This comic was originally posted in 2017.

Thoughts from 2/3/2020: This was very hard to make, given a 10-second timer on the camera, and needing to get the book prepared in-between my monkey toes, let alone raising everything to the right height. Also no one appreciated how clever this was, because, alas, that's the way of things.

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This comic was originally posted in 2016.

Thoughts from 2/4/2020: There is a real problem with making endless comics for ten straight years that have your face in them, as you will get set in your mind that is what you look like, and anyway I'm 37 today and I'm now trying to remind myself that that's the way of things. The sad thing is I know I somehow got a little more mature along the way, and that's the real depressing thing. Hurray!

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This comic was originally posted in 2016.

Thoughts from 2/14/2020: Westley was a good dog and he was forced into a labcoat far too many times.

The 'roses are red' rhyming scheme joke is my favorite part of this stupid holiday.

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This comic was originally posted in 2014.

Thoughts from 2/16/2020: This comic was made in honor of my sixth wedding anniversary. I then self-plagiarized it for when I officiated my friend Ron's wedding this past summer, and then self-plagiarized it again for when I officiated my sister's wedding last fall. And now I'm posting it on the day of my parents' 40th wedding anniversary. I have better comics about love but this one kind of drives the message home better than any of them.

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This comic was originally posted in 2017.

Thoughts from 2/18/2020: I just spent my weekend grading 148 exams for two classes and I'm brain numb right now. So here's an old comic about grading.

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This comic was originally posted in 2018.

Thoughts from 3/8/2020: It's International Women's Day so let's destroy the old system, if that's okay with all of you.

Both Torpedo and Cannonball seem likely to continue on this path, as most people of their generation will be, I assume.

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This comic was originally posted in 2014.

Thoughts from 3/10/2020: I remember making this comic six years ago but I did not remember that 'file under' tag, I must have been feeling particularly blasphemous that day.

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This comic was originally posted in 2012.

Thoughts from 4/12/2020: I remember this comic coming out just days before Cannonball was born and even though I was hallucinating to the point that the chair I was sleeping on was literally talking to me, those were certainly simply times than right now.

I hope that all of you and your families are healthy, both physically and mentally. May we all make it through these times as best we can.

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This comic was originally posted in 2010.

Thoughts from 4/13/2020: This was originally thought of in 2003 after a bad summer camp experience, and was developed in response to dumb political talking points in 2010. I have no possible idea why I've been reminded of it now ...

I hope that all of you and your families are healthy, both physically and mentally. May we all make it through these times as best we can.

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This comic was originally posted in 2017.

Thoughts from 5/8/2020: Hey, it's my mom's birthday! Happy birthday, mom. Thanks for not throwing me into the sun.

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IBM (NYSE: IBM) and Cúram Software announced today the successful implementation of a number of software solutions for WorkCoverSA to support their business. WorkCover selected IBM Global Business Services to implement the Cúram for Workers' Compensation Solution, a comprehensive and proven claims management solution that manages and automates the complete claim lifecycle from injury to outcome, as part of a comprehensive modernisation of their IT systems.

IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced the successful implementation of a first of its kind smart grid data management platform, designed and built with Ausgrid to give the utility more data from part of its electricity distribution grid.

IBM (NYSE: IBM) and the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) today announced that more than 2.6 million households across Australia submitting Census forms via the web-based eCensus solution. This represents a significant jump from the 2006 Census, when 778,000 (9.1 per cent) of Australian households completed their forms online.

IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced the Australian results of the 2012 Smarter Consumer Study – the largest study of its kind – which looks at the purchasing trends, habits and expectations of more than 28,000 consumers globally, including more than 1800 from Australia. Over the last three years, the study has tracked the annual evolution of the ‘empowered consumer’.

IBM Australia (NYSE: IBM) and The Sauce, today published the first Australian BPO Report 2012 (ABPO Report), which investigates the current state of business process outsourcing in Australia and points to future trends. Global expansion is seen to be the key driver and benefit of outsourcing decisions amongst 71 percent of organisations surveyed. The report also showed significant anticipated growth in business process outsourcing activity among large organisations with between 1,000 to 5,000 employees (this constituted one-third of all respondents). This group of Australian organisations is expecting an increase of 20 percent over the next two years.

