Tag Archives: comic status

So. Um. Yeah.

Posted on by

Nighthawk’s been diagnosed with thyroid cancer. He’s having surgery to have his entire thyroid removed on Monday.

So now that you’ve picked yourself up off the floor, here are the details. Thyroid cancer itself is rare but very treatable. It was caught very early. From all indications this should be a case of cutting out the thing that went bad, probably doing some radiation treatments that are standard to the disease, and moving on. He’ll be on drugs the rest of his life, obviously, but he already is (obviously), just for other stuff. The CF and the diabetes certainly complicate matters, but outside of the constant challenge of making sure that each doctor understands the pieces the other doctors specialize in, in this case neither issue directly affects the cancer surgery or recovery.

He’ll likely spend about 24 hours in the hospital. He’ll be home for a total of about 2 weeks if everything goes according to plan.

Obviously this is not minor surgery and we’re both very concerned. On the other hand, there are thousands of people who’ve come through this with nothing more than a new thyroid drug or two to add to their regimen. We’re freaking out in controlled bursts instead of constantly.

So why am I telling you all of this? Well, for one, the comic is half imagination and half journal comic, and as today’s edition illustrates some aspects of this new turn of events are going to bleed through.

In addition, it should be obvious to everyone that he is by far the highest priority in my life, so there’s a chance the comic will be delayed or skipped for medical events. (Right now I give no guarantees for a Tuesday comic.)

And there is a piece of me that, as an author, thinks y’all are going to think it’s over the top to have the character with cystic fibrosis also get diagnosed with thyroid cancer. Believe you me, I’d’ve never planned it this way. It is over the top.

Thanks for reading.

Weekend wrap-up

Posted on by

Well, the bedroom trim is painted, the house is clean(er), and I got to hang out with my sister for a while…. got a massage, that’s always good, and found the diningroom under a mound of stuff. Nighthawk appears to be feeling better. Jessdog got in some serious sun-time, which makes her a happy puppy. And despite how horrible the art looks in both the Saturday (past) and Monday (upcoming) comics, I feel pretty good about them – they’re awful, but a darned sight better than I did a year and a half ago when this ship launched.

Work this week promises to be as hectic as last, but with things a little less crazy at home and closer to conquering the new schedule. See you on the forum.

Side Trip: Bimbo Bread Trucks?

Posted on by
freakin' weird.

So my new work schedule is kicking my tail. Plus tomorrow’s food day and I have to make spinach dip before I fall asleep from the new work schedule kicking my tail. So rather than skip a comic today or make up some kind of crap, here’s a spare I made a few weeks ago after passing one of these trucks on 422. Back to the regularly scheduled plot Saturday, I hope.

A quick update

Posted on by
  • The new hard drive is here, sitting next to my laptop, but I probably won’t get a chance to install it until Saturday.
  • I’m probably working some overtime today/tonight to free up some hours because have a viewing to go to on Friday for my next-door neighbor, so time’s kind of tight.
  • I’ve got a spare comic I might throw into the queue… I’m not happy with the writing for it but it’s better than running nothing at all… if I convince photoshop to play nicely and let me finish the comic I’m working on for the “at the restaurant” quasi-storyline I might not have to. We’ll see. Or, y’know, someone could send some fanart to kirabug at kirabug dot com… no really, anything will do… send your pictures to dear old captain kirabug, send today, send right away….

Plantnerd’s really got our goat.

Posted on by
a painted goat

And a last-minute bailout by ideaphile Plantnerd saves us from overall comic lateness, huzzah! I received this awesome goat painting (I think for a shirt?) a few moments after posting today’s Help, my hard drive is full! missive, which is good because the comic I was working on is still less than 1/3 complete.

We will get back to the Get Outta My Head plot in progress as soon as I can. Thanks!

Drive-ing me crazy

Posted on by

Well, I knew it was going to happen eventually, but I was really trying to put it off a little longer than this.

I’ve maxed my hard drive.

See, this comic is brought to you by the power of a 2 year old iBook G4 with a 40 gig drive. When it was purchased, I thought this was the lap of luxury — it was an upgrade from a 2000-model Pismo (Powerbook G3) with a 20 gig drive. Forty gigabytes! That’s huge! My first Mac had a 512 megabyte drive! I could hold THE WORLD with 40 gigs!

Except that the world has suddenly become 7.5 GB of applications, 10 GB of music, and, shockingly, almost 10 GB of files in the Pictures directory. And of those 10 GB in the Pictures directly almost 7 GB is, well, the comic. There’s another 6+ gig of every other thing I need to survive (everything from finances to old poetry to, oh yeah, the backups of this website) and that leaves me at about 33 to 34 GB filled.

Since the drive only formats at 37 and a smidge, well, things have been tight.

So tight that every single time I try to draw a comic at this point, I’m maxing the hard drive. How maxed? Well, let’s just say I’m very very familiar with the error that says that the comic can’t be saved because we’re out of disk space.

So here’s where we sit. (The livingroom.) (Sorry. I couldn’t help it.) Nighthawk just spec’d out and ordered me a new 120GB laptop drive and an external enclosure for the old drive. But once it arrives (next week?) I’ll have to back up everthing to the server, then install the new drive, and then rebuild the laptop with the new drive.

But until then, well, the buffer is empty because it’s been so damn hard to draw comics with no hard drive space, and we’re really scroungy. Consider this an active solicitation for fan art. You send fanart, I post it. (Obviously within reason, I get to choose, blahblahblah.) Where to send it? How ’bout we go with fanart at kirabug dot com

As for tonight’s comic, I’m trying to throw something small together to get us through the night, but it’s after 11 now and we’ll see what happens. Whatever does show up will probably be late. I do have some standards.

Thanks for your patience and your support.