Yeah, I’m done. Tonight has been aggravating as shit. Every time I’m getting somewhere on the comic, *BZZZRRRWWWT*, the power goes out. I am typing this on a laptop, holding my camping LED light near and dear. Tomorrow will be another day. A day coated in ice and snow. Which Dallas is NOT prepared for.
Fuck it, the comic still hasn’t missed an update in the last year and change.
And people are complaining about 80 degree weather here in Florida… :p
people in florida complain? do tell. please.
Pft. A Real Cartoonist would have ripped the alternator out of the nearest available vehicle and rigged it to a stationary bicycle for power.
Slacker.
*runs!!!* ~XD
Stupid cold. Stay in the damned north where you belong!
( However, UIPS. )
Cold has made the mice move into our cellar and the attic. Time to break out the poison and the traps.
With all these advances in artificial intelligence, it won’t be long before you can put a tiny, mouse-destroying drone in the comfort of your own home!
Where would be fun in that?
damn straight. get a cat. more fun and they love to kill
Doesn’t work for people with allergies, and the rabbits just look at us like we’ve lost our minds. Besides, if you make the drone remote-controlled and non-lethal to humans, you can make a game out of it.
Video, dude.
And gambling.
Place your bets! Will the white mouse escape? How long before it’s gruesomly mudered by the autonomous kill-bot stalking it? Put yer money down!
We already do this with a gopro on the cat.
Sadly, we get a lot of video of sleeping, ball licking and eating to edit.
That. is. awesome. I totally need to do this so I can find out where my cat goes when I let her out. LOL
Are you really sure you want to know?
Be well, Mel and J., Hope the heat stays on where you are. Much as I hate the winters in New England, I really feel bad for people in parts of the country where the houses and the infrastructure aren’t built or adapted to deal with that kind of shit when it hits.
Last power cut I had the UPS shat itself and leaked battery acid on my floor, and then my clothing when I went to investigate. Good times.
I once had this problem in VA, except I did everything on a laptop and had my modem and router plugged into the UPS.
I actually only noticed the power going out because of the fan turning off. People online think it’s weird when you say “whoa, the power here just went out”. They say stuff like “You mean it just came back on?” (And yes, apparently DSL substations have independent power, too)
Telephone exchanges have entire rooms dedicated to battery backup, and most/all cabinets have battery back up. Same for mobile towers. These batteries can run out, in a disaster don’t expect more than a day or two unless authorities can put up generators. Of course, in a disaster expect them to be overloaded anyway.
Emergency generator (either portable or whole home) just sayin’.
Whole home generators are crazy expensive. My folks just had one put in this year – Mom’s dependent on an oxygen generator and can’t risk a power outage. Generator, installation, plus propane tank and gas to fill it = $10k. Ain’t happening on my budget!
That’s an oxygen “concentrator,” not “generator.”
You don’t NEED whole home generators, in most cases.
A modest-sized generator that can cary the *necessary* loads will do just fine. Even the reefer needn’t be powered up continuously, so long as you keep your head out of the ice-box. Just power up those things you NEED, as you need ’em. And shut ’em down the rest of the time. Even lighting is mostly optional – Fire still works, yanno – in the form of hurricane lanterns. And you can’t tell me Texas doesn’t have hurricane lanterns. House heat, well, that’s why God invented cast iron stoves and fireplaces.. 😀
Oh, and for the computer? Yuo make a living with it, so… Battery backup.
Of course, I grew up in rural Maryland, with a notoriously unreliable power grid, and plenty of winter (and summer, for that matter) storms. We’ve got this shit down to a drill. Texans can be excused a little bit due to lack of practice.
“Totally counts as an update”
Works for me….
I have a house full of free UPS’s. People throw them out after two years when the batteries die. It costs $20-100 to put in new batteries for 6 hours of lights, phones, radio, computer power and no glitches with lightning and air conditioner surges. I haven’t had a computer die of anything except disk head crashes since DOS 3.1.
This ice does indeed SUCK. And I’m from the north. But I moved south for a REASON!!!
High of 80deg today. Sunny.
My boss used to have those UPS bricks all over our office. 1) My office is in New York City and if we lose power, my concern is not going to be saving the document I was working on, it’s going to be getting home. 2) He has a tendency to buy the cheapest versions of everything possible, so occasionally one of these bricks will start squealing. No idea why, no way to turn it off. Long story short, they all started squealing one by one and we threw them out, never to be replaced.
UPS’s run a self test on the battery. If the battery voltage fails before the end of the test, the battery needs to be replaced and it sounds an alarm. The batteries are only good for 2-3 years. Batteries for a rebuild are $20-100, depending on the size and number of batteries. buying them by the case cuts the cost in half. There is usually a door or a couple of screws for battery access and a bolt or slide on terminals to connect the batteries. The next time the lights flash and everything is lost or fried, compare the cost of lost work to a set of replacement batteries. Don’t forget to put UPS’s on network switches, routers, and modems or everyone is down.
heh 🙂
Ice storm while you’re drawing dirty pictures? Maybe someone upstairs is trying to tell you something. 😉
(That’s meant as a joke, folks)
If you didn’t want to deal with ice, you shouldn’t have moved to Texas!
