09.07.2008 - Terrence Marks:

My birthday is in a week, on September 13th. I'm asking for music. Your choice what. Local music. Or your own band. Or those songs you like, but don't think anyone else would. Your choice. I listen to a lot of music, mostly psychadelic pop. If it's from the 1960s, I probably already have it. But it doesn't hurt to ask. I'm sorry about the short notice. Our PO Box is listed above, or you could just send me a link if it's online.

Also, how are you guys liking the RSS feed? I'm strictly a web 1.0 kinda guy and I don't really use it. Do you? How could it be better? Should it have all the comics or just the last dozen? Let me know.

09.02.2008 - Terrence Marks:

Isabel and I play Maple Story - or at least we did until Monday. Now, when we went to Comic-Con, our freebie bag included, among other things, Maple Story cards. They've got an affiliated card game, and some of the cards give you in-game items.

One of the items we got, it turns out, sold for 100 million mesos. To give you an idea of scale, Isabel and I have been playing on and off for four years and have about thirty million saved up. This was a very significant amount of money.

So I put it in my shop. We begin making plans about what we'll do with the money, much like the protagonists in a Guy de Maupassant story would. We looked at a number of expensive things and I was trying to decide which of them would be worth buying.

It sold. Unfortunately, in my haste to get a good spot to sell, I left a zero or two out of the price. The item sold for a mere fraction of its usual price and all of our dreams of extra-fancy equipment crumbled to dust.

So now we're very disappointed in this turn of luck. From a strictly economic standpoint, the cards were included in our Comic-Con expenses. We paid nothing extra for them and are a million ahead, technically. In the same way, if you buy a winning lotto ticket for a dollar and trade it for a Happy Meal, you're making a 500% return on your investment, technically. If I, instead, got an item worth 500,000 and sold it for a million, I would've been thrilled. I don't think we could play without thinking about all the stuff we could've had, how we don't have it, and aren't going to get it any time in the near future. It's a slow, grindy game sometimes, and it's hard going when you realize that all the playing you did this week only gets you one thousandth of the money you lost.

So we're not playing it, at least for a while. We may try to find another multiplayer game - we're not too specific about it being online. Just something cooperative with a good amount of content. We may put the game down for a few months, again. Or we may ask you readers who went to Comic-Con, got the free cards, and don't play to send us your in-game item codes. We're not sure yet.

08.18.2008 - Terrence Marks:

Comics are back up to date! A new ND Talk podcast is up over at NamirDeiter.net! And if you donated $50 or more in any month between December 2007 and July, expect a package from us shortly.

Also, we'd like to thank everyone who donates and supports the comic. We were a few dollars short of our goal last month, but it looks like we're on track this month.

08.11.2008 - Terrence Marks:

August's wallpapers are up! Donate for a full size version, please.

08.10.2008 - Terrence Marks:

Yes, this thing gets updated every 10 days or so because things are either too busy to write, too dull to write about, or eventful enough to get covered in the main news, so I've got thing you might not have known about me #1-

You probably know that Isabel and I color Kevin & Kell. I'm still amazed that I got the gig. Several years ago, Bill Holbrook mentioned that the guys who color Safe Havens kept coloring Laptop wrong. I said I could do a better job. I couldn't, actually, but apparently I learned quick. Kinda. I think the first couple years, my style was abrasive and excessively shaded. Isabel does most of the work now, and has always had a much more even hand.

I considered a career as a professional comic strip colorist. Some comic strips, like Garfield, are colored in-house. Most of them are colored by a company based in Orlando. I remember calling them up during my last semester of college. It's about a dozen people. They all work from the office. They weren't really hiring, or going to hire anyone in the near future. I was vaguely interested, but the field didn't have much room for growth.

For a few months, I colored the internet version of Guy Gilchrist's Mudpie; we had creative differences in the end. I colored a few pages of Grootlore, until I graduated and got a real job. The folks at Plan 9 Publishing spoke to me about coloring print editions for two comics, one of which was Kudzu. The deal fell through, in part because they were significantly behind in paying me for Kevin & Kell by that point.

So instead I went into tech support. I think that I'll stick with coloring our comics and Kevin & Kell for the future.

08.09.2008 - Terrence Marks:

My computer is back working again. What happened? After the power outage it was giving me a CMOS error. Normally, this wouldn't be a problem. You hit F1 to continue or, in a worst case scenario, get a new CMOS battery ($3.50 and 5 minutes to replace).

The problem is that the PS2 ports and all of the onboard USB ports on my computer died, years ago. I got a USB card, but it's not recognized at that point in the boot. Fortunately, one of the front USB ports started working. I set the machine to not stop on any errors, ever. Is it smart? No, but neither is the alternative. About half an hour later, that same USB port stopped working again. But at least my computer works still, and I can delay getting a new one for a few more months.

08.07.2008 - Isabel Marks:

Around 11am on Wednesday, our complex's power transformer (that is literally seven feet from our bed) sparked and smoked something nasty after the transformer drum on the power line above the complex's parking garage blew up and smoked up. Once again, we were awoken to great crashing sounds and people screaming... the second time in a week (only, unlike the earthquake on the 29th of last month, this one was A LOT SCARIER. A LOT). At first, we thought our neighbors apartment was on fire, not realizing where the crashing sounds came from (and we heard them looking for a fire extinguisher). Then our power went out. After we panically wrangled our stupid cats into their stupid carriers, the living room was filled with nasty smoke as Terrence went outside to offer them ours. Turns out to have been the problems listed above (sorry for the lack of good story telling here- I'm just trying to get this information typed up as soon as I can). At first we didn't know what to do. Would they still need us to evacuate? The cats stayed in their carriers for a little while, we didn't feel like trying to get them again. Terrence didn't go to work, because if we needed to vacate, 1. I don't have a car, 2. I cannot carry three cat carriers by myself and 3. Cat Wrangling is a two person job, I could not have done it alone. But, in the end, after a night filled with jackhammers, workers outside our bedroom window screaming at eachother over said jackhammers ALL NIGHT LONG (all the work being done was only a few feet from our bed, causing little sleep to be had- leaving the both of us insanely irritable) and two hot mornings and afternoons, the power came on an hour ago.

So now where does this leave us? Unfortunately I only had two comics sketched out before all this and all the scripts were on my powerless computer. So now I am at work. Namir Deiter has the comic for the 7th up and Grover Hills will have one comic update this week (with three to make up for it next week). I will get the other comic up as soon as I can and two You Say it First comics also up as soon as I can. To make everything better (note the sarcasm), they changed Terrence's schedule on him (last minute and permanent) and instead of being here with me, I was alone in the dark with probably drunken neighbors walking in my bushes (to talk loudly to the workers about when things would be finished) and workers still screaming. To lump it all in a nut shell: this week sucked and I'm broke to show for it (but I have four more boxes of Pop Tarts - never go on an emergency nonperishable food run while PMSing D:).

Now... back to work! Hopefully the power will stay on and nothing by our bed will explode again! >< Once again, we apologize for the delay and thank you for your patience through all this!