I realized this year that I like doing this webcomic. My biggest problem was finding time, i.e. not playing a game and setting my mind to it. I believe the second hurdle in accomplishing the comic was not the drawing, but actually the backgrounds. I would do rather good drawings, but making backgrounds has been a hindrance in production. I can't get the backgrounds to the level that I would like and therefore have shied away from finishing the product. I am trying a new method in Part III to overcome this difficulty.

Now, on with the show. I saw Lord of the Rings, with reluctance. See, originally I was to see it the morning that it would open. Instead I went to work, remembering completely the Star Wars incident of trying not to fall asleep at work. There I was entering the theatre, trying desperately to forget Things not to say in the movie. When we entered the cineplex, there were a number of individuals participating in a fantasy mini-Con in the lobby. The whole nine yards of LOTR game cards, a huge D&D dungeon set where little figurines moved around inside a model, and live swordfighting. I looked at it all and just stared. What possibly in our lives could be missing so that we need to fill it with a fantasy world, that grown men and women would like to escape to? I have no answer. Maybe it is the culture of simplicity that people would like to return to. Or perhaps it is the chivalry of it all, or the anarchy of it all. But know this, the world that Tolkien created, it is populated by tons of people, real and imaginary, who if given the chance, would gladly live in that fantasy world. I saw the movie in a nice plush leather seat with wide seat area and tilting backs. I don't think I could be more comfortable in a movie theatre for three hours. Kevin had suggested that the endings drag on a little, and they do... forever. When I finally left the theatre I was so annoyed that I left feeling robbed of the actual movie going experience because I just wanted to leave.

I had a wonderful Christmas. I looked around and saw a number of people with the new, Happy Holidays, concept that is slowly gripping the stupid commercial fronts. On December 22, I left work and told my co-workers Merry Christmas, and they all were gripped for a second with a moment of feeling that I've not seen on most of their faces for a while. They actually stopped and wished me a Merry Christmas and meant it. Christmas is a feeling. A feeling of good that you realize that not all of humanity is out to get you, there are people who do want to work with you to make society better.

My New Year's resolution of not to lie to my friends came through for me as I ceased with the lieing and as a result, grew an entire inch and half taller. I'm not going to have a resolution set for next year, but I'll come up with one next year. n_n

I had eye surgery. They pulled my lid up and then bam they cut it off. That was fun. I was put on the operating table and had an I.V. placed in my arm. After thirty minutes they let the iv flow, and I looked at the nurse and said: "Ahhhh... that's the stuff." So, an hour later they drug me out from the operating room and started to wake me up. I hate those moments after coming out of sleep, especially drugged sleep and people are asking you questions, because everything is so weird. I really don't understand people doing drugs because this alone makes me want to stay straight. So, don't do drugs kids... Because something like this might happen: The nurses were prodding me to wake up and they wanted to know what I desired to drink. Before the operation, they had asked that to someone else, and I had said to myself: Say malt liquor. I did. The nurses gave me orange juice. I love orange juice. Seriously.

Phone Actresses is a funny thing to find employment for.

One of my friends got married. Yes another one. So, I went to Wal-mart and tried to find the gifts that they had registered with. No dice. Most of them were out of stock, so I ended up getting what I deemed a paint bucket (It's really nice actually with a handle and is used to seal fresh cookies). Then came the day of the wedding and the two were happily wed in the chapel. It was very nice, people turned out including some I had no clue who knew Cristy, so it was nice to see them again. After the wedding Kevin and I drove up to the reception hall and there we went in. After a couple of hours of dancing, haha! I danced, and with a lot of cute girls. At around eight o'clock one of the bride's maids came to me and pointed out they needed streamers for the bride and groom's car. So, I grabbed Kevin and Chris (a friend of ours) and off we went to Albertsons. Looking through the store we realized that we would also need something to write on the car. So, we grabbed some Irish spring soap and streamers (Blue, White, and Blue) and headed back, after paying of course. When we arrived back the car was already covered in stuff as the aforementioned bride's maid had cajoled the groom's best man into doing his duty. They did an alright job, but it wasn't quite good until I added the streamer's. When the groom came out his first words were: "What the F@#$ did you do to my car?!" Now that's something that I can take pride in.

