My "workspace"

I'm always on the lookout for the perfect laptop bag, you know? One that holds *just* the right amount of stuff *just* the right way, with *just* enough extra room for whatever. This one's not bad, it's a carrying case for a PS2 Slim. It's just about the right size for my 10" netbook and my small Wacom Bamboo, plus misc. and sundry accessories. I scored it at a Goodwill for $8 I think, and when I got it home I found a COA for Windows XP MCE inside, pretty cool! I used the COA to upgrade my net-top at home from XP Home.

Anyways, this is all the stuff I manage to fit inside and carry around every day for "working" (browsing, drawing, gaming, etc.) See if you can name them all!

Hey, that's me!

They finally went and put me on a note pad!

I'll call it... the "crash pad"

The Room: Calculator Edition

My adaptation of Tommy Wiseau's The Room onto a calculator.

oh hi, calculator

**UPDATES UPDATES UPDATES**

SO.  When I first set up my blog(s) I really didn't know much about what I'd be doing.  Now that a couple months have passed and I'm so much older and wiser and something something etc., I'm kind of focusing more on drawing and less on whatever this one is for, and not at all on my writing blog and art project blog and whatever.  I guess I'm kind of going to leave this one up, but I'll probably mostly forget about it and most of the action will be over on my Tumblr.  I did have fun setting this one up and kind of figuring things out and writing stuff and putting up photos, so there's that.  I even got one dude following me!  Hi, dude!  I'm waving at you!  I might still post stuff here, who knows.  Anyways just letting everybody(?) know.

very classy

Here are some bathroom-use instructions I found at a place I was filling in at a couple weeks ago.  I really enjoy how they spruced up "ASS" with the dollar signs.  Out of modesty?  Hmm.

A$$ GASKET/POOP NEST

hard to do the calculations without the formula though

those Advanced Flushing courses finally pay off

workplace graffiti

I love workplace whiteboard doodles. This isn't mine, but just look at it.

look at it

CENSORSHIP

Well, the other week I was finally back at the place with the bathroom booger art and somebody'd finally had enough. Was it too gross? Too awesome? We'll never know. RIP, you poor boogers.

scene of the crime

40-TON DUMP

THAT'S A LOT OF DUMP

Trying on sunglasses

how do they look

Apple Bag Handle

:|

"Okay" I "won't"

I "promise"

Sonic Kids Meal toys

hey, these are pretty cute

wait, wait, this isn't right at all

Happy Camper

cheeeese

Get Stick Get Fun

submitted without comment

Comedy Defined

Over on Twitter the other day, John Martz observed Comedy = Tragedy + Fart.  Is he right?  What do YOU, THE VIEWER think?

*BRAAAAP*

*FLRBBT*

*THBTBT*

Dept of Corrections (pt 3)

People are just messing stuff up left and right, oh well!  More work for me.  This time, it's about Valve's Portal 2 Three Turret Moon shirt.  It's a play off the notorious three-wolf moon shirt on Amazon.  Kiala was talking about the Valve one over on Twitter the other day, and after thinking about it for a bit, I decided the originals weren't "space-y" enough.  Et voila, another crashterpiece™.

the original

Valve's version

with 100% more SPAAAACE

I punched up the original for good measure

Dept of Corrections (pt 2)

I've been busy editing Guy's comics over on Twitpic.

original

this is how my brain works

Dept of Corrections

The other day, The Oregonian ran an article about Commisioner Nick Fish and some kind of affordable-housing plan for Portland.  The article had the wrong photo and a couple typos, but I fixed all that for them.

also, two more pebble colors

OMG E.T.

E.T., is that... is that you??

ooouuuuuuch

Boogers

Step 1:  Some gross person puts boogers in a bathroom stall.

Step 2:  I see the boogers.

Step 3:  A little paper and tape later, there are no longer boogers in the stall.  Instead, there is Art. (f. 1)

Step 4:  I come back a week later, and there are MORE BOOGERS. (f. 2)

f. 1 - a collaborative work

f. 2 - a work in progress, apparently

Ruh-roh, more CAPTCHArt

Have to click through for full version again.  Blogger's goofy like that.

I CAPTCHArted

This one might only be funny for fans of both CAPTCHArt and Vampire Diaries.  What do YOU, THE VIEWER think?

