Google, get your shit together.

Just spent like ten minutes trying to make Google sign me in with the account I actually use instead of the random account Viaero gave me for my phone. Should not have been this hard.

I'm at a show at the Broker, it's all right but I'm rocking beyond nowhere near enough reality right now. I'm trying to think of some way to be productive since I'm far too sober ATM, but this was the closest thing that came to mind.

I've played a lot of chess tonight, trying out Hikaru Nakamura's hyperdefensive strategy as white and the Sicilian Defense as black. I'm getting good at the former, but I get the impression that the Sicilian is hard to play well. My ranking for live chess has improved though... I'm about 1000-1100, only about 100 points below my non-live ranking.

What else... I've been sick since Labor Day. Wouldn't be out tonight except that my friends and I made plans. This is also why I haven't done a comic in three weeks. Well, that and the thesis.

That's coming along swimmingly, though. I made my first map for the thesis this week; just a map of central Asia before Genghis Khan started breaking shit. My advisor says it's pretty good. I've seen the fairly simplistic maps that predominate the field of Mongol studies; putting out something that's got more information while being prettier and easier to read shouldn't be hard. The background in art and geography is helping me a lot. I'll try to provide a pic for the net here soon.

Speaking of random stuff helping out, it turns out Draya spent her childhood riding a Mongolian horse, which is important because they are different from other warhorses. Not as strong or fast, but they can endure twice as much. Mongol strategy often involved pretending to run away and tiring the enemy cavalry out, and then attacking. Mongol horses aren't very common on this continent, so knowing someone who grew up handling one (and dating her, no less) is incredibly lucky.

Apparently one of Draya's relatives is a translator over in Mongolia, to boot. Which gives me heart about this degree, especially if I go on for the Ph.D. Even if I don't teach, I can almost certainly travel abroad and earn a living translating stuff. My Russian skills will help with that too, as they're next door. If I can somehow learn Chinese, I'd be set.

Anyway, enough rambling for now. Now that I, well, have an app for this, I may post more often.

Project 86 is looking for funding support for a new album.

It looks sweet as hell too.

They've been one of my favorite bands since high school. The 503 is replete with Project 86 references, up to and including putting their frontman Andrew Schwab in the comic for Strip 300. The Project 86 froams (sic) were the second messageboards I ever posted at. They are, all around, a fantastic band whose brilliance hasn't diminished with time. Not only that, but they did it all with very little label support (back when that was a necessity) and in a scene with very little acts that could hold a candle to them. (One of the few that could, Anberlin, recently announced that they're breaking up after a farewell tour.)

Basically, their music kills, killed and will kill to come. Just about anyone who listens to harder stuff has dug them after I played a few songs of theirs. And their latest crowd-funding project is a fan's dream. For $25, I'm getting a signed limited-edition copy of the album, and a bunch of additional stuff. If you look on the list of perks on the Indiegogo site, it's nuts just how much they're willing to do for their fans.

I really really hope this thing works, which is why I'm spreading the word. It's got 38 days left to work, and they're over halfway there, but I wanna make sure they reach their goal. I'm currently reading a book for class called Who Owns The Future? by Jaron Lanier, and one of the points he makes is that the digital network economy has hollowed out the middle class, and one of the places it started was the music industry. It's harder than ever before to eke out a living playing music, but I think and hope that Project 86 will be one of the rare acts that manages to not only pull it off, but to do so on their own, without having to rely on a label. The future of the music industry is going to increasingly look like this, and as a multi-medium artist myself, I want to support other artists trying to make it work.

Every new beginning is some other beginning's end.

My buddy Nate and I have been living parallel lives in reverse ever since July 2011. We've both noted this phenomenon, and with my move, the chapter has finally closed.

July 2011: I arrive in Fort Collins, Colorado on a Greyhound. After hanging out with a friend for the night, he picks me up and we hang out with his brother for a few days at a Rennfaire, and then go to Chadron, where I have a job offer with Wreckers as security for Fur Trade Days.

I'm functionally homeless for two weeks as I take out loans to get a house that I'll share with Nate. I'm crashing on his couch, or when he's got family visiting, in his backyard. His parents are nice and I do a lot of cooking to sort of earn my keep until the stuff I mailed from Portland to myself arrives and we can get a house.

