Grrl Power #778 – Moving on up
It’s a lot easier to draw Sydney’s circular shield than her Honda Element. I assume that’s either parked back at her apartment or in the garage at Archon. And honestly how often is she going to use her car now? If you could fly, especially if you could fly as fast as her, your car would probably be relegated to doing errands like groceries. She could gather up groceries up by her feet and scoop them up in the bubble I guess. Her bubble doesn’t have a radio though. But her phone still works inside it. I would think flying with earbuds in is probably not optimal, safety wise though.
Don’t go back and check old pictures of Sydney’s shop, because apparently it used to be on the end of the building. Maybe the owners extended it? I thought I remembered it being flanked by other stores but didn’t realize that until I went looking for color references. It has been a while since I’ve drawn it.
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Oh good. Joel moved the store and Sydney has another place she doesn’t know how to find from altitude.
Her bracer has GPS tho so she can just remember the flight route to it.
Which will probably lead to her not knowing how to drive there.
She isn’t wearing her arm thing *OR* her neck thing?
I guess they’re in their respective rechargers.
Yes, she’s off duty but as an active military she’s actually on standby or whatever
the term is.
Good thing she has the phone.
Yeah, I’d be wearing that pipboy pretty constantly if it is even half as useful as it appears to be. I like to be told when I’m being punched, as I tend not to notice otherwise… But I’m sure the new location is listed on the notice, and she can look up the address on her cell and get driving/flying instructions from it also. Unless it’s in an unfamiliar place of town she should be able to get there using driving instructions even while flying above traffic. You just go slowly and not like you’re running from a mob of reporters gathered in front of your apartment and you’ll be fine.
I wonder if Joel or Olivia (or another partner they hired offscreen) thought to include a flight plan in addition to driving directions and address. With as many supers and aliens as there are around, someone must have thought of that. Especially since Sydney’s shop (does it have a name?) is associated so heavily with Archon, through Arianna if no one else at the time.
Event Horizon Comics.
Subscript: Buy More Comics!
TIL that the subscript tags do not work on this site.
Supers with flying abilities should get a pilot’s license and fly obeying visual flight rules.
Avoid air corridors unless they call it in and obey air traffic control.
They wouldn’t show on radar unless they had a transponder.
Halo’s flying lesson from Maxima really should have covered this but they were in
military airspace at the time and it didn’t apply.
Max mentioned that her arm thingy includes a flight transponder when she gave it to her.
Actually this raises an interesting question – Archon needs her location at all times, but publicly broadcasting that info is a terrible idea, even though it’s only intended for local traffic control. Even if it’s broadcasts were encrypted with an Archon key, anything emitting a signal can be triangulated.
Have a coworker who’s worked military contracts for the Air Force in the deserts of Nevada and Utah; he claims they routinely had radar staff turn equipment down or off for short periods to conduct flight tests.
Well they can presumably disable the transponders if they need to not be tracked.
And so far as I recall the only Archon fliers are Maxima, who is extremely thoroughly indestructible. Halo, who makes a habit of using her shield whenever in flight so she’s not quite as indestructible but can still tank direct hits from Space Empire level dreadnoughts. And Jiggawatt, who flies by turning herself into pure electricity. So it’s not particularly dangerous for them.
You forgot Major Major Major Hero (still love that line from “Catch-22” :D)
They should always be tracked by Archon – especially during active engagements, which is the worst time for someone else to be tracking them as well.
They may be indestructible, but the objects who’s airspace they might infringe upon certainly aren’t
Just look at that poor road sign Sydney vandalized on her way home that first night :(
Also Heatwave can fly.
I know the posting here is unforgiving of typos.
Could you have meant ‘paged’? Is that still a thing?
Pretty sure that you would know if you were punched.
(Unless it was a really hard one you didn’t see coming.)
It’s a reference to a page where Sydney was punched, and her pipboy gave a helpful “you have been puched” notification.
Thought it was a ‘You are about to be punched’ warning, because Shadow Crushed-Nuts had snuck in before Mr Buble was deployed and was about to hit her from behind (could be mis-remembering though)
I actually own a pipboy :) Came with one of the collectors editions of Fallout 4. It’s cool. You can put your phone in it and there’s an app for it and everything.
There’s also a guy who sells an actual pipboy 3000 online, which has the app basically built in without having to use a smartphone.
> good thing she has the phone
That’s what Joel is thinking, too.
Did they not moved it into the Archon building? She should be able to find the civilian side of the building easily.
You kind of want a retail outlet close to customers.
Archon headquarters is surrounded by training facilities and woods to isolate it from civilians. They seem open to the public (partially) but part of their security is the open space between the building complex and the perimeter.
Pretty much like most military facilities.
For a comic store you usually want cheap rent and lots of nerd foot traffic.
Perhaps an older mall,
Or a building on a side street near a university.
I don’t believe that DaveB has ever explicitly named the State and City Archon’s HQ is in. I would think that Archon would be located near the outskirts of a major city, where there is ample government owned land for doing military stuff yet near to the conveniences of a major city. I’m thinking something like how Lackland Air Force Base is just outside of San Antonio. This would also explain why the Archon building is able to support civilian retail and dining establishments.
He hasn’t, butt it’s been implied (or speculated) that it’s in the Mid West in general or Texas specifically, with Dallas/Fort Worth being the likely city
You mean Archon is in Mesquite or Garland? Sweet. Probably replaces the Mesquite Metropolitan airport, plus some open space all the way north to Lake Ray Hubbard.