A new IBM (NYSE: IBM) study of more than 1,700 Chief Executive Officers from 64 countries and 18 industries worldwide reveals that CEOs are changing the nature of work by adding a powerful dose of openness, transparency and employee empowerment to the command-and-control ethos that has characterised the modern corporation for more than a century.

An IBM (NYSE: IBM) study of 26,000 consumers from 14 countries -- including almost 2,000 Australians.-- found that over 60% of Australian consumers identify themselves as “apathetic” in their choice of primary retailer – almost double those who see themselves as advocates of a particular retailer. As such Australian retailers have a significant opportunity to capture shopper loyalty, but they need to capitalise on existing investments in multi-channel and accelerate customer engagement across all channels, including mobile devices and social media platforms in order to win in this globally competitive sector.

The Australian Customs and Border Protection Service (ACBPS) has implemented an advanced passenger analysis solution with IBM to improve border security.

Sydney, Australia – 29 May 2014: The IBM (NYSE: IBM) 'Heart of the City' installation at this year's Vivid Sydney is using data analytics to map and visualise the real-time movement of festival attendees with WiFi devices walking around the 40-plus installations along the Vivid Light Walk precinct.

IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced Melbourne start-up Localz as the winner of IBM SmartCamp Australia 2015, a global competition that brings together entrepreneurs, investors and experienced mentors. Localz provides software that connects the digital and physical worlds for enterprise, using the latest micro-location technology to enhance customer’s in-store experience, improve asset and inventory tracking and provide frictionless mobile payments, at scale. One of the key differentiators of the solution is that it works across different technologies (iBeacons, Bluetoth Low Energy, GPS or even QR Codes).

INPEX selects IBM to manage operation critical apps in Australia

IBM, (NYSE: IBM) today announced the findings of its 2016 Global Customer Experience Index (CEI) Study, which showed that Australia is above the global average when it comes to providing a good shopping experience for consumers, with a CEI rating of 43 percent compared with 40 percent globally. The results provided a snapshot of the Australian retail sector, revealing that some businesses are still struggling to provide a seamless cross-channel experience, personalisation and convenience for customers.

IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced the appointment of David La Rose as Managing Director of IBM Australia and New Zealand (A/NZ). He replaces Kerry Purcell, who will return to a senior leadership role in IBM Japan.

IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced the appointment of Professor Iven Mareels as Lab Director of IBM Research-Australia.

IBM Appoints Katrina Troughton as Managing Director of IBM Australia and New Zealand

Woodside Energy and IBM will work together to re-imagine the way work is done using next-generation technologies, such as artificial intelligence (AI) and quantum computing to help Woodside realise its vision of an “intelligent plant”.

(I know I've been scarce lately -- it's been a bad two years or so -- and I keep swearing I'm going to get back to posting regularly and it keeps not happening, but this was worth using up some spoons for.)

Background

The context, for those who've missed it: The Archive of Our Own was awarded the 2019 Hugo Award™ for "Best Related Work" in August by the voting membership of this year's Worldcon™. As fandom does, a lot of people predictably joked about "welp, my Stucky tentacle porn just won a Hugo" or "my Stucky A/B/O has won 0.0000482% of a Hugo!" The World Science Fiction Society™, who holds the service mark for "The Hugo Awards"™ and licenses the ability to award those awards each year to the independent organization that seeks the license to throw each year's Worldcon™, decided that they would like us all to know we should stop doing that and this award being given to "The Archive Of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works" does not mean that we, users of the AO3 or members of the OTW, are 'Hugo winners'. (Repeatedly. In great detail and at great length.)

( cut for length )

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I still aten't ded, just in a shitton of pain pretty much constantly.

The good news: after much hoop-humping, the orthopedic surgeon has finally agreed that I have jumped through all the correct hoops in all the correct order and if I haven't spontaneously reacquired the ability to sit up for more than an hour or two a day without agony by now, I ain't gonna: he has agreed that the next step is surgically fusing L5-S1 so the vertebrae at least stop grinding against each other. (I have no actual disc left between them anymore, which we've known for a while, but apparently that's not enough cause to operate on its own, even when there's this much pain. Instead, I had to go to a specific pain specialist who puts you under xray in the hospital, puts a needle between the vertebrae, and injects saline in the (yes, even the nonexistent one) disc in hopes that they can pinpoint the exact spot that's causing the pain by reproducing it under xray. I don't remember much of the procedure, thankfully, because they had to get me really fucking high on Versed for it to have any effect at all, but the pain management nurse said to Sarah afterwards, "She has a really high pain tolerance, doesn't she?" Always nice when they notice. Anyway, I apparently said 'ow' at the right time for them to conclude that yes, it is actually the missing disc causing the pain even though that's weird.)

