Polite Dissent

Updates on a couple of recent posts and musings:

• I’ve expressed some concern in the past about the latest version of the comic-book collection software Comic Base. Any doubts I had are now erased. The program runs incredibly quickly and smoothly. Part of it is due to a patch that was released last week (version 9.0.3), but most of it was because I finally decided to read the manual and skim the troubleshooting section. I had never compacted my database ever (and I’ve been using some version of Comic Base for about 5 years), and what is now a svelte 162 MB was formerly a hefty 1.3 gigs! The speed increased immediately after I compacted the database.
  An aside to publishers: While it’s fine to include a pdf format version of the manual, please include a paper edition as well. This is especially important if there are substantial changes from a previous version of the program or if it is a guide that will need to be referred to often. If the program costs more than $50, I want paper!

• The 90% House strikes again! This weekend, we came to realize that substantial portions of our house’s interior had not been painted. They’d been plastered with a white plaster, but never painted afterwards. The rooms are fine, but the hallways and utility areas definitely look grungy in comparison. So yesterday the Polite-Wife asked what color we should paint the walls. “White,” I replied.
  “What color white?” she asked, displaying a portfolio containing at least twenty distinct shades of white and other subdued colors.
  “That one: ‘Ultra Pure White’ (which looks suspiciously like ‘Titanium White’).”
  “What about these other colors? How about taupe?”
  “Taupe? That’s fine for pantyhose, but I’m not painting the walls in my house anything remotely beige!”
  Well, I lost that discussion (as I suspected I would), and the walls in the front room are going to be ‘Tuscan Beige’, but at least the hallways will be painted ‘Decorator White’.

• Now You Can “Name That Diagnosis!™ “: A patient called the clinic yesterday, complaining that she just couldn’t stop eating ice. She said she was eating it so much, it was hurting her teeth and ruining her appetite. She called wanting us to check her blood sugar and wanting to know if anything could be done about this. What diagnosis does she have? (hint.)
  

  ANSWER: PICA.

• I finally received my Batman the Animated Series DVDs yesterday. I watched the first couple of episodes while unpacking some other boxes (see below). The art from the first season is a little crude compared to later seasons, but the cleverness of the stories shine through. 12 years later, they’re still better than 99% of what’s on TV. The Polite-Wife enjoyed the first episode even more than I did because she had never seen Man-Bat before, so didn’t know which of the scientists it was and could enjoy the mystery.

• Political Machine came in the mail yesterday from ebworld.com. I haven’t have time to install it yet, but I plan on sitting down with it today.

• I also received my monthly box of comics yesterday. Girl Genius was hopelessly mangled. Some of it is due to poor packing, but a lot of it is due to the non-standard size of Girl Genius. What’s the point of this? It’s not big enough to significantly enhance the art, but big enough to be dificult storing. Just ask Barry Windsor-Smith about non-standard sized comics.