The thing about a network outage (such as I had yesterday) is that it doesn’t just prevent me from participating in a meeting or two. As mentioned on previous occasions, I teach for a technology company, and an interruption means class isn’t happening. That material ain’t gonna teach itself, so we’re behind for the rest of the week. Add to that the fact that three of my students this week are in Mexico City and suddenly piped up this morning We’re having an earthquake, we have to go outside now just put us further behind¹.

But thankfully, we’re in a portion of class with lengthy exercises. While I haven’t had much time to look deep into [web]comics news today (or, honestly, for the past couple days), I did notice a couple of things. They’re extremely random.

• Chris Hallbeck made my physics-loving heart sing with today’s Pebble And Wren: an explanation of ice cubes, and how we don’t shove around cold in making them, we pull heat out. I sometimes pity the children of today, growing up without Beakman’s World², because where else are they going to learn There’s no such thing as cold, there’s only more heat and less heat? Apparently, from Hallbeck.

  As long as we’re mentioning Hallbeck, this is your early notice that he is about to hit a Big Round Number of Maximumble (current strip: #1985), which I notice puts him past the just over 1900 strips he did at The Book Of Biff. The point, to the extent I have one, is that 1902+ 1985 + 566 (Minimumble) + 292 (P&W) = a metric squatload³ of comics (or, to be exact, 4745) since he started back in January of Aught-Six, or about three weeks after this page launched. Given that there have been 5286 days since the launch of Biff, that’s damn near 0.9 original strips per day, and over that threshold if you count his collaborations with other creators. Dang, Chris, well done.

• Speaking of well done, I can always count on Erika & Matt to find a way to rise the challenge of [waves hands about helplessly] all of this. To quote the modern-day version of the St Crispin’s Day speech in today’s strip:
  

  We can’t take time off, but we can do the next best thing: A simpler comic. Let’s just get back to our roots and back to the title of this comic with a good ol’ fashioned sex toy review. We can’t fix the world but, by god, we can review a vibrator. [emphasis original]

  I would follow Erika Moen into battle, no shit. And since I don’t believe that we mentioned the end of the Drawn To Sex: Our Bodies And Health Kickstart. The campaign finished with US$54,027 of a US$7K goal. We didn’t bother with the FFF mk2 because it funded so quickly and those huge Day One campaigns mess with the formula. But I’ma say that any campaign that ends up at 780% of goal is a success. If you didn’t pledge, I guess you can wait until November when they go on sale.

Spam of the day:

Thank you for the quickly delivery to my home. When I saw the order. I immediately saw that something was wrong with it, and when I opened it, the product was unfortunately broken. I am a regular customer, and I regularly order from your shop.

You’re not even trying, Jesus.

I don’t mean that Jesus isn’t trying, I guess that’s his whole deal if you believe in that. I meant it as an intensifier to express the depth of my contempt for this would-be identity thief.

_______________
¹ They tell me that things got shaky in MC, but didn’t mention any damage when they returned. Something tells me that closer to the epicenter in Oaxaca, it’s gonna be not such good news.

² Or even Bill Nye The Science Guy. Nye’s an actual engineer whereas Beakman was played by an actor, but honestly, I was always more of a Beakman fan. Zaloom!

² Which, given the conversion ratio of metric squatloads of 2.54:1, means an Imperial squatload is equal to approximately 1868.11 strips.