Genejoke wrote:
When you got back did everyone complain how busy it was while you were away?

No, they complained about my replacement being shiz and not being as good a graphic artist :)
Served them right too. Before I left they were taking me for granted a bit too much.

It's different this time though, since they weren't realy a man down then (they had a temp ozone). This time the people left will have to scramble a bit to fit the same pace… plus, when one of them leaves more orders tend to come in. We'll see though.

No, they complained about my replacement being shiz and not being as good a graphic artist :)

That's funny, that's what they said about your replacement here too!

I wish I could take more holiday here as well. It's been pretty slow, which is nice, but also which kind of makes it worse than it being busy- if it were busy I wouldn't have the opportunity to slack off. But right now I have plenty of opportunity (it doesn't help that I'm kind of demotivated right now anyway) so it's been hard to keep up the effort. I feel like I'm not taking advantage of the relative amount of “work on non-critical stuff” time I've had this month. So instead I do things like slack off in the morning, then feel guilty about that and work later into the evening to make up for it. Which has actually left me with less of my time to do my own stuff. I'm so counter-productive sometimes.

Buuuuut I get a 4-day weekend this weekend, so perhaps that's a good time to get myself sorted out. :]

skoolmunkee wrote:
Buuuuut I get a 4-day weekend this weekend, so perhaps that's a good time to get myself sorted out. :]

I fear the long weekend, too much time available to slip into the old video game addiction and get bugger all else done.
@gunwallace: What type of a biscuit?

skoolmunkee wrote:
That's funny, that's what they said about your replacement here too!

Aww :)

Yeah, slack off time is baad. I keep planning to use downtime at work to do comic stuff, but I slack off and read tech news stories instead. :(

I'm doing DD work right now. Reading through my feature for tomorrow! Except the feature I spent a while reading through had about 8 fillers as its recent updates GRRRRR!!!! >:|
-I thought they were real pages, till I actually read through the whole thing…

…so now I'm reading another comic through in order to feature it instead. -_-

So there was an earthquake on the eastern seaboard of the USA. 5.8 and felt from New England but centered on Virginia. So there I am looking around the internet and everything beginsto shake. I think I'm having an attack of vertigo, but no, the shelves are moving.

I ran outside and checked the house for any kind of damage. Then on the Facebook to announce I had survived the massive eastcoast earthquake of 2011.

And looking ahead to the weekend we have a hurricane coming. Just in time for my shift.

sharin:

Today is the first day of my second year with Drunk Duck. Not even an earthquake could prevent this from happening.

ayesinback wrote:
sharin:

Today is the first day of my second year with Drunk Duck. Not even an earthquake could prevent this from happening.

:D

The other day, I watched a crow hop along the parking lot. It stopped at an old dry leaf, prompty worried the leaf apart in it's beak and ate it. I thought this was odd behavior, never having seen a crow do such a thing. I mean, I had ducks once and they liked fresh maple leafs as a snack. Then again, a duck will eat nearly anything. They're like funny feathered pigs.

I don't know. Part of me is charmed by the random sight of the crow doing that. I find it somehow comforting to experience that in my early 30's, I can still be somewhat enchanted by the ongoing aspects of the natural world.

Chernobog wrote:
The other day, I watched a crow hop along the parking lot. It stopped at an old dry leaf, prompty worried the leaf apart in it's beak and ate it. I thought this was odd behavior, never having seen a crow do such a thing. I mean, I had ducks once and they liked fresh maple leafs as a snack. Then again, a duck will eat nearly anything. They're like funny feathered pigs.

I don't know. Part of me is charmed by the random sight of the crow doing that. I find it somehow comforting to experience that in my early 30's, I can still be somewhat enchanted by the ongoing aspects of the natural world.

Oh, I love crows. They're kind of like parrots, I think, in that they're so smart that they can always surprise and charm even the most jaded of us. They are omnivores, I believe, so I guess plant material is something they would eat… still, that does sound a bit odd. I've never seen a crow do that, either.

One time I saw a crow in the middle of the road and as the car approached, it started walking across, and then decided hopping would be faster… it wasn't, and it just made it look like an idiot. Hm, maybe that's not the best example of how smart crows are. And I wish I had seen this one, because it sounds hilarious, but I heard about it second-hand - a crow flying off with an apparently empty grocery bag in its beak. For some reason.

