Monday, August 08, 2005 -- 10:59:14 AM

Hanging out at my parents' house today! Ah, home-made breakfast...

Wednesday, August 03, 2005 -- 03:55:08 PM

This broadcast is coming to you from a computer lab on the Indiana University campus in Bloomington. Go Hoosiers! I'm once again Stateside, hanging out with my family, and catching up on junk food and fringe culture. I'm also in the process of discovering the Bryce animation software, so we'll see what impact that has on Alas in the future.

Thursday, July 28, 2005 -- 02:50:21 AM

This old computer and its FGGIODR keyboard are going to a new home in just a couple hours. After that, I'll be updating Alas via borrowed computers-- which is kind of cool, actually, that I can do that from anywhere in the world. Thanks, Gopher! Maybe I'll rent some time at one of those airport laptop cafes while I'm transiting Frankfurt. If I'm transiting Frankfurt. I won't go into the whole story, because I can't do it without cursing, but suffice it to say that our travel agent screwed up at a point in time when it was most critical she not screw up. Yosma! Can I say that? Can I curse in Turkish?

Monday, July 25, 2005 -- 11:00:35 AM

The boxes are gone, the air freight is gone... we invited sixty or seventy of our closes friends over, and now the alcohol is gone. This week I'm shutting off our DSL and our cable, which is about as "we're outta here" as it gets. Don't worry-- the strips will keep coming.

Friday, July 15, 2005 -- 03:54:30 AM

Everything's packed, and the movers are now loading the boxes onto the truck. My bass gets its own special crate-- I'm picturing it killing rats along the way, like the Ark of the Covenant in Indiana Jones. Our baga snake statue has already fallen and snapped in two, but we're hoping that calamity absorbed all the misfortune for this particular move.

Our entire apartment smells like CARDBOARD.

Wednesday, July 13, 2005 -- 09:40:39 AM

The computer is packed, all my CDs are inventoried, and I've taken redundant photos of my bass. Tomorrow the movers come.

So, I dragged the old computer out of its case, and hooked up a Turkish keyboard to it tide me over. I can't look at the keyboard while I type, because it's not a QWERTY keyboard, it's a FGGIODRNHP keyboard-- and you try saying that a few times fast. Fortunately, I developed mighty typing-in-the-dark skills through years of cohabitation with roommates whose sleep schedules were diametrically opposed to mine.

Tuesday, July 12, 2005 -- 06:50:30 AM

This is the upside of living in another time zone-- I never even noticed the server glitch.

The strips are all finished and uploaded! So, although the plug on this computer gets pulled Wednesday night, we'll have two solid months of regular Alas updates. The end result of the 24-strips-in-24-hours is a little weird, since it's more like a comic book that's being fed to you page by page. Still, I rather liked the process, and I think I'm going to try it again during my extended vacation. After all, I won't have any distractions once the computer's in the box, will I?

Monday, July 11, 2005 -- 10:38:31 PM

From Gopher: There was a bit of an outage today. The server was a bit under the weather. It should be back and happy now (I hope).

Monday, July 11, 2005 -- 07:52:12 AM

Duman! A new Duman album!

Kurban! A new Kurban album!

A new Duman album and a new Kurban album in the same week! The Turkish rock scene itself seems to be telling me to stay in Istanbul just a little bit longer. Sadly, everything's packing up this week. The strips are all drawn, and the first quarter of the run has been uploaded to the site. I'll try and get the rest up today as well (though you won't see them until next week).

Friday, July 08, 2005 -- 03:48:52 PM

The worst part about being a diplomat is having to smile quietly and say "No comment," while raving hayvanlar are free to say whatever the hell they want. I can't even tell you what I'm mad about. So let's pretend I'm not mad, eh? Four pages to go. Still.

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