I was sitting in class trying to think of ways to spite Kevin and his socialist leanings when I thought about operating systems and the USSR. I would have loved to have seen the operating system that would have been turned out by the Russian infrastructure. Sadly, the more I thought about it, the more likely the Russians would have used open source to go about their bidding. But it still would have been interesting, especially when it comes to data mining. The whole situation would have been nice to witness. But fortunately though, I don't have the worries of the cold war from day to day.

As usual it's a wonderful world. Why wasn't there a post on Monday last week. I've got that one covered actually. One of my classes had a project come due that was assigned at the beginning of the semester, and my group only got around to sitting down and figuring out what it would take the weekend before it was due. As a result on Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and Monday, my cadre of co-students were feverishly working away on the project until 12:30 and on Monday night, the day before it was due, up until 2:30. This project spanned numerous classrooms and two peoples houses. We were able to visit the families of two of our project members and just say "hi". So, over the course of time we each grew more and more desiring of the one precious gift that can't be transferred: sleep. Each night the later we stayed up I had to keep prodding each of the members with jokes to make sure that they still could keep going. When one of the group became really irritable, we would call it a night. Fortunately, one of our members reminded me of the All your base are belong to us phenomenom and we pulled up the web page and watched the music video. This saved us in times of hopelessness. For example, at one point in time, we were nearing the end of our paper, and I was piecing the final pieces together, I go to save the document in WinWord, and dang it all that stupid error message comes up and says: "This program has violated something, all your documents will be lost, sucker." Well that's how I remember it at 2:03 in the morning. I just burst into laughter. I am very proud to say that my group did an outstanding job. The only thing was that I didn't have a minute after the project or during it to really sit down and do today's comic.

Kevin of course was furious about my jab at him regarding the two webpage designs, it should be noted however that the people he designed the webpage for, asked him to specifically make it look that way. What can I say, web-design is an art, and it takes practice. It shows, Kevin is actually the one who designed this web page. The hardest thing in doing this thing is actually coming up with the content. Most people will just say, put me on the map, and then the web-page person comes up with a spiffy intro graphic and there's nothing in the site. A good example of well designed web pages are Crate & Barrel, Maxim, and Victoria's Secret. One of our members' wife wanted swim suits, and we got a chance to check out all the latest fashions. Viva Swim 2003!

For those that remember my speech on L33t, here's a translator for the rest of you.

The Swordsman=A lot of work in flash.

The person who used photoshop to alter the images of the iraqi conflict, well, thanks to us, you can see before and afters.

I have a wedding in two months that I'm scheduled to attend. At center will be the always fun Bridesmaid dresses.

Of course what would be a post without something for everyone: ZIPPO TRICKS!

My cat had a small bump a couple of weeks ago and we had it looked into. Cancer. So, she got an operation to get it removed. As a result she got to run around with a band-aid and a little wrapping around her to keep the band-aid on in her mad dashes around the house. Well, the vet didn't wrap her very well and she got it off and immediately dug her teeth into her side to get the stitches out. Blood everywhere. I asked the vet on why she might be doing this: "Fifty percent of the cats are fine, the other fifty percent don't do so well." This was not told to me in the post-op briefing. She had her stitches out last week and now I'm watching her run around with the new "Daniel" bandage method. She looks like Galahad, you know with the shoulder protection. No more chewing on the sides problems.

On Saturday I decided to make one of my favorite culinary treats: Chocolate Chip Pancakes. Solid. I busted out the ingredients: flour, sugar, salt, cinnamon, baking powder, baking soda, eggs, buttermilk (I didn't have that so I substituted milk), butter, and chocolate chips. Hooray! Well, I started to mix the ingredients when the problem came up for the milk. No buttermilk lent itself to regular milk with only two cups (No one will ever say I don't solve my own problems). The next step was to throw in the butter. I neglected to read past the list stating butter, overlooking completely the word melted. Since the butter wasn't mixing in with the rest of the ingredients I went back and looked at the recipe. Sure enough, I didn't need to melt it. I needed to get the butter that I had sliced into the batter out. Yes, I took a sifter and strained the butter out. This butter then went into the frying pan that was set up for the purpose of melting the butter. Since I didn't get all the batter off the butter, as soon as it hit the hot pan, a number of little pancakes were made. Learning my lesson, I cleaned out the pan, and put a new half stick of butter into the pan. This time it worked. I applied to my batter and I was ready to start making the pancakes!