I find crows interesting, too. not sure that I like them, but I do find myself pausing to watch them when they're around. And generally it is “them” and not just one.

This is especially true when I learned that a group of crows is called a murder. Wonder who started that, and why.

The small ones are crows, the bigger ones are generally ravens… and they get mistaken for crows all the time. I have no idea why that matter to me.

In animal “intelligence” they're ahead of everybody's fave fixed-grin friendly neighbourhood ocean bullyboys the dolphins, which I think is quite lovely- the whole absolute and relative brain size thing is nicely undermined for the facile assumption that it really is.

I'm always entertained at the antics of those birds. They're amazingly cowardly though, running from the tiniest finches, flying in terror from nothing more that a flinch or a sharp look- that probably pays into intelligence too though, probably takes a LOT more smarts to know when to be afraid than to be “brave” or beligerant. -dogs take heed.

The ravens here are about as big as a cat when fully grown and have big buffy feathered beards that that fluff out at each other. They're also EXTREMELY loud, so I don't usually like them in my garden while I'm working inside… it's a horrible, desolate cry of despair and nothingness which is not improved one whit with volume! It really is so loud that it can make it impossible to hear people on the phone inside the house.
They are fun to watch though.

Definitely a crow, I've seen the difference many a time. :)

As for a finch pestering a crow into leaving, that's not terribly unheard. It's common place in the animal world for smaller and frequently more maneuvarable birds to drive off local aggressors such as hawks. The reality is their power and size (these are typically gliders too) can't match a tinier bird's raw agility so the predator either puts up with some feathers lost from flanking attacks or tries a better place to lurk. Kind of a bomber plane dealing with fighter jets scenario.

No, I get what you're saying, but it's not really true in the case of the corvids, at least from what I've seen. Even in large groups they're just as apprehensive about the attentions of one or two little birds, and the attention that pay to the smallest glances and little movements of humans in close proximity can be astonishing. I can set a whole flock of them fleeing in terror by moving no more than my head, eyes and fingers.
Whereas with other types of bird (big or small) they pay not the least attention or else they see it as an invitation to get closer in hopes that I'll drop food. -_-

I go with my theory about intelligence breeding caution ^_^

——————-

How do you feel when a friendship goes on the skids? Always feels a little painful to me, even when you're just buddies. People move on and stuff of course and it happens all the time, but it's not really that comfortable.
Ah well, on the bright side it's one less person to think about and more space in my head for artwork ^_^

Haha, the crows must be a little more brave over here, I've seen them chasing after hawks and buzzards when I'm on the highway :) But they're probably smarter over there in turn, I was quite fascinated with the story of how they solved the dillemma of inedible invasive poisonous toads by flipping them onto their back to get at their non-poisonous underbellies.
I always thought they were cool since I was little and read through one of those big book o'nature type volumes, and it said that crows have been observed playing hide & seek. One crow hides while the rest fly around looking for it, and if they get close it pops out of it's hiding place and squawks at them. That sounded incredibly cute to me :)
———-
As to the thing on friendship, I absolutely agonize over it, even if it's a mild acquaintance! Someone I considered a best friend back in middle school betrayed me to impress her new lower-tier popular girl friends, and even though she was the one who killed the friendship at the time I felt like I'd done everything wrong. That was probably the only real major one, but I've had acquaintances online drift away and I worry about them often. It's not even the people who commented nearly every update on my comic for a solid 3 years or more and then simply vanished, but even some people who I met as recently as months ago and then I never hear from them again. Sometimes once-in-a-great-while when I see one I want to say hello, but I don't want to come off as creepy!
I did make a reader account on SJ just to say hi to one former DD member from looooong ago, but I dunno if she remembers me at all!
It's kinda hard for me to tell who considers me a friend back though. There's been a few times when I thought I was held in a slightly higher regard in someone's mind, only to have the reverse laid bare to me when I dared to be friendly to said person. I am already hamstrung by social anxieties and experiences like this make it that much harder! I guess my problem is I want to be genuine friends with people, and a lot of people are just looking for people to use for the sake of promoting their comic, so they must think that's what I want too. I wouldn't be saying that if it hadn't happened to me 3 times already :(

ozoneocean wrote:
How do you feel when a friendship goes on the skids? Always feels a little painful to me, even when you're just buddies. People move on and stuff of course and it happens all the time, but it's not really that comfortable.
Ah well, on the bright side it's one less person to think about and more space in my head for artwork ^_^

I'm the absolute worst at keeping friendships going. After a while I think I become too easily irritated with people. In person it's not so bad - there have been a couple friends who I got annoyed with and cut out, but I think it made sense with them. Online I find it harder.

