(chuckle) i wonder what largo will say when he sees that I've given him his very own 'buy a megabear' banner. ^_^ He'll probably kill me. So, nice knowin ya. I'm a dead man.

A few things going on this weekend. We've got some special stuff in the works for this month that will also help cover me while i move to a new apartment. It's weird, but this might actually be the easiest move I've ever had to do. The way things worked out, I signed a lease on the new apartment today but I don't have to be out of this one till the end of the month.

gee. A whole month to move. That will never happen again.

A year ago, almost to the day, I was driving a 14 foot Isuzu Budget Rent-a-Truck up from Atlanta to Michigan. It was just me and the two cats - Seraphim was already up here. Oh man, that was the worst move EVER. I didn't have a car for my last few months in Atlanta (Seraphim had it up in Michigan - I was using MARTA to get to work ^^;;) so just getting boxes for the move was a trick. The movers were late, I BARELY got everything into the truck... but the worst was yet to come.

I had managed to get barely 2 hrs of sleep in the previous 2 days. I was tired, and I swear the only thing that kept me awake was talking to the cats (who listened intently) and listening to my Tenchi Muyo tapes. By 9:00 pm, it was pitch dark, and I was getting really worried about making it all the way to Michigan in one drive. I pushed on.

Then the engine did something really weird. It suddenly started revving at a high pitch, and then my max speed dropped to 35 mph. Thinking to myself that this wasn't really a good thing, I pulled off into a gas station and called Budget. I think in the end, it was the best thing that could have happened. There was no way I could continue driving that night, and I was so tired that I SHOULDN'T have been driving in the first place. Budget was good enough to put me up for the night and have the truck fixed the next morning. Other than recoiling in horror at the idea of having to unpack and repack the truck, sleep was a welcome concept.

I forget exactly where this was in Tennessee - but across from the hotel was a Japanese restaurant. I remember walking over to see about getting myself a nice huge bowl of ramen for dinner - but sadly they were closed. It was icy, and cold, and you know... it was kind of a surreal experience.

The surrealness of the situation continued into the next day. It turns out that all that was wrong with the truck was a dislodged turbo hose. They had it fixed in 10 minutes. It took 3 hours to get the 'mandatory recall' parts fixed. -_- I just remember sitting in this grungy waiting room, with both cats in a single cat carrier, talking with truck drivers. It was kinda interesting, actually. I found out a lot about how car carriers worked, and the kind of routes and problems the guys had on the road. Nothin like sharing very bad coffee with an amusing older chap who was gleefully telling me about the time he shot and killed a guy who broke into his home in Florida. Life has a tendency to put interesting things in your path.

This year, I'm moving a mere 6.2 miles. Closer to work, nicer apartment complex, smaller apartment. I expect disasters galore.

Back when i discussed my Hard Drive upgrade and the fact that was manually swapping cables to switch OS's, I received quite a few emails telling me that i was flat out of my mind. ^_^ Well, that and the fact that I should get myself some removable hard drive enclosures. I had a 'DOH!' moment when I read the first one. Of course this was a very effective solution. On Friday I finally managed to saunter on down to a local computer store and pick up two removable HD kits. I installed one in my computer, and used the case from the other so that each of the HD's would have it's own case. I penned 'EN' on the English Win98 drive and 'JP' on the Japanese Win98 drive. It works great, and things seem to be running much smoother. Thanks to everyone who emailed me that suggestion.

Oh, and the 'why don't you just load Win 2000, it will let you run Japanese programs' comments. I've tried. Several times. For some reason, my motherboard and chip combo (a Epox Mobo and a AMD K6 3 450) doesn't like win2000. Win2k won't even boot in Safe Mode with all the cards pulled!! (sigh) Very annoying. One of these days I can replace this damn thing...

Today's sketch... well, once again, I can't tell you anything about her. I need to stop giving things away over at fredart. ^_^

And as far as piroart.net? Stay tuned, I actually registered the domain the other day - i have some ideas for what to do with it that I think will tie in nicely with the comic.