Category Archives: Sunday’s Rant

Got a new TV

Last year, I never would have imagined that my living room would end up looking like this. I used to have a 40 inch TV sitting next to a computer desk and chair. The TV acted as a second monitor. On the other side of the room sat a couch with two end tables… Oh, wait… You’ve probably seen it in my comics, because Brandon’s living room (and the entire house) was based off of my own. There are some differences, but I literally modeled my house in 3D and used it for the set design.

So in the early part of 2016, something went wrong with my back. Way wrong. As a result I decided to get a rocker/recliner, and I tossed out the computer chair. So now I sit comfortably on the other side of the room with a wireless keyboard in my lap. It helped my back a lot, but I had to forgo the dual screen setup because the smaller monitor was now too small to be useful. I also had to switch the resolution from 1080p to 720p so I could easily read the text from across the room. Needless to say, I had to move a lot of things around.

Now I had been using this 40″ TV as a monitor since I bought it back in 2010, and over the past year the TV had been glitching badly, and it finally got to the point that I decided to replace it. Naturally I also took this as an opportunity to upgrade from 40″ to 50″. Believe it or not, the new TV was a little too big for the arrangement, and I had to rethink the living room layout again.

So… I actually have a console piano in my exceedingly small living room. It was Christmas present from Grandma Sauer back in 1979. This is one of those things not depicted in the comic version of my house, but nevertheless it’s here. Well it got moved against the wall where the TV stand and desk used to be and has become the new TV’s “stand”. I know it sounds kind of hokey, but it actually looks pretty good. In a way it looks like the TV is mounted on the wall, and there just happens to be a piano under it.

Of course the new TV looks great. They all do. Even my old TV looked great when it was working right. That’s the funny thing about TV’s today… They all look good because they all look the same. It’s just a big black rectangle up against a wall, and when you turn it on it’s a vibrant window to another world… or in my case, it looks like a really large computer monitor sitting on top of a piano.

Pax,

-f2x

Secret Santa Sucks

My family started doing the “Secret Santa” a few years back, and I really dread it. Every Thanksgiving we have to draw names from a hat. I suppose I should be grateful since I only have to buy but one gift. In years past, the gift giving was getting out of hand, so it’s nice that the family elders decided to reign that nonsense in.

But this year I drew my sister-in-law’s name. Why can’t I get an easy one, like one of my aunts or uncles? Up until a few years ago, I’d just ask my mom, but she’s gone now, and I really don’t care to face conundrums like this on my own.

Of course, I want to get her something she would enjoy, but to be honest, I don’t really know what that would be. It doesn’t help that outside of family gatherings, we don’t really have any sort of relationship.

I suppose in times like this it’s best to play it safe. I need a gift that is pleasant, and not controversial. Yes, I’m almost certain that we’re looking at some sort of gift basket for women. Maybe I’ll order something from the Bath and Body Works website. Wish me luck.

Pax,

-f2x

Just a few more days…

Thanksgiving (US) is just around the corner. In a way, I’m one of the lucky ones. Every year I get Thursday and Friday off to make for a 4 day weekend. I used to resent the fact that Thanksgiving messed up the long weekend, but now that I’m older, all I have to do is make a tray of deviled eggs and show up for a free dinner at my Aunt’s house on Thursday. I generally find a recliner and take a nap while I’m waiting to eat, and then take another nap when I’m digesting. Oh sure, I spend some time with the family, but I’m not very good in social settings, and they understand these things make me very tired.

This year I may have to get a new television on black Friday. I bought a 40″ TV back in 2010. 40″ was still respectable back then. It’s six years old, and for some reason the screen keeps messing up. It starts flickering green and purple horizontal lines until you turn it off and on. It does this randomly, and it’s been getting more frequent. It’s done it 9 times in the past 2 hours. Believe me, it’s fucking annoying.

I thought I’d also mention that it’s almost time to renew my hosting plan. This year it looks like it’s going to cost me $120. That doesn’t include the $25 annual fee for my domain name registration in May. So basically Flush Twice costs me $145 a year. That’s about 40¢ a day. These aren’t special insider prices either. My webhost is essentially fucking me up the ass compared to some others out there, but it’s still cheap enough that I don’t want to mess with it.

