ChronosCat

As a child of the 80s: Transformers, G.I.Joe, and My Little Pony (though Transformers was the only one of the three I was into at the time). (Not that I could have told you Hasbro made them at the time, but I didn't really pay attention to what brands made toys and games back then.)

It's exiting to finally see one of Grace's siblings again. I know Dan has a lot of characters to juggle, but for characters who were once so important to the story, and who remain important to Grace, it's bugged me for a while that we've gone so long without seeing them (well over a decade and a half at this point!). I wonder how much we'll actually see of Vladia in this story, and whether this is a sign we may actually have Grace interacting with them again before we hit the two decade mark... Vladia talked a little bit about her views of her female-human form at the end of Painted Black and when Grace talked with her on Grace's birthday. The first time, she said that as far as she was concerned she had never been a man, merely a monster. The second time she said she was happy with her current form. Based on this, I believe Vladia is the sort of person without a strong sense of an internal gender identity, and since she had never experienced what it was like to be a human male, slipping into the role of a human female was relatively easy for her. Well, according to the final recap link in the commentary, the "trainee" has "a talent for detecting people who are using concealment magic". Of course this raises the question of where she gets that power. I suspect that since we last saw her she's been learning magic. Alternately, perhaps despite not appearing on her face her antennae have not been completely suppressed (maybe they were just moved to the back of her head?), and she still has the senses they provide.

I learned of it on the RPG.net forums (which I joined, ironically enough, for their active off-topic forums). Of course, I don't play D&D, so it doesn't directly affect me, but I have to admit it's a pretty messed up situation.

Yay for towering explosion background in panel one!

But on occasion... (Baby Herman from Who Framed Roger Rabbit comes to mind.)

Dan accidentally released this Milestone for patrons earlier than usual; it can be found at: https://www.patreon.com/posts/whoops-ashley-76836142 Tomorrow night it should be available on the main site; I'm guessing the URL will be https://www.egscomics.com/sketchbook/2023-001 I don't have too much to say about this one other than that the art's pretty but the contents don't do much for me.

Yeah, I copy-and-pasted an old url then edited it, and apparently the rich-text editor decided I wanted to keep the original link with the new text... It's fixed now.

It's an artificial tree, and sadly far too small to climb. I just wanted to make sure I wasn't setting myself up for a Krampus attack or something if I put off taking it down until the weekend.

What will happen if I don't?

Developments in D&D are probably fairly irrelevant to this storyline; Dan doesn't actually have a lot of experience with tabletop RPGs. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if the game they're playing in story wound up influenced by some of the video games he plays. (I seem to recall appearance playing a large role in persuasiveness in Dan's "Parable" story/game, so this may be Dan playing around with the same ideas again.) The part where it gets weird is when Nanase and Ellen talk about it as a phenomena they are concerned about in real life. Of course, as you said looks do play a part in how people react to one another in real life, but generally being good looking isn't enough. Considering what George said, I don't think this is Dan's mistake - I think Nanase and Ellen are supposed to be mistaken. But I suppose we'll have to wait and see to know for sure.

Well, the thing is, I (and my parents) actually rely on a Mobile Hotspot for home internet (we live out in the middle of the woods, where the only other option at the moment would be to get a satellite dish, and last we checked that was more expensive than we could afford). And no, there's no ethernet socket on it. (For that matter, I hadn't really thought about it since I never use ethernet connections, but there's no ethernet port on the laptop either - just HDMI and a couple different kinds of USB.)

Yeah, that would probably be the best thing to do.

A good idea, except I'm not aware of anywhere I might go that has wired internet. Not very. Besides the fact that I have zero experience with working with the internal hardware of computers, there's also the fact that I just bought this laptop a few weeks ago and don't want to risk voiding the warranty or otherwise causing damage the warranty won't cover.

Yesterday evening my laptop suddenly stopped detecting any Wi-Fi signals; borrowing my parents' laptop I determined that the Wi-Fi was fine - my laptop was the problem. Restarting the computer only made it worse - now the icon on the taskbar and the entry in the settings for Wi-Fi were gone entirely. I didn't want to wait for a computer repair place to be open to fix the problem (or to either pay for someone to fix it or try to make use of the warranty) if I didn't have to, so I used my parents' computer to go to the website of my computer's manufacturer (ASUS) and check the support section for suggestions. I found a solution that seems to have worked for the moment, but before I thought to go to the ASUS site I found a bunch of Redit posts complaining about the network card my laptop has (and the drivers for said card) not being very reliable, and some people talking about having this problem repeatedly. So now I find myself worried that my laptop's wireless functions could malfunction again at any time without warning.