The bad news: given my various, it's gonna be like 4-6 months for recovery after (not that I'm not ALREADY in horrible pain all the time, but, ugh.)

The worse news: it's classed as elective surgery, so I have no idea when I'll be able to have it. (The also worse news: I lucked out and got the Dupuytren's in my feet as well as my hands, it's already painful as fuck, and this means I'll have to put off irradiating my feet for another 6 months or so even after the pandemic clears. Thankfully, the feet do not turn into immobile stiff claws if you put off the radiation, they just hurt like fuck. What's one more thing that hurts like fuck added to the list? sigh.)

People keep asking me how I'm dealing with the whole pandemic quarantine thing and I just have to laugh hollowly. My life has been "leaves house once a month for pain meds refills, occasionally grits teeth and does something that will lay me flat for a week because I'm going stir crazy" for about four years now. About the only difference is that Sarah is now allowed to work from home occasionally. (Her lab is down as essential; you can't really drag the thermocycler home and set it up in the garage.)

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Just got back from leaving the house for the first time since February! (Okay, it was the very first week of March, I think, same thing.) Quest Diagnostics has started offering the SARS-CoV-19 immune response test (no doctor's order required, although my doc is Very Curious about our results), which I've been eagerly awaiting. No, most US people who are saying "I was really sick in December and I'm positive it was this!" are not going to be correct -- retrospective testing of samples taken in Dec-Feb through the Seattle Flu Study found no infections prior to February and sequencing the virus in the Feb-March positive samples shows an expected common ancestor from a February US introduction -- but we were on a cruise ship in mid to late December, and there were enough people from China on that sailing to have the ship's information available in Mandarin, which they don't always do unless enough people request it, so it's a plausible vector.

On the one hand, it's a bit of a stretch. On the other hand, Sarah got incredibly sick 6-7 days after boarding and I went down two days after her, a ridiculous percentage of the ship caught it despite the crew kicking into "high sanitation" mode quickly, literally every symptom we had matches what we're hearing for COVID-19, Sarah was diagnosed with pneumonia as soon as we got home and I only didn't wind up with it because my doctor insisted on giving me the pneumococcal vaccine, and it took a good 21+ days before either of us were feeling better. Anecdotally (aka we always manage to befriend the crew well enough to get the good gossip), it was brought on board by a couple that showed minor respiratory symptoms and mild fever on boarding, and they were quarantined in their stateroom as per procedure until they weren't feverish anymore, but their room service steward caught it and brought it out to the crew, from whence it spread like wildfire. Neither of us have ever been that sick in our lives; it was miserable. On the other other hand, we didn't hear of any deaths or medevac required from the ship, and like all cruises, there were a larger number of older folks on the ship who would have been more vulnerable. There are factors leading to either conclusion!

Up until now, we've been treating it as "we may or may not have had it, but will continue to behave as though we're still vulnerable", and I don't envision that changing even if the antibody tests come back as showing that we have antibodies for it already, because a) it has not yet been demonstrated to my satisfaction that having antibodies prevents reinfection and b) I know about the base rate fallacy. But I'm hellaciously curious.

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"Immune response negative" for both Sarah and me on the COVID-19 antibody test! Like I said, I wouldn't have been surprised for either answer, but it's good to know. So we had must have been the flu after all; we'd ruled it out because the urgent care clinic we went straight to after we got off the plane home did do a rapid flu test but it was negative, so my assumption now is it was the flu but either the flu test was a false negative or the test was done so long after infection that there wasn't enough viral load to pop on the RIDT and the symptoms we were still having were all secondary. (Or the COVID-19 antibody test was a false negative, of course, but we agreed ahead of time that since if one of us had it, we both had it, we would only worry about the actual positive/negative predictive values of the tests if we had disparate results; that way lies madness, otherwise.)