Thanks for the update. Your record is still spotless. Good luck with the ice! Central Illinois here, so I’m familiar with ice storms. They suck. and not to be left out of the “You shoulda” crowd… For forced air heat, a couple of RV batteries and an inverter will keep the furnace running.
I tried keeping my computer and modem on UPS, but the darn drivers keep escaping.
The Aristocrats is such a famous joke, they made a documentary about it.
Don’t watch the movie unless you like sick jokes.
I warned you.
When shit gets too aggravating step away and take a breath, least you decide to shoot the computer with your gun. Especially, after 9 shots or so.
We’re getting freezing rain with snow on the way up here in Kentucky. The native borns have all made the obligatory rush to Kroger for French toast fixin’s. We’re hunkering down with a fire in the fireplace, dinner in the crockpot, and bourbon in the whiskey glass. Hope y’all have better weather for the weekend!
Oh, yeah, thanks for the free ice cream, even when the weather sucks!
Urrgh. I loathe ice storms. It is not possible to ride a bicycle in an ice storm. (No, snow, rain, wind, and -40 windchills did not stop me. Sleet and freezing rain did.)
Don’t use hot water to de-ice your windshield. Rubbing alcohol with a bit of dish soap is supposed to work well. If you have nothing else with which to scrape the windshield, use a credit card or something like it, ideally one which normally doesn’t see much use.
50/50 white vinegar and water. Spray it on your windows and windshield BEFORE it starts freezing, then spray again when you’re ready to scrape. Stuff comes right off.
You can cut the vinegar back to 30%, still works.
well there is always the trusty UPS battery pack.
But we understand. stay safe! 🙂
My trusty UPS had the battery blow this summer, haven’t gotten around to replacing it.
Thanks for updating Twolumps.net. Kinda makes up for it, and is halfway gun related. Keep makin’ wit da cat jokes 😉
x2. Two lumps made me LOL…in the middle of a meeting, with a client.
x3. I love Angryfish! He’s so cute when he’s angry! (And also, Castle Doctrine, given his fishbowl ornaments…::groan::)
We have missed one update for Two Lumps, and that was the day we got married.
Totally got a ‘Pass’ for that one.
It totes counts as an update. Now stay warm and huddle under blankets together!!!! Oh, and the offensive joke video? TOTALLY made my day!! A few I’d already seen (including, of course, the Aristocrats), but I am living proof that left wing freako women who might be identified as feminists from a distance (if you squint) (and ignore the deer carcases) can have a sense of humor, and a horribly “Un-PC” one at that! Keep sharing!!!!
Snowing here in Missouri since yesterday and it doesn’t appear to be slowing down.
wooot gratz dude you guys are awesome!!!
be safe out there today …seems like people get a little cold and they forget how to drive …much less be civil
people in Texas have NO clue about driving on ice/snow. We play news clips of them here as gag reels. ( colorado/kansas)
Oh, the power’s out? Wah.
Some survivalist you are.
Wait for iiiiit….
😀
I live in Arlington Tx, which has even less stuff than Dallas to deal with the cold weather. The metroplex has a simple plan to deal with Ice and snow. DON’T LEAVE YOUR HOME. Yep its just that simple. Power out, stay indoors. Trees down, stay indoors. 1/2 of ice on the road, stay indoors. Who remembers the superbowl ice storm from 3 years ago?
Concur – This counts as an update. Sure, you broke the hell out of the fourth wall, but who gives a shit?
Buy this man a big honkin UPS.
@luna.wolves – I remember the Super Bowl storm… TxDOT took all of the road equip we have here in the Panhandle and redeployed them to D/FW. Then we got hit by the second wave of the storm!
We got lucky on this one… Amarillo’s currently 13F, only got a trace of powder last night.
Remember your Sierra games! “Save early, save often!”
Didn’t get much ice out here around Tulsa. Lots of snow, tho. A good six inches of the stuff when I went out to shovel the drive this morning. Was enough to shut down the schools.
Totally counts as an update= our daily excuse to amuse each other in the comments section. Well done!
Seriously, we are hunkering down for the weekend as well in Plano. Stay safe & stay warm!
I live in Michigan, but back when I lived in Austin and they got snow (95?) I got an offer by the state police for a job driving food around in it because I was used to it already. That was odd, to say the least. I will say, anywhere you live, a coleman NorthStar lantern and a couple tanks of propane aren’t a bad investment at all. Great for camping, and they put off some serious light and heat for emergencies. There are many other options as well, but be aware of all the safety stuff ect of course.
A UPS is a wonderful thing…
Gah. It was -20 F here last night. My chickens got frostbite on the tips of their combs Thursday when it was ONLY -14.
Wow. And I think *MY* hometown is wimpy.
You can thank my wife and I for bringing the cold weather from Maryland. We’re out this weekend visiting family. Lovely weather keeps the real morons off the road. But stores aren’t open either. And our return flights got cancelled.
take care. you look good in that last panel.
So.
You had an ice storm, a freezing rain storm, a snow storm,
and a shit storm??
While freezing rain is really bad news (although trees look just beautiful encased in ice), it makes easier to clean up the shit after the shit storm. However if the freezing rain falls after the shit storm, you get the ice encased shit that lasts until the spring.
Now have taken 9 inches of snow in a 8 hour period of time, followed by intermittant cold rain.
Still standing.
(actually, the dogs are pissed at me – they want to back out in the snow to play some more)