Hippie Van wrote:
ozoneocean wrote:
How do you feel when a friendship goes on the skids? Always feels a little painful to me, even when you're just buddies. People move on and stuff of course and it happens all the time, but it's not really that comfortable.
Ah well, on the bright side it's one less person to think about and more space in my head for artwork ^_^

I'm the absolute worst at keeping friendships going. After a while I think I become too easily irritated with people. In person it's not so bad - there have been a couple friends who I got annoyed with and cut out, but I think it made sense with them. Online I find it harder.

i don't know. i can't help but think even if people grow apart what made them friends in the first place is someplace and maybe they'll never be as close but goodtimes can still be had. to hell with distance, a friend is never really that far. which reminds me i need to try to recollect some aim names again.

Ugh… Guam politics… what am I gonna do? Right now there's a huge squabble about tax refunds. Our government hasn't paid refunds from year 2008 (maybe even earlier)up to this year. And this has been going on for decades now. All starts back in the early 90's, when the senators back then dipped their hands into the money that was supposed to go into paying the tax refunds and they haven't paid it back since. And now the current governor has a plan to pay it back, but the senators are resisting. I wonder what's going to happen if they continue to fail these things when they're supposed to and that interest rate keeps going up. I think it was 4% a year or something? The amount owed to the people here sofar? Over250 million.I bet it's nota lot of moneycompared tothegovernments of theU.S. states, but Guam being a small territory…

Sorry… I'm not happy with all the crap going on in our government here. Yes… I live in a tropical paradise, but every paradise always has some rot going on somewhere…

@Amy- That's weird about DD friends… There have been people over time here that have assumed a close friendship with me that I didn't reciprocate, basically because I didn't know them from Adam, and still others that I thought I had a friendly rapport with who were offended the moment I said anything familiar.

But yeah… Friendships can be hard to judge and retain, no matter if they're online or not, but it's always so sad when you realise that it's passed on and that other person does not value you anymore in the way you value them.

@Hippie- Haha, Facebook is the worst. There are people I'm no longer friends with but I'd feel so much worse about “un-freinding” them there even though I don't like them.

@Roku- Yeah, distance thins things out but doesn't break friendships… or at least friendships that're broken that way end a lot gentler. :)

Looking forward to them hurricane force winds at work. And I got the call, leave early so you make it to your shift on time.

Um, the Governor declared a state of emergency. If roads are closed and police turn me back I'm not making it to the site on time or until the waters recede. But then I suppose that's my fault for not investing in that amphibious car.

And if my site has been evacuated because of the storm do I still have to show up for work and guard the building which might fall on my head in the rising flood waters?

For those of you about to be smacked around by a hurricane, I hope you have your windows and doors barricaded and every nook and cranny of your house where the wind could find purchase seald off. Having your house blown apart by one is not pretty. And I should know… it's already happened to me twice.

Is anyone else seeing an ad with some sort of a video of scantly “dressed” blonde?

gullas wrote:
Is anyone else seeing an ad with some sort of a video of scantly “dressed” blonde?

No I either have abearded guy from a small business or the widely smiling Flo from Progressive insurance.

I miss the blonde in the bikini with the obviously surgically enhanced chest.

the pop up blocker is a wonderful thing.

Thanks for the hurricane tips, Lonnehart – sorry you can boast of firsthand experience. One of the difficulties is that our local weatherpeople ALWAYS make a big deal of every storm brewing, so when the storm hits 7? out of 10 times it's totally anticlimatic.

And then when the next one comes around, it's hard to take the warnings seriously. This “Irene” doesn't sound very strong, but it's pretty big, and the projected path is taking it through some very populated areas, so most everyone is taking it pretty seriously.

We're probably going to spend the day bringing the “blow-ables” (garbage cans for example) into the garage, and having a duct tape festival of sorts. I'd kinda like to attack the laundry pile before we lose electricity for a couple of days . . .

what a week: car accident, earthquake, hurricane. If I'm having a yin week, I want the yang week soon – or just send me the multi-million dollar lottery winnings, and we'll call it a day.