P.S. It's too big for Blogger to show full-size, sorry.  You have to get off your lazy butt and click the mouse on the picture to see it full-sized.

P.P.S. I've never seen Vampire Diaries before, but I still feel like I probably nailed it.

I made a club

Today I officially founded the Portland Fake Mustache Club.  What did YOU do that's so great huh?  Oh, really?  I guess that is pretty cool.  Anyways, if you like drinking beer, goofing off, and wearing fake mustaches, well I have got just the club for you.

B. Y. O. M.

Monster, Inc.

There is a monster in my house.  It's really just the elliptical exercise machine, but for how strongly I avoid it, might as well be a crazy monster.

raaar

Xtreme Petting

These guys had me at "pet a live shark."  They don't even need anything else really.

touch and feel the hell out of that mother

Dear Bill Corbett

I was jazzing around with Bill Corbett on Twitter a few weeks ago, nothing big, just having fun, trying to be funny to a funny guy, that kind of thing.  Then he tweets back he's going to block me.  Well of COURSE I knew he was joking.  I knew he wasn't REALLY serious but jeez, what if he was?  So I do what anyone would do, and write a huge kiss-up fan-letter to mail him.  And here it is!  No response back yet, but that's OK, I wasn't really expecting one, and besides I'd found out even before I mailed it that he hadn't really blocked me.  I actually mailed it in, care of the Rifftrax street address in California.  I included printouts of these photos, plus photos of my kids.  Basically I was shooting for a Cracked article, but in letter form, sort of a printed-out Internet.

My letter to Bill Corbett:

  Dear Mr. @BillCorbett,

  How are you?  May I say you look great, those clothes you are wearing to read this in look fantastic, unless you are naked, in which case, have you been working out?  No?  Well still, you're doing something right, because you look and smell great.

  Before we get any farther, my lawyers advise me there is really no way for you to prove I was or was not wearing pants during our last "hang-out session" on Twitter, and any lawsuits brought on that pretext will prove groundless so really, why ruin a perfectly good friendship?  They go on to advise everyone should just "chill the F out" (that is the legal term I believe.)

  By now I suppose you know I am referring to the allegedly-pantsless "Imma Block Ur Ass" Twitter incident of some days ago (f.1) wherein you might or might not have actually blocked me on Twitter.  I'd like the record state that I, as a father of two boys (f.s 2 and 3) know exactly how it feels to suffer "theme-tune dementia" and was merely trying to help you feel better knowing others in your shoes sympathize with you, only partly due to having to wear your shoes, which may or may not be ill-fitting and/or ill-smelling (especially after a hard day's riffing, am I right) but also because I have felt your pain, I have seen your sights, heard your sounds, smelled the smells, tasted the rainbow™, shot the curl, and I was there, man.  Know what I mean?  I don't.  I went way off-scrip just there.

  Being such a giant medium-sized fan (f.4) I cannot over-profess my joy knowing you were only kidding about the Twitter-block, and that everything is "still cool" between us.  Had you actually blocked me, I would have been literally heart-rent. (f. 5)  Please do not be concerned that, remaining unblocked, I will suddenly flood you with messages or links, and I will certainly not send you any photos of myself pants-less.  (Really, I wish you'd stop bringing up the "no-pants" think, though secretly I have to admit I am flattered at your interest.)

  In closing just let me say how grateful I am we can still be "best bros 4 lyfe" even if it is just in my fan-fic I scribbled in my diary/dream-journal, and please keep up the fantastic work on Rifftrax.

  Your pal,

  @crashsuit

[signed @crashsuit here]

Included in envelope:

f. 1

f. 4

f. 5

f. 6

GAME ON

Have you ever seen the "free strips of paper" gag?  Me too.  When someone puts one up in my break room they obviously have no idea who they're dealing with.

Challenge accepted.

Your move, Mr. Free Strips.

Big Pimpin'

Sesame Street has really gone downhill since I was a kid.

