11.25.2010 - Terrence Marks:

I hope you're all having a great Thanksgiving. Unless you're Canadian, in which case I hope you enjoyed Thanksgiving when you had it last month.

I'm feeling a lot better than I was when last I updated. Things have been pretty interesting around here. In a good way. Unfortunately, they've also been busy. Why? CompTIA provides a number of IT-related certifications, including A+ and Security+. If I get one before December 31, it lasts forever. If I get it after, it lasts three years. I'm studying for the Security+ exam now and will probably go for the A+ exam after that.

I've been meaning to get A+ certification for the last six years. I've been putting it off in the hopes that I could get someone else to pay for it. There's always been a gap between when we have a certification budget and when I'm ready to take the test. I always seem to do these things right before the deadline. I got my Windows 2000 MCSE the day before they discontinued the test.

Anyhow, I'm going to be busy for a little while. We've started playing D&D. I picked up a bunch of awesome comics that I don't have time to read or discuss - Darkwing Duck, Usagi Yojimbo, Cross Game, Fushigi Yuugi, the new Amelia Rules trade paperback.

You know what's awesome about Usagi Yojimbo? He's there to kill bandits and build a giant taiko drums. Any other action hero would follow that up with "...and he's all out of keyaki wood" (which is what they make taiko drums out of). Usagi Miyamoto is not out of keyaki wood. He is going to kill bandits and build a giant taiko drum in a historically accurate way, which is much more impressive than merely doing one of those things.

11.15.2010 - Terrence Marks:

My ear has been hurting me for the last few days. I've been meaning to mention it, except I keep trying to find something witty to say about constant pain. I've got five messages in my drafts folder that begin with "ow! ow! ow!" and go downhill from there.

The good news is that my eardrum isn't ruptured. The bad news is that my ear canal is infected, which the doctor says hurts even worse. I'm inclined to believe her. Like many problems, it will pass. In the meantime, I'm feeling pain in places that I didn't know could feel pain, avoiding solid food, and sleeping a lot. Isabel has inked the comics, but spent the last few days taking care of me instead of coloring them. I appreciate that. I know that a lot is happening in all of our comics right now and appreciate your patience.

11.01.2010 - Terrence Marks:

We made donation the goal. Thank you all for your support. Isabel has had a bad cold for the last week, though and is taking tonight off. We will, as always make up for it. In the meantime, a very nice reader has created the Namir Deiter Wiki. If you contributed to it, that'd be awesome.

10.04.2010 - Terrence Marks:

The wallpapers were updated on the first! But now you can see the previews if you scroll down. We've got some awesome Halloween wallpapers featuring Joan, and Richard & Veronica. Any donation of $1 or more gets them to you, and $10 or more gets you access to NamirDeiter.net (including all the past wallpapers, sketches, bonus comics, commentary, and more)

Thank you all for helping tag our comics! We've added a few features - you can list all tags for a comic (Namir Deiter, You Say it First, and if you're a donor, NamirDeiter.net ). As you can see, Tipper is in the lead, with Brisbane in second place.

You can also view all the untagged comics if you're looking for a place to pitch in. Again, you can choose ND, YSIF, and NamirDeiter.net.

09.26.2010 - Terrence Marks:

I really need to update this more often.

Also, when I bring up a problem I need to mention when it gets fixed. The water outage two weeks ago? Fixed the same day it happened (after I had to go to work, but that's another story). It's been fine since and probably won't break again for a few more months.

Frankie, our new kitten? All parasites have been removed, internal and external. He's been subjected to a large amount of veterinary medicine all at once. Pretty much everything you're supposed to have done to a kitten got done to him in a span of about two weeks. All the boxes are checked off, and that's hard on a cat. That's what we spent the middle of the month doing - sitting up with him and watching him recover. He's doing alright now.

We call him Frankie for short. That was the deal. Isabel got to choose what we call him, I got to choose his name. Depending on how I'm feeling, his full name is usually "Frankie Goes to Hollywood" or "Abbot & Costello Meet Frankenstein".

Also, I finished watching Babylon 5 a few days ago. I never watched it when it originally aired, possibly because there was some misguided B5/Star Trek rivalry and I was on Team DS9. Or maybe because I didn't get the channel that it was on. It was a long time ago.

I highly recommend the show to anyone who likes science fiction, even a little bit. When the show really gets going (which is about season two through the middle of season four), it's amazing. The bad episodes (which there aren't too many of) all have very good parts to them. The good episodes have more happening in them than I thought was possible to fit into 45 minutes of television.

We get emails from people about how they spent weeks reading the entire archive of You Say it First and/or Namir Deiter (or, more rarely, Unlike Minerva and Spare Parts) and after going through all* of Babylon 5, I know how you feel.

*: I skipped the first half of season 5. If you skipped Picnic in the Park (or Todd's Review Site or pre-reboot Unlike Minerva...) when you read through You Say it First (or Spare Parts or Unlike Minerva) we're even.

09.06.2010 - Terrence Marks:

Happy Labor Day! You Say it First now has an archive tagging system. You can search and find comics featuring Brisbane or set in the lounge, or about computers or...well, it's a community project. You won't see every comic there right now - it's a 12-hour-old community project. Some awesome people have been going through the archives and tagging things. Most comics haven't been tagged yet, so here's your chance to be awesome.

No percent-signs, dashes, or doublequotes (%,-,"). Those are reserved for system use.

You can enter multiple tags, separated by commas. If you tag something "Brisbane, Kimberly" that will add a Brisbane tag and a Kimberly tag to it.

Clicking the red x deletes the tag.

If you have any questions, we've got a forum topic for it.

08.30.2010 - Terrence Marks:

Forum registration now works once again. I think something broke when I patched it. I've manually activated a bunch of accounts, so if you registered but didn't get the email it's cool. If you haven't registered yet, now's the best time.