Again, neither a positive or negative result was gonna change anything about how we're behaving! But it is awesome to be able to satisfy my curiosity. Yay, science!

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Glimpses through Ginny Weasley's mind during the last months of her fifth years at Hogwarts. Missing scenes from Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.

He'd only meant it as a joke, but here she was. Ginny Weasley, his celebrity crush, armed with economy toilet paper rolls and three dozen eggs, ready to commit a misdemeanor all in the name of charity. Muggle AU

Voldemort believes he has uncovered a new means of gaining the supreme power he craves in the depths of the oldest recorded history - a civilization lost over the centuries. But history is known to distort with time. Reeling from the loss of his Godfather, Harry must navigate grief, love, and growing up while surviving another year at Hogwarts as the Second War begins.

One-shot between Harry and Ginny a day before his Auror-training began. Canon, R&R

Getting to be there with her in the ghostly moonlight made everything Harry had gone through worth it... even if her brother was hellbent on tormenting them.

Six-year-old Teddy Lupin was feeling unnaturally nervous. One-shot Teddy's speech for his primary school about his parents, or people like his parents. R&R!

Moving was always stressful, but to be placed in a nationwide lockdown only a few weeks after moving was just too much for Ginny to think about. At least she had a fit neighbor keep her company... from two meters away, of course.

Auror Spook Kitty Fawley thought the difficult part of her return to the UK would be getting Sirius out of prison and recovering Harry from his Muggle relatives. Turns out that was the easiest thing she would do. To help them, Kitty will delve into a mystery deeper than any she faced in the field.

The war is over and Ginny returns to school, but it isn't easy to pretend like everything is the same as before.

[sequel to 'all your fumble words']

One-shot,*not what you might think* Now that Harry and Ginny are dating, Ron needs to get his brotherly duties out of way, but who is he going to talk to if not Harry? Read to find out... R&R!

Raised by his godfather, following the events of Halloween 1981, Harry spends his childhood, hidden from the Wizarding World, preparing to face his destiny. However, his world is turned upside down when he reunites with the beautiful redhead he rescued down in the Chamber.

To serve and protect. That’s what Harry was there for. He had been sent undercover to protect Ginny Weasley from a mad man. Not to fall in love with her. But how couldn’t he? She was everything anyone could want, and clearly her stalker agreed.

With Voldemort dead, Harry Potter is training to be an Auror and is finally back together with Ginny Weasley. But when a young woman dies of poisoning at the Ministry’s Midsummer Ball, Harry is the first suspect, and he can only uncover the true murderer by working with his childhood rival, Draco Malfoy.

Their first meeting literally knocked them off...and it took them twelve hours to finally kiss. **Harry never went to Hogwarts-AU**

At a time when the world is piecing itself back together,
There are those who want to rip it apart again.
Teddy Lupin is about to learn how powerful his godfather truly is.

Head Auror Harry Potter hated the Department of Mysteries. He hated dealing with Unspeakables and disliked their holier than thou attitude. When Harry is called upon to identify a man who has been dead for years that the Unspeakables found, he suspects that there’s something more sinister going on.

On the cusp of the third wizarding war, the truth behind the events of Halloween 1981 and subsequent events finally come to light, when it is revealed that Harry Potter, forgotten and ignored by many, is the Boy Who Lived.

The Wizarding world finally knows that Lord Voldemort has returned, and the Second War has begun. As Harry prepares to enter his sixth year at Hogwarts, he is forced to deal with the trauma from his last encounter with Voldemort, the upcoming trial of Dolores Umbridge, Sirius's uncomfortable questions about his childhood, his budding relationship with Ginny Weasley, and the unknown shadow of what lies ahead as the "Chosen One" who must defeat Voldemort once and for all. This is an AU take of Half-Blood Prince following my previous story, Path Diverged.

Five times Teddy Lupin called Ginny Potter his mum. One time he called her grandmum. A few times he called Harry Potter his dad.

What if, after Harry faces Voldemort in the Forest, he doesn't go to his mental construct of King's Cross Station? Rather he finds himself on the shore of the Black Lake in a host of Guardian Angels (one a little odd, another disturbingly familiar looking), and a tall, hooded black-robed figure. On a white horse. Named Binky...