Happy Cereal

Hey, so remember Bob Ross?  Turns out he had his own breakfast cereal.  Who knew?

happy shapes for happy tummies

Benchmarks, Part 2

Remember a million years ago, when we were younger, the world was brighter , and I'd said something about running benchmarks on my Acer 522?  Well, it turns out I had a lot more testing to do than I'd thought.  OK, not really, but now that I have a decent machine, I finally took some time to play through Half-Life 2.  And Episode 1.  And Episode 2.  And Portal.  And Portal 2.  But I did finally get the numbers... and here they are!  Not many surprises really.  The CPU is still the limiting factor, but with more RAM and the 64-bit install of Windows, the graphics shine a little more.  (This uses the Fusion platform, with integrated CPU/GPU and shared RAM.)  The biggest change is in loading times, most credit going to the SSD.

Windows Performance Index - still 2.8, as the CPU score is the lowest and didn't change.  Everything else is better though, except graphics. I'm not sure what happened there, but I think it's due to Aero being fully implemented in Home Premium.  Before, WPI was judging my system's graphics based on Starter's stripped-down Aero.  It's got full Aero now, and wow, it looks good.  Primary Hard Disk jumped up the most, to 7.7 out of a possible 7.9.

Processor - 2.8->2.8
RAM - 3.9->4.9
Graphics - 4.2->4.0
Gaming Graphics - 5.5->5.6
Primary Hard Disk - 5.5->7.7

Crystalmark - 34372->51975

Portal loading time - 0:50->0:30
Portal FRAPS - unchanged

Windows boot, power button to posting desktop - 0:55->0:35
Windows shutdown time - 0:23->0:14
Hibernate - 0:18->0:21
Wake from hibernation - 0:23->0:21

Startup and shutdown times dropped 0:29 together, but hibernation and wake times increased 0:01.  The SSD has much faster reads and writes, but there's four times as much stuff in RAM to swap on and off of the HDD during hibernate/wake - the swapfile is four times bigger now.  Still, hibernating/waking is faster than shutdown/startup, and doesn't require I close all programs first.  I'm a little concerned for the SSD reading and writing a 4GB swapfile a few times a day but not enough to stop doing it that way.  The Crystalmark increase mostly reflects the move to a SSD, not much gain in the other categories.  I'd read some talk about running 3DMark11 on SSDs possibly being bad for them.  Not sure how much truth there is to that but I still gave it a pass, I had plenty of other benchmarks going on up in here.

Portal loaded much faster, as did individual levels, but in-game performance was pretty much the same before and after.  One thing I hadn't realized before: I wasn't running Portal at native 1280x720 but instead at a mostly-stretched 1024x600.  I was able to crank up the graphics pretty high without much of a hit to FPS.  Enabling full 720p, 2xAA, HDR, and some other stuff only knocked a few frames off the total.  Same for Half-Life 2, Episode 1, Episode 2, and Portal 2.

Over all?  I'm pretty happy with the performance I'm getting.  I've managed to turn it from a higher-end netbook into a fairly-decent gaming machine.  It's not going to blow the doors off of newer games but it's solidly capable.  I'm sunk into it for almost $800 (original machine plus upgrades) but in the absence of anything better in the 10" range I'm happy with the payoffs.  I know that could've gotten an Alienware M11x or a 12" netbook with higher-end Fusion chipsets, but really, I don't like using any netbook over 10".  I plan on keeping this one a good while, or at least until OEMs catch on that there's a market for higher-end 10" laptops.

Last thought: If you want any more proof this netbook now means Serious Business, check out all the official decals on the bottom.

Where is your god now?

Stick Puppet Theater

Made a shoe-box stick-puppet theater.  I love ideas like this, as they are lazy and awesome at the same time.  I haven't run the numbers yet, but I think the investment was approximately zero dollars, some tape, some paper, and some recycling we had sitting around, and now we have open-ended fun-times available any given evening.

Wait'll you see us do Macbeth, it'll blow your mind.

Dry-Erase Fridge Puzzles

1. Snip puzzles from paper.
2. Peel plumbing-ad magnets from phone books.
3. Affix puzzles to magnets with clear packing tape.

These look a little wonky as they're a couple years old, but trust me, they're way cooler than fridge poetry.

Cracker Nuts

Seems a little racist.

My two favorite things

Axe Cop and roller coast chess.

Say hello to my little friends

So, "fische" huh?  That must be what, like French?

My three great loves

Batman, captchart and Blamimations.

I like both kinds.

"What kinds of books do you like?"
"Oh, you know... Science Fiction, Western."