Next I needed a small layer of grease (Read melter butter) added to my pancake making skillet. I tossed some butter in and threw some of the batter in. The recipe said: "2 minutes on one side." Okay, two minutes come up I flip it over, completely charcoaled. Hooray! I tossed that one. The next round of batter went on, and I reduced the time before I fliped it. Once I flipped it over however began the real fun. The butter ran out on me. So, the smoke started up. I ran around opening as many doors as possible and turning all the fans to high to avoid setting off the fire detectors. Needless to say, this pancake was toasty. The third pancake was the final toasting as I figured out how to keep the butter in the pan away from the happy chocolate chip pancake. The fourth, fifth, and sixth pancakes all came out tasty, and combined with my 100% pure maple syrup, I was eating like a king.

Here's a comparison:

Kevin makes a web page.

Daniel makes a web page.

Hey! It's Matt. That's right, he finally got the "treatment" of being updated. This is actually a better fit to Matt actually because I took his picture and "digitized" him using sophisticated technology to make him look like a cartoon in this comic.

Been a while. I went out with the girl from Valentine's, and let me tell you about that one. It wasn't a date, we went out after our mid-terms were over with a number of other students from the group of persons that I attend classes with. Where did we go? A bar of course. I was told to be there at nine, and was there at that time. I walked in and there was Andrew, one of the people I was supposed to meet there. He had a table and beers already there. He welcomed me and introduced me to all his friends at the bar, he was a regular and knew all the people and each person had a story behind them. Not being a drinking person I ordered a Smoothie and told the waitress, "no rum," sat back and listened and waited for the other people to show. The waitress brings back my smoothie and just like that, Danielle and two others show up. As soon as they sit down, a guy starts trying to talk to Danielle. I talked with the other two persons I knew, both very nice people. Danielle finally dispensed of the guy trying to hit on her and talks to me. Andrew goes and says: "Have a sip of his slurpee," the smoothie without rum caused a hoopla. Danielle however goes: "You don't drink, that's so hot." Allll-Riigghht. Another smoothie and now I realized that my cheeks were a little warm, and the bill comes. $9.11, smoothie with rum. Great, I have to drive home for an hour and I'm all jibbered up. (Not really, it was just minor alcohol). So, that was that.

For spring break I wanted to go up to Daytona Beach, and I was touting that I could go for three days and do it for $100. Here's how: Hotel rooms were $50 a night, Kevin and I get double beds, split the stay for two nights, $50 each. We both pitch in and buy some rolls, strawberry jam, and lunch meats at the local publix: Breakfasts and Lunches for the three days: $15. Then I would let us splurge on supper with $5 each. Two tanks of gas: $40/2=$20. Cost per person: $100. That's what I thought would be a good spring break. Nope. Kevin went up to see his parents, and all the other people I knew took a road trip to Kentucky, to see the first Kentucky Fried Chicken. I will say that my spring break looked better on paper.

Last weekend, I had my pseudo date with Kristy. We went and saw the play: "My fair lady." I would recommend this to everyone. At the end of it, the main characters came out and said: "We would like to thank you for coming out to this play, and keeping theatre alive, this is a real chance for people to see the real acting. We would also like to thank those overseas right now fighting for our ability to put on plays like this." They played the national anthem and everyone stood and sang that song. I write this because there were about 250 persons in that theatre, and not one was sitting in protest of the war, and this kind of thing won't get written up in the paper.

Also that weekend, I had a birthday party down at our local Gameworks. It was fun to be able to play Dance Dance Revolution. I did fairly well, and even tried taking it up a notch to practice some of the harder levels. One of my friend's date had never tried it, so I encouraged him. He trounced me on easy mode. Figuring he was sand-bagging me, I moved it up to moderate, and come to find out he was just lucky. So, I gave him pointers on how to not stay stagnate and he did better. I got a phone call from Kevin, he was in Orlando watching a robotics competition.

This weekend was a golf weekend. Not interesting, what was, was the fact that I saw wild turkeys. Instead of the fat short legged birds, the ones we saw were tall, proud moving birds. These were the ones that Benjamin Franklin were talking about when he wanted to make these the national bird, instead of the Bald Eagle.

Later Days.