Which one is the one you're supposed to leave some windows open a crack to even out the air pressure? Or is that just a myth…

When I was in college on the east coast we got a tropical storm. We were in the dorms so it was pretty fun really. Til the power went out all night and a tree branch crushed part of the roof on one end of the hallway and another tree branch torpedoed through a window at the other end. And… it was still pretty fun after that, because we weren't in those places. They didn't get rid of the lounge furniture that was there though, and it started to smell all mildewy. That wasn't fun.

skoolmunkee wrote:
Which one is the one you're supposed to leave some windows open a crack to even out the air pressure? Or is that just a myth…

That's a myth. You should probably stay away from windows as much as possible during a hurricane.

What I'm basically saying is to seal your windows and any openings you may have that may lead into your house, ESPECIALLY under the roof. Any place the wind can get into so it can push the house apart from the inside. Leaving a crack in your window is definitely a myth. Even though the wind can blow hard, I doubt it can blow hard enough to make the air pressure inside the building rise enough to make it pop.

Hopefully you also have a safe room inside the house where you can weather out the storm if it somehow pops your house and rips it apart (similar to the safe rooms used for tornadoes). However, if you're not confident abuot how well your house will weather the storm, pack away all your valuables in stormproof containers and take shelter in any building designated for that purpose (our public schools are this since they're concrete).

Too bad statesiders (those living in CONUS) can't live in concrete houses. Cold weather and concrete houses apparently don't mix… (I live in a tin/wood house that's amonga neighborhood of concrete houses)…

So this fits into the Rave category:


ALL of the Radio Play Recordings are IN!!!! I'm so excited! They sound good, too. So while I have electricity, I'm beginning to knit everything together – I'm roughly half way through the play right now.

Which means: I want those radio art pages in SOON. Should I name names? hmm, yes, I think I should:

YOU!!

Genejoke

Snevilly

PitFace

usedbooks

rokulily

Kroatz.

One of YOU might hold up the broadcast, on Quackcast, of the famous, infamous, notorious, FIRST Drunk Duck Radio play. and I'll totally spill the beans on you. I've got a pointing finger and I know how to use it.

Hugs and kisses

Czarina

(and you'll see this exact post on two other threads. maybe more. I can't seem to locate the definition of shame on my internet dictionary)

ayesinback wrote:
So this fits into the Rave category:


ALL of the Radio Play Recordings are IN!!!! I'm so excited! They sound good, too. So while I have electricity, I'm beginning to knit everything together – I'm roughly half way through the play right now.

Which means: I want those radio art pages in SOON. Should I name names? hmm, yes, I think I should:

YOU!!

Genejoke

Snevilly

PitFace

usedbooks

rokulily

Kroatz.

One of YOU might hold up the broadcast, on Quackcast, of the famous, infamous, notorious, FIRST Drunk Duck Radio play. and I'll totally spill the beans on you. I've got a pointing finger and I know how to use it.

Hugs and kisses

Czarina

(and you'll see this exact post on two other threads. maybe more. I can't seem to locate the definition of shame on my internet dictionary)

Shame those shameful so and sos! We need that radio play! ^_^

—————–
My main computer needs replacing… I think. :(
Great timing… I can't really justify that expense now after spending Sooooo much over my holiday, and with no of the DD admin pay to help out. Grr…

I'm not sure what's wrong with it, but while I've been watching a tv show in (in Flash) full screen on one monitor and colouring a Pinky TA page on the other it just freezes. I've turned off as many silly background services as I can, updated graphics drivers and such, defragged all drives etc. But I dunno if that will fix anything.

I can only think of two real possible causes:
1. A hardware issue with my graphics card or my ram that's only just now causing a problem.
2. One of the recently updated programs is causing a huge memory problem- SeaMonkey (my main browser), Flash, or the Windows OS.

Either way it's too hard to narrow it down, all I can do is not run SeaMonkey or watch anything in Flash and just draw as usual and see if I avoid a freeze that way. If I do then that's either because of luck, or one of those was causing the problem, or the issue has gone away by itself… No way of knowing for sure.

Meanwhile, I neeeeed this machine for art and work. All my backup machines are too limited and old now. All my main programs are ON here! They couldn't handle the massive Pinky TA pages now. I don't want to raid my poor abused savings for another comp yet.
fuck. -_-

@Ayes, I'm on it, just having a creative block so now forcing myself to do it.

Genejoke wrote:
… just having a creative block …

We need to clear the blockage, immediately. Bend over, grab hold tight, and cough!