The new Frenzy

(The title is obviously a reference to The Ophiuchus frenzy.)

Wednesday, February 16, 2011. 2:41 PM. The Computer Science student lounge.

A group of students are trying to make sense of the instructions to a Computer Networks exercise, when one of the guys' cell phones vibrates. The guy reaches for his cell phone and reads the text message.

"Hey," he announces, "you remember how the professor was saying there weren't enough IP addresses; that one day when our computers would try to connect to the Internet, they wouldn't be able to?"
"Yeah?" answers one of the girls, who had obviously heard the professor say that a million times.
"Well, it's happened. Just now. The professor says, 'do not turn your computers off' … they may not be able to connect afterwards."

"Preposterous," I thought. I immediately input "IP addresses" into Google news. I got only two results: a report from Cornell and business news. It obviously was the former, which had been published exactly two hours and one minute previously –while we had all been eating lunch.

Christmas story: Epilogue

This one was supposed to go up on Holy Innocents Day at the latest… which explains the coat in my apology, but not the pendant.

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The Ophiuchus frenzy also got to me

I wrote the following on January 14. I didn't post it back then because I felt the need to apologize first.

I really hope I don't need
to explain why I put this
image here.

So, I was in the student lounge Friday morning, January 14, 10 a.m., when I overheard one guy tell another,
"Yo, you know what your sign is?"
"Duh, I do."
"Well, what is it?"
"Scorpio."
"Not anymore."
"Whaddaya men 'not any more'?"
"Your birthday's is November 30, right? The International Astronomy thingy is saying your sign's now Ophiuchus"
"What the hell is that?"


I immediately Googled "Zodiac" and saw the news story, already dead and buried by then, unfold before my eyes.

Pro Crass Ti Nation (or, the stealthy joke you probably missed)

In panels 8 and 9 of my apology, Jane comes in to whack me with a book.

"I can see that. The question is 'why?'"
Well, she's an avid reader and the rolling pin was not at hand.
"What? No! I mean why does she– You did that on purpose, didn't you?"

The thing is, having decided she was going to hit me with a book, for it to really look like a book it had to have a title, and a back-cover description. The first thing that came to mind was calling it "Light readings: an anthology." This thought lasted about five seconds, when I thought that it would be infinitely more funny if she would chatize me for not focussing on my work if the book were titled "Procrastination."

New Avatars

I've made a set of avatars to go along with the apology which I'm now using when commenting. (That is, avatars using the new winter coat I designed.) Of course, they also go with the subsequent, prequelling explanations. Read those last three words again; they make all the sense in the world.

What doesn't make sense is where I show him carrying the torch. It doesn't make sense because he dropped it when he had to run off at the start of the Christmas Story. However, until I get around to making new ones, this will be what I'll be using.

An apology

Text-only version