features I built into it like the breakaway walls and such. Next time I’ll have to make a point to show him before I settle into a spot where I can observe.
Since I had access to all my parts again I finally finished the roof of my Bob’s Burger’s inspired building. The bottom approximates Bob’s as well as you reasonably can at that scale, and the next floor up approximates their living quarters. That said, I’ve tried to work out the floor plan for both parts of the building and I don’t think it actually conforms to the rules of reality. Much like The Simpson’s house it seems like there are doors that go into rooms that simply don’t fit in the space available. I’m not 100% sure if I’m right on this or not though. I think the building is meant to be longer than I made it, but I’m still not sure the layout actually works.
In any case I made a functional two story building and finally put a roof on it. There’s no actual ladder access to it, or a fire escape, but I basically just gave it a lid so it looks finished from the outside. My nephew likes taking buildings apart to play in so Bob’s is one he enjoys.
I also finished a smaller build that is a more simple 2 story house, which I had stuck in one of the containers and wasn’t able to complete when that happened. Even though it was super basic he liked opening it up and having things happen in it, so mission accomplished.
I’m going to clean up the play area and get the various builds set up in such a way that they look purposeful when not in use. After that, I dunno. When I started that whole thing my goal was to try and get something made that could be entered in to the LEGO creator program that I forgot the name of. Maybe I’ll actually try that eventually.
I have stacks of sets that I set aside for later that I’ve never built. Things I was really looking forward to, like the ghost themed ones. At one point I got it in my head that I was going to film myself building them, but I still don’t have an acceptable area to do that and every time I try to set one up something happens to stop me, like the basement flooding.
I feel like I should point out that having the basement flood in an area of the world were basements really shouldn’t flood seems suspiciously like an act of god, or a sign, but we aren’t a superstitious people… Generally.
If god is testing me it is unfortunate because I have not studied.

I decided that I needed to have easier access to my DVDs and such the other day. My plan is to buy a big folder for the discs and take all the cases and put them in storage. Then I can set my folder in the TV stand and get out whatever I want to watch without having to get it off of my now mostly unalphabetized shelves. Ideally I would rip all of them to a thumb drive and plug them into the player because it has that capability, but the rips always fail halfway through so I’m just going to watch them from discs like a fucking caveman.
I already ordered the case because I found out that they are extremely cheap now that no one owns physical media. The once lucrative CD folder industry has fallen on hard times and I’m reaping the rewards. There was a time when it was quite pricey to buy storage solutions for physical media, not so now it would seem. Now I can buy storage the likes of which would astound me 30 years ago.
You might say “Why not simply subscribe to a streaming service?” Firstly, not cost effective right now. I can’t stream most of my collection at any service and my internet is still bad. Secondly, they have been censoring things so you can’t watch the original versions. Generally the edits are minor, but I find it annoying. Thirdly, even if you pay for some services now they make you watch ads anyway. That just sucks. Especially since on Hulu at least it often causes the show to crash and you have to start over from the beginning. After watching the ads that caused the crash, AND another set for starting over. Six minutes of ads is too many. Of course that means that I just haven’t watched Bob’s Burgers for, like, 3 seasons now, or whatever. I also can’t buy them on DVD because they stopped offering them. So for the moment the latest episodes of that show are lost media to me.

Man I just looked up the show to see how far behind I am. I’m not sure when I was shut out, but I only remember up to season 9 or 10, so it’s like 5 more seasons now. It’ll be nice to see those someday, I hope.

At any rate I suspect you have better things to do with your time than to read more of whatever it is I’m doing here. Have a nice Wednesday and come back on Friday if you still want to. I hope to see you then.

2838 The Doctor Is Interpolating.

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