In short order, we do get a house. Technically one-bedroom, the basement can easily serve as a second bedroom. We'll eventually make the mud room (think a garage that you can't park a car in) into a third bedroom. I get the actual bedroom, Nate takes the basement. We don't know this yet, but it will be infested with wasps in short order. We will have a "Bug Board" keeping a running tally of bugs slain by each of us; at last count he was leading 127 to 6.

Nate gets a car. The first time I moved to Chadron, it was for a girl. Her parents still like me, and her dad works at one of the dealerships, and he hooks Nate up with an excellent 2001 Buick with all the stuff for $1800. We have a house, we have wheels. I need a job. He's got a job cooking at the nursing home.

Today's 503.

I actually got one out on time, try not to look so shocked.

In the Facebook post I made to the comic's group about it, I linked the TVTropes article for "Put On A Bus." That's kinda what I'm doing with Shellie now. I feel like the character has a lot of potential, but I haven't been able to realize most of it.

Part of it's because other characters are just bursting with potential. Saffron's going to play a key role in the next chapter, being the center of the characters' resistance to a Very Bad Thing in "The 503rd Oregon (The Left Must Hold)." Tina's going to be one of the key players in the chapter after that, "Five-Oh Fantasy Three." Seymour is going to take center stage when the group eventually starts a clan in Online Moon Game. The Aussies are going to go on vacation here soon, and that's going to be a big plot.

Record Breaker Day.

Aww yeah. Traffic's picked up a lot on The 503 lately, and this is the day when it broke the previous record for yearly hits.

The 503 is a pretty unique comic, traffic-wise. It's not a gag-a-day comic, and even compared to something like Questionable Content or Something*Positive, it's very story-driven. As a result, you can't really read just one, so a lot of my readers wait for a while and then read a bunch all at once. I see this when an unreasonably large amount of my traffic comes from people Googling the comic to find it again, because they didn't bookmark it the first time.

The comic had a really strong summer, and although traffic's slowed a bit since then, it hasn't slowed much. September was one of the strongest months on record, and October's lining up to be the same, even though typically these are the weakest months.

It may be the case that the comic is finally - finally - starting to break through. I certainly hope so. I'm not doing it for fame or anything, but I certainly wouldn't turn it down.

What I'm listening to today.

The album came out last year, but it's fast become one of my favorite songs of all time. The Birthday Massacre is one of the few newer gothic bands to come out that's actually been pretty good. They've kept alive the spirit of the old school while keeping it relevant to the times.

Also, this song reminds me of my girlfriend. The why of it is a story I can't really tell, at least not yet and not directly. (Expect an arc in The 503 in the years to come.) But suffice it to say that I'm a really lucky dude.

Winter is coming.

A snowstorm beat Chadron senseless like Elvis at a hempfest last night.

I'm currently at the Bean Broker, and on my way here I took some pictures of the damage. Trees have collapsed under the weight of snow all over; construction equipment was clearing felled trees on my street when I woke up this morning. Impromptu urban streams revealed their pathways for the day or two that they'll exist. And I'm currently negotiating with my dumbphone to transfer these pics to my computer so I can show you guys.

A bit about this dumbphone. It's actually quite smart for a dumbphone. It can play music, take pictures, and if it has a plan connected to it, it can text and make calls and browse the internet and all that. It's probably the smartest dumbphone you can buy, and it served me well until the company it works with decided to screw me. So now I use it as a music player and a camera. With a bigger SD card it could be as good as an iPod, and as for its camera abilities... they're not great, but I've been able to take pictures high-quality enough to use them on the comic. I actually quite like it, and I'll probably keep it around for many years to come. When I do finally part with it one day, it'll only be because it broke or I got a "real" camera, and if it still works I'll give it to someone who'll treasure it as much as I have.

Oh, one more thing.

New comic's up today.

They've been at a bar for the past few strips, but this is a new scene. It's one of those strips that tells the story through subtle details, through the art. And Saffron's really adorable in it.

This is also the end of my buffer. I've already cut a bargain of sorts with my readers to just not update on Wednesdays for a while, so the next one's due up on Friday. I'm gonna go down to the Jolly Swagman Bean Broker now and try to get a couple more in the buffer.

One final thought: I've only had Facebook removed from my bookmarks for a few hours and I already feel a lot more productive. I even caught myself mindlessly browsing and instinctively going to where the bookmark used to be. This is gonna free up so much time; I should've started blogging earlier.