Personally I’d love to go back to running my own webserver in the basement again, but because I have a quasi-dynamic IP address, I’d have to find a reliable rapid DNS updater, and most of them have terms shittier than my webhost’s. Just so you know, I pay my webhost $120 a year and can host an unlimited number of domains with 2 Terabytes of disk space, 100 Terabytes of data per month, and operating up to 50 MySQL databates and 50 PgSQL databases. I don’t even begin to scratch the surface of that, but 40¢ a day and I get my own website? Sure… Why not…

OK, I’ve droned on long enough. Tune in next week when I’ll probably be moaning about eating too much at Thanksgiving.

Pax,

-f2x

Winter is Coming

I suffered the summer’s heat, and was a little disappointed to find October was much too warm for the season. Basically, I’m looking forward to the cold. Most people hate the cold, and if we’re talking sub-zero temperatures, I’m with you… But I’ll gladly take 28°F to 48°F this time of year.

It’s an amazing feeling to bundle yourself up into a nice warm sweater while breathing in the cool crisp air. It’s so much easier to chase away the chill in the fall than to draw off the heat in the summer. The weight of the extra blanket comforts you in the night as you snuggle into bed.

And don’t forget the best holidays are just around the corner. While I’m generally partial to the charm of Halloween, the flavors of Thanksgiving and Christmas along with the love of family and friends lifts the spirit and fills the air with a sense of hope and joy.

If you cannot find the love and joy in your life, perhaps your spirit has been poisoned. You must draw the poison out and cleanse yourself of hatred lest your soul wither and die. Cast away your fear and anger, and strive to enjoy life as it is. You can’t make a better tomorrow unless you make peace with today.

Pax,

-f2x

Being Sick

You know, on average, there is less than a single day per year that I don’t have something wrong with me. Usually, I get over it pretty quickly and life goes on. Right now I’m dealing with some kind of throat infection that keeps lingering and getting worse. Who knows! Maybe it’s cancer. In any event, it’s really pissing me off.

So basically it’s a swollen lymph gland. Go ahead and google the damn thing. I’ll wait. Now I kinda had an earache too, and there was a soar throat with sinus drainage… But I cleared all that shit up already, and now that lymph node in my neck is still aching. If I move my head or touch it in the wrong way, it will send intense pain shooting through me. Oh joy!

So I’m taking antibiotics. Maybe that will take care of it? Usually those things work pretty quickly, but it’s been a few days, and I’m still not better. So maybe it’s the early stages of sepsis, and I’ll be dead before the next holiday… At least one can hope.

One good thing about a painful malady, is that you momentarily forget about all the other shit that your body has been annoying you about. Oh, my feet still hurt like they’ve been mercilessly beaten, but that doesn’t begin to be in my top ten concerns. My arthritis is probably still there, but my neck is just screamingly painful.

I don’t dare scream though. I don’t even want to talk. It hurts to move my jaw, or even swallow. (insert “that’s what she said” reference…) All I can do is take my medicine and wait. Wait while this damn thing steals more of what’s left of my life. I’m not getting any younger here!

So my dear, gentle reader, take heed. Avoid bad habits, get plenty of rest, drink plenty of water, get plenty of exercise, practice good hygiene, and eat nutritious meals every day. You’re still going to die, but at least you won’t be in my situation thinking that it was the lack of the aforementioned lifestyle that led to your demise.

Pax

-f2x

Do my side posts do anything for you?

Did you ever stop to think that I actually write these side posts? That’s right: I sit down and try to come up with my own original material to amuse and entertain in this sidebar. Even the little images in the corner are either photos I took, or original artwork that I created in a bitmap editor.

At first I was merely trying to be informative with regard to this website in these little asides, but as time went on I just started writing shit for the sake of entertainment. Kind of like that cheeky columnist in the “Life” section of your local newspaper.

I’ve noticed that I can sit down and read the stuff I write, not just here, but in forums, reviews, and e-mails. Occasionally I’ve actually found myself enjoying it, not because of how narcissistic I am, but because I thought the sentences and paragraphs were easy to consume. On more than a few occasions, I actually forgot I was the author of the text I was reading while I was reading it, and just enjoyed the way it “flowed”.

So does any of my original writing do anything for you? Do you even bother to read this text? I never get any feedback on it, and maybe that’s for the best, but no… I’d like to know. Do my stories entertain or bore you?

Let me know what you think in the comments. We’ve got new obviously stolen jokes lined up for Monday through Friday, so don’t forget to stop back and see them.

Pax,

f2x

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I am in so much pain

It’s been a long week. I’ve worked a lot of overtime, and I ache like hell. If I hadn’t already put the jokes in the queue, I’d be saying “fuck it” right now.

