Here’s the next thing that decided it was more important than the comic. This shut off valve for the toilet does not entirely shut off anymore. It is 50 years old. It did well, but this is the end of the road. I can’t put poly on the floor while I have to have a bucket sitting on the floor to catch the water this valve is letting drip through. The store had about six different versions of this valve. I found one that looked like it would work, but the threaded section on the new valve is too short to screw into the nut on the bottom/left of the valve in the picture. Maybe we shouldn’t have made so many different versions. As a homeowner, I want to quickly replace this part and get my toilet back into service. Not pay a plumber $2-300/hr and wait for them to show up and find they don’t have the part on their truck.

I think the new valve can be plumbed directly onto the pipe at the wall, if I cut the 90 degree bend off. It would be great if I could find an escutcheon for that little pipe, and cover the hole in the wall. I’m going to go see if I can turn one up.

I did find some time to begin writing the next chapter. Merry and Marty have an origin story now. Naturally, it doesn’t spend much time on them. Most of it happens before they are made, but finally, they will be a bit interesting.

I haven’t heard back from the company I applied to work at. They said they’d let me know by the end of the week. I didn’t hear anything either way, even though I texted HR, so I’m going to move on. That job was just what I needed, but there’s no point in dwelling on it. Maybe I can get a little further with the online job.

And, it’s done. I’m surprised the new piece is lighter than the other boards. I found a spare board in the eaves, so this is the same wood from the original shipment. The polyurethane will darken all of the boards a bit, and make them more yellow/orange, like the trim boards. I thought about bleaching the floor boards to make them lighter, but there is a special bleach for floor boards and it’s a bit dangerous to use. So I’m going to finish sanding the floor, put the poly on, and call it good. I’m sure I’ll be able to live with it.

The interview I did yesterday went well, but I feel like this will be a “there was a better candidate” situation. The job would be exactly what I need right now. The factory was the nicest one I’ve seen in that city, much nicer than the previous one I worked at. It runs a normal work day instead of 12 hours. That kind of thing is in demand. I might get it, but there could easily be a guy out there who’s been doing that job for twenty years. I’m not going to celebrate unless/until I’m hired.

Site traffic appears to have stabilized, and while it’s much lower than the post-4th of July peak, it’s around ten times higher than it was at the beginning of the year. So, that’s a positive. I may start working on the next chapter today. I’m thinking of posting pencils to the blog, which will mean spoilers, but I should probably show proof that the art isn’t entirely A.I.

Since my two busted vehicles are roadworthy again, it’s time to get back in the house.

Someone let water leak on this floor, and it rotted away. I haven’t messed with anything like this before, but it doesn’t seem like it could be too hard. I’m a bit surprised that the floor joists are further than 12″ apart. I wonder how far apart they are?

In other news, I have a job interview tomorrow – if you’re the praying type, put in a good word for me. I’d be a good fit for this job, but you never know, there could be a guy with 20 years experience in the same job applying. Hopefully that person has moved on to bigger and better things, because I’m on a long roll of coming up short.

Pg 55 got a record 10 likes though – first time breaking double digits!

Sometimes I think I overdid it with Yaoi Hokkaido’s character, and other times I think I’m understating the situation –

The global sex toys market size was valued at USD 35.2 billion in 2023 and is projected to grow from USD 44.5 billion in 2026 to USD 62.7 billion by 2030, at a CAGR of 8.7% from 2024 to 2030.

This comic isn’t meant to be a serious commentary on society, but – that’s a lot of sex toys, and I don’t see men bragging about owning one. Except for a few of the guys with silicone sex dolls, who are semi-anonymous online; and they usually take a ton of criticism for it.

It’s pretty sad when your currently active comic is about four times less popular than the old one that has been dead for longer than the current one has been alive. Counting book sales, the difference would be infinite.

I struggle to comprehend. Did people prefer the American comic art style to manga all along? Is horror better than comedy?

Well, I noticed that pg 55 is up to 8 likes now. Hopefully those are real people, and not A.I. companies testing the ability of their bots to click on websites. Bots are a quarter to a third of my traffic lately. Maybe they’re clicking stuff instead of just scraping.

Not perfect, but much better than pulling levels or curves around to try to turn a pencil drawing into an ink drawing. It won’t take long to correct these. Given the starting point was a badly lit photograph of a pencil sketch, not even a scan, I’m extremely impressed. It may not be worth committing the desk space to a scanner, when this works so well. A phone with the flashlight turned on might be a good compromise.

You all know how much fun I’ve been having blowing time and money on my brake repair job. I bought a new caliper from O’reilly’s today, one of their BrakeBest brand calipers. I should, at this moment in time, be done with this job. But here’s what actually happened.

See the little rubber boot on my old caliper bracket? I installed this myself, a couple days ago.

The O’Reilly’s caliper comes with a new caliper bracket and other hardware that I already have, but I’ll use it. However, what do we NOT have here?

Wow. WOW. I don’t know if they assemble these things on a line, or pay a drunk 5 pesos a day for as many brackets as he can rebuild – but someone forgot to install the caliper pin boots. If it was on an assembly line, the next person lubed up the caliper pin and installed the pins anyway, and then the next person bolted the calipers to the pins, and quality control passed it. Unbelievable. If someone had installed this the way it is, they’d have a locked up caliper in no time, and a ruined pad and rotor.

O’Reilly’s shows the boots installed on their website –

So, instead of drawing something you might want to see, I’m about to drive back into town and tell an underpaid O’Reilly’s clerk about it.

It might not have been the most responsible way to use my morning, but it’s done –

I’ll see what AI can do to clean this up later.

I’ve got a bunch of ideas for the next chapter. The maids didn’t get much time in this chapter. I will fix that. Things are about to get tough though, I don’t know what kind of update schedule I have. More than likely, very infrequent, so if I’ve built up any readership in the past year, it is sure to be lost.