Kevin currently is out on a date with a girl. This is not of interest, what is is the conversation that he and I had leading up to this date. I called him up to see if he wanted to go to Daytona for Spring Break. And he said he would have to see, and for some odd reason (I think he wanted to make me envious) he blurted out that he had a date on this Sunday night. I asked him where he would be going, and he replied: 'Daniel, I am not going to tell you that.' I asked why, the response: 'I don't want you following me.' I was floored. I promised that I would not follow him, and after much coercion he admitted the location. I responded with: 'Ooohh, they have nice bushes to hide in, you'd never see me.' Kevin was a little upset, and I promised in earnest not to bother him or his date.

Kevin's date was not alone, he was going on a double date. I don't know if I'm a big fan of the idea of a double date, you really don't get to do any one on one conversation, nothing deep, because you have the other group to worry about. And when you drive the girl that you are personally on the date with home, you still have the other couple in the car, you can't come up with sheepish ways to stand on the doorstep, trying to get close to one another for a good night kiss\hug. You're on a time clock, people are out in the car, so instead of a meaningful french kiss goodbye, you end up with an awkward hug.

As for my exploits, I went and had Chinese food yesterday and went into pay for my food and this beautiful blonde girl with glasses on comes up and asks to help me. I asked for my meal that I had phoned in, and she smiled and said, which one. She was pretty, and I could feel myself losing it right there, with the sheepish grin as I tried really hard to concentrate. She handed me my bill, I paid with credit card and tried to think of things to say. The best I could come up with was: 'Please tell me you don't have a boyfriend, or husband.' To which if she replied no: 'Good, then I would like to ask you out on a date next Friday.' I really wish I would have said that, then I wouldn't be wondering what the response would be. *_*

For a bonus look at today's date and you can see 030303 spooooky. Later Days!

Birthdays are a fun thing, except when they are your own. Yesterday was mine and I had a great party that I don't think could really be bested. There were candles, party hats, the little firing pop cannons that spray confetti and streamers when you pull them. It was great. I also received my wish that no one would sing Happy Birthday to me, I've never been a big fan of it because everyone is singing to you and there is no where for you to lock your eyes. I mean, you can only look at the cake so long before everyone thinks you're weird, and you really can't look at anyone for too long otherwise they think you're debating on whether or not to wish them undressed as your birthday wish. The whole singing of the song just bothers me. I wish there were some way to incorporate the birthday person into the situation.

My Valentine Adventure

There was this girl in my class that I have a thing for, so instead of spending the Valentine's like I normally would, at another anti-valentine's day party, I decided to do something about it. I went and bought a rose from the supermarket, to which I also wrote on a piece of paper: Happy Valentine's Day, from your secret admirer. I took the rose and put it inside a newspaper that I rolled up to protect it from getting crushed. That Thursday, I walked in and placed the rose on her desk space, and so I sat down with the only other person in the room and waited. Well, she walks in and I turn around and see that the rose still had the newspaper on it. So, she looks at it, and goes, why would someone leave the newspaper on it. Calmly I turned around and suggested that the newspaper was for prevention of crushing. She, blushed and went on with: This is sooo cool, I have a secret admirer. So, then we left class and I needed to figure out a way to get her to go out with me the next day for Valentine's Day. So, with this information in mind I couldn't come up with anything until I came up with an idea. I awoke the next morning with the best option, I was going to write a little card and place it on the door outside her class, and so when she comes in she would see it. I wrote: Happy Valentine's day, from your secret admirer, if you'd like to know who it is think back and remember who the one that said what the newspaper was for, and if you would like to go out tonight stay after class, if not then just leave. Your Secret Admirer. With this I taped it outside the door with her name on it, and entered the class. At 9:00am our class started and she wasn't there, and I started to worry, but then she comes scooting into class at 9:04 with her head down and totally missing the card. Here I began sweating, what was I going to do, how was I to solve this one. I could get up and go to the bathroom and 'notice' the card outside, but that makes it a bit suspicious. Locked in this debate, our professor who was letting the Teacher's Assistant teach, was walking in and out of class. After Danielle came in, he went out for a bit, and came back with the card, and hands it to her. The roller coaster of love still wasn't complete, there was over an hour remaining in the class. Finally, the teacher let us go and she came directly over to me and told me what I had done was sweet and that unfortunately she already had plans, but if I wanted to do something else at a different time, then that would be good. SO, nothing happening there right now. But, goodnes, what a roller coaster to be on, it was a crazy valentine's.