We went to Foy’s

If you find yourself around Fairborn, Ohio in the month of October, you simply must make time to visit Foy’s on West Main Street. It a big Halloween celebration. Friday and Saturday nights towards the end of the month get really crowded. Vendors line the streets and people have a really good time.

OK, well that’s about all I have time for this week.

Pax,

-f2x

OMG, is it Sunday again?!

Seriously, this past week just flew by. Also, if you have any good jokes, please send them my way. The next few weeks just don’t look that hilarious to me, but the jokes are in place. Even though only one person ever seems to rate the jokes anymore, feel free to click those stars. Trust me, it makes your visit feel so much more satisfyingly interactive.

In other news, I’m still getting moved around a lot at work. I’m being used to triage a massive shortage of qualified help. In some ways it’s kind of fun, but it’s also very nerve-wracking. I have to be on top of my game every day, and it’s taking a lot out of me. I pretty much spent most of yesterday in bed trying to recover, yet I’m still experiencing symptoms of exhaustion. It’s not pleasant. Hopefully I’ll start to get the hang of my enhanced responsibilities. Too bad it doesn’t come with an enhanced paycheck.

Other than that, Grace is still doing fine. She seems to be eating quite well, and has more energy than I can possibly deal with.

Pax,

-f2x

Too Many Irons in the Fire Again

Don’t worry, I’m not going on hiatus again, but suddenly everyone around me thinks I’m some kind of magic djinn as they dump their mess in my lap and run for cover.

Of course they sure as hell wouldn’t give my ideas a moment’s consideration back when the situation was realistically manageable. Oh, no… That would might have implied the ungrateful SOB’s had a shred of respect for me.

So now that everything is out of control, I’m their fallback plan. It was nice of them to tell me ahead of time… Oh wait. They didn’t do that either. They just waited until all the shit was fucked, then flippantly dumped it on me as if I’m supposed to not mind a single fucking bit.

Well, I’ll just get right on it and make everything all right again, and once that happens they’ll want their reins back. Nothing ever changes, and once I’ve fixed their problem, they’ll sneer at me with contempt for being better than they are.

I hate these fuckers.

Pax,

-f2x

The Comic’s Font

If you’ve been watching the sidebar this past week, you might have noticed that the speech bubble font has changed. I thought I’d write a brief article about it and share it with you here today.

One of the things I pride myself on is the fact that I created my own font for the comic. Back in 2004 I tossed a serif font into the comic, and it was impossible to read. I really didn’t pay any attention to the idea of fonts at all, but quickly realized something just didn’t look right.

It didn’t take long for me to stumble into Comic Sans. Shortly after, I starting to notice how much the internet seemed to hate this font, which is a shame, because it really is a good font. Not in the mood to champion a lost cause, I set out to forge my own font with FontForge.

Of course the first version was absolutely abhorrent. I didn’t know what I was doing. It was monospaced. The characters where supposed to appear handwritten, but these looked downright arthritic. It was just very, very bad. That font was revamped and overwritten several times while I used it for the daily panel. Eventually I felt it was “tolerable”. Overtaxed on my creative output, I called this font aaa.ttf. That way it would be easy to locate at the top of the font list.

That font lasted until about 2009 when I revamped it again. This time I named it the aab.ttf. Even though the only real difference was a heavier and more consistent line weight, it was a lot easier to read. There were still some aspects of it that bothered me back then. Why were other comic fonts able to me more legible in smaller spaces? This is kind of an important thing since the comic has to surrender an unfortunate amount of space to the speech bubble.

And that brings us to the present. I finally took the time to sit down and give the Flush Twice font a complete overhaul. Many of the typefaces were redrawn from scratch, and I finally figured out how to standardize the spacing. The size of the characters has not changed, but I can fit more text in a smaller area. If I’m to be totally honest though, I still don’t know what I’m actually doing. I don’t know how to properly design a font, so it’s glitchy. On a positive note, I feel the look of the font has significantly improved.

The image above is a before and after of the font. As you can see, the bottom one is bolder and takes up slightly less space. IMHO it’s easier to read because more of the word stays inside your foveal vision. I really like my font. It’s no Comic Sans, but that’s probably a good thing. While I probably spent way too much time making this font, I’d do it again in a heartbeat. There’s just no way I’d feel as good about my work if I used a font that someone else designed.

Pax,

f2x

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