You're welcome.

Lady Tygress Suite. Great work as always, ProfessorTomoe! Incidentally, I already listened to Geisterwolken, and it was awesome; I only regret I didn't get around to listening to it sooner.

Yay for speedlines backgrounds in panels five through eight! Also, the final panel looks really cool.

My parents gave me some jeans & some winter PJs (long gone are the days when I was disappointed to get clothing as a present), Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (the movie, not the game), Beren & Luthien by J.R.R. Tolkien, the Pink Floyd album Ummagumma (I'm in the process of collecting their albums), and an IOU for Hyrule Warriors: Definitive Edition (the delivery was delayed, so it hasn't arrived yet). From my sister, I got the Pink Floyd albums A Momentary Lapse of Reason and Animals.

We lost power from around 6 PM to around 5 AM; given how many people lost power and how much work the power crews have, we were lucky it wasn't out longer. There is still some white stuff on the ground, though I suspect it's more ice than snow at this point (I haven't been outside to check). So bright side: we'll have a white Christmas with electricity (even if it is fairly cold out).

https://www.egscomics.com/sketchbook/2022-018 https://www.patreon.com/posts/76265365 I have found my desktop background for the next few days.

Well, it is nice to be able to see the keys when using it in a dark room (though on the other hand I try to have a light on when using my computer, and I can touch type). Anyway, finding a laptop I liked and could afford was hard enough without ruling out laptops that had unnecessary features.

I'm hoping to get a new computer soon, but there's one big detail I'm having a hard time deciding on: which OS to get/use. I'm leaning towards Windows 10 or 11 since Windows is compatible with the most software (& hardware). However, the most recent version of Windows I've used is 8.1, and I've heard some things about 10 & 11 I don't like the sound of, such as it being difficult to reliably delay updates until you're ready to install them, Windows 11 in particular making it hard to create accounts that aren't linked to Microsoft Accounts, and advertisements built into the OS. I don't know how annoying such things would be, but stuff like that makes it hard for me to trust that the Windows experience won't continue to get worse, and makes me seriously consider getting something else. I've used a Mac before (my computer for most of the 00s was an iBook), and really liked it - but that was over a decade ago. I'm not sure how much has changed, and I'm not looking forward to going back to having the majority of software not be compatible with my computer's OS. I have heard that there's a lot more software compatible with Macs these days, and WINE to help with some that otherwise aren't (and there's always virtual machines if I'm willing to put up with a drop in performance), but I'm sure it'll still be an issue. There's also the problem that Macs tend to be more expensive than the equivalent PC, and I'm trying to get the most computer for my money. I'm also a bit tempted by Linux. I've never used Linux before, but I've heard a lot of things I like about it (such as it having a high degree of customizability, and being more stable and secure than Windows); I also like the fact that it isn't created and maintained by some big corporation. Of course, there would be similar issues with software compatibility as with Apple, and if I wanted a computer with Linux pre-installed my options would be rather limited. And then of course there's the question of "Which distribution?" (from what I've read, probably Ubuntu or something based on it, but that only narrows things down so much). I'm not interested in Chrome, and I don't think I'm tech savvy enough to handle an OS more obscure than Linux (and even if I could learn I don't think I'd want to take the time). One additional option I'm considering is to get a computer with Windows on it, test out a few Linux distributions in a virtual machine, and then set the computer up to dual boot Windows and Linux. My biggest concern with this option is that I've never actually done something like it before, and I don't want to risk messing up a computer I will have just recently bought. So, anyone have any thoughts or advice to share on the matter?

Rainy today, with a predicted high of 50 (f); for context it's been in the 30s for the past couple of weeks, and we have about a foot of snow on the ground. (I wonder if any of it will still be here tomorrow?) More troubling is the predicted wind: sustained winds around 30mph, with gusts up to 60mph. If that prediction holds, there are going to be a lot of branches and even trees blown down, and we'll be lucky if we don't loose power. Tomorrow we get a cold snap, with temperatures dropping down to around 20... Fun.

I seem to have figured out what triggers that bug: a setting (on by default) that causes the keyboard backlight to flash when in sleep mode. I didn't like that feature anyway, so no loss there.

I have access to a multiverse; while this gives me a lot of options it does mean I sometimes when working on a story I have to decide between multiple similar (or not-so-similar) realities.