Sometimes this page posts about things that are slightly related to webcomics, or on occasion barely tangential to webcomics, and a handful of times completely unrelated to webcomics except by the barest thread. Guess which one we’re doing today?

This is the story of a chair. Specifically, the chair my butt is currently in as I type these words. After years of trying and failing to find a decent office chair for my home office, I eventually went out around 2008 or so and got a middle-tier gamer chair on account of you know who gets some pretty damn good chairs? Gamers.

Fast forward to nowish, and the foam on one of the armrests is disintegrating because it’s been used daily for a dozen years. I called up the company to see about replacements and the model of chair is long since discontinued, but the told me that they looked it up and a particular set of current armrests will fit. It’s US$70, but better that than getting a whole new chair that I don’t really need.

The new armrests don’t in fact fit. The mounting plate that joins the arm to the bottom of the chair has a screw hole in the wrong place, and my choices were return them and let the old rest fall apart, find a machine shop to drill a new hole in 3mm steel plate, or get to experimenting. I was able to detach both old and new arms from their respective mounting plate and the holes for swapping the plates were good so I could put the old plates (which will attach to the chair) on the new rests.

But the old plates won’t fit in a connecting slot on the new rests because there’s an entirely decorative raised section of steel on the plate.

Three hours, every tool I own, a run to the hardware store to get a tool I didn’t yet own¹ and about eight Dremel cut-off wheels later, I’d reshaped the old plate to the point it could slide in and attach to the new rest, got everything tightened and viola² it’s all working again and I can sit here and type to you about webcomics again. Because if you set a problem in front of an engineer that gives them a solution path involving a Dremel, you’d better believe they’re going to get to experimentin’.

Okay, fine, you get two tidbits of webcomics today:

• The Abominable Charles Christopher book 3 kicker now has had sufficient time to warrant a run through the FFF mk2. Let’s call it CAN$160K to CAN$240K, a number which I believe will comport well with the McDonald Ratio once today — day 3 — is done.
• Shing Yin Khor’s latest book, The Legend Of Auntie Po released yesterday and I was quite determined to get my copy today. I am pleased to say that violence was not necessary and as soon as I hit post on this and walk my dog³, I will be digging in.

Spam of the day:

CAREDOGBEST™ – Personalized Dog Harness. All sizes from XS to XXL. Easy ON/OFF in just 2 seconds. LIFETIME WARRANTY.

I have a harness for my dog, in fact. It’s got high-vis reflective tape sewn in, so she’s super visible from the porch when she’s taking her pre-bedtime dump in the yard.

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¹ An Ikea-style hex wrench with a suitably large diameter. They only sell them in sets of ten but it’s only about six bucks and now I have another set of useful tools in the toolbox so that’s all right.

² The least favored instrument in the orchestra. Violists are the classical music equivalents of the garage band bass player, demoted from the instrument that actually gets groupies.

³ Not a euphemism.