Except… no, the place they shot off to with rivers and canyons doesn’t fit into north Texas very well…. unless it was Lake Texoma. I’ll have to pay attention for clues next time I reread.
I’m pretty sure Dave’s explicitly said he doesn’t want to pin it down, but it’s *somewhere* near the edge of a big city in the middle of the US, more or less. Chicago and Dallas were named as possible locations considered and only rejected due to lack of familiarity with them.
I personally choose to think of it as the Simpson’s Springfield: present in every state with a Springfield, so it’s half an hour from anywhere at a decent flight speed.
Maybe he made sure to get a flagpole installed, or some other obvious landmark? Compass painted on the roof? With arrows pointing to her home & ARCHON?
Ooooh, I like the way you think.
She should totally insist on a big flat roof marker she can land on, maybe some iron man style robot arms to take her utility belt off and hand her a drink.
They already make landing indicators with a big H in the middle (H for helicopter, H for Halo), so presumably there’s a stencil for it available somewhere? Probably would want to put a little angel halo over the H or something, though. Wouldn’t want a helicopter to land on a roof that’s not structurally rated for it. Even bagged and boarded comics will suffer an Overstreet rating downgrade after a helicopter crashes on them.
Oh, yeah, and human casualties, probably, too. But think of the comics! :-)
Her curve-lined Halo H is pretty distinctive and different from the helicopter H, particularly if they keep it white-and-gold (which is difficult to distinguish from a distance, but meh) or just do the golden curved-H on a dark background.
Considering the speeds, and therefor newtons, with which a seuper hero can land on a heli pad…the pad needs to be rated for something heavier than just a helicopter….ideally rate the structural integrity for an aircraft carrier….and even that might not be strong enough if the hero is coming in at Mach 20
Why (other than intending to destroy the whatever they’re impacting) would a super capable of Mach 20 flight (or even Mach 1) choose not to slow down before landing? Maxima and Sydney (shielded) could survive the impact, but they’re also both capable of reversing thrust (or whatever inertia-less ultra-tech equivalent Sydney’s fly ball uses).
Landing without slowing to a reasonable landing speed is usually called “crashing,” and most areas intended for landing are susceptible to damage when used instead for crashing.
So they can land on three points, look cool and break their knees. Why else?
They can still do that after slowing down and land ‘as soft as a lamb’s fart’
I have to assume that someone, like Harem, who uses this phrase, has never been near a lamb (or other long-digestive-tract herbivore) when it farted (or is being facetious). “Gentle,” “soft,” and similar terms are not one’s I’d associate with that. “Assertive,” “Sewerrific,” and “Weapons-grade,” maybe.
(Of (anecdotal) note: Every dog I’ve been around who has eaten lamb trimmings or scraps has also had particularly obnoxious flatulence — perhaps the fart is somehow inherent to the essential Aristotlean nature of the lamb, and thus equally present in all its component subdivisions as well?)
Indeed. That’s truly using your meta-knowledge noggin!
Never forgot the Automatic closing Skylight!
It is a must have for flying superheroes.
Well yeah, automatic closing can be handy, but automatic opening would be nice too. But for security purposes, there should also be “identity scanners” hooked up to it too.
*sigh* The things you never have to think about until you become a superhero…I tell ya’, it really just adds a lot of problems that you have to deal with, on top of normal, everyday living.
The Fantastic Four in Marvel comics had circuitry built into their costumes (faux belt buckle, if I recall correctly) that was scanned by the building’s security system to open doors, enable the elevators, etc. Predated the real world RFID tag idea by a couple of decades, actually, if I’m not mistaken.
ID scanners might work, too, but Max (and Halo with her shield up) might present some challenges, depending on how and what the scanner is scanning.
They do have the rotating code phrases, like Harem used when she ‘ported into the armory. If you’re coming in too hot to have time to say them, you’re probably coming in to hot to have time to wait for the doors to open, too.
Which is convenient, but any carry-able tech that operates when the authorized user has lost it or is being propped unconscious up to the sensor (i.e. RFID badges, fingerprint and retina scanners, Bluetooth door lock) is insufficient for meaningful security.
Ultimately, it’s pretty hard to really lock something down without memorized codes (PIN / pass phrases) and armed guards. And as we saw at the vault, even that can be compromised.
Can’t they rig up something that requires the unlocking unit – the key, keycard, chip, eyescan, whatever – so your squishy meatsack organics have to be functioning a certain way? Can’t be too low, might be rebooting or whatever you Humans do? Too high, extra confirmations needed, might be a hostage? I know I set them up on Megatron’s ship, but remotely removed them when I went AWOL…
Valid point, which is exactly why that kind of tech is being used in super hero stories. Create some plot by allowing the villain to find a weak spot in the hero’s defenses. Would be boring otherwise.
That’s part of the reason why many high-level security systems ask for two diverse factors – something you have, something you are, and/or something you know. ‘Something you have’ – a physical token, badge, hashing key, etc. ‘Something you are’ – biometrics (correlated against an internal database, not against what’s written on the subject’s card). ‘Something you know’ – passwords, security questions, etc. All the systems I’m aware of ask for two out of three of those; that standard of proof would probably allow the third mode to be used to verify identity if one of the others needs to be reissued (due to a lost token, forgotten password, or biometrics-relevant injury), but I’ve never been in a position to say for sure whether that is the way it’s run.
And even then, the highest-security areas get live guards who can spot if things don’t look right. Whether the guards themselves are armed, or not, or have the armed units on call, depends on the location and the local laws.
Why 67 Minute Cleaners?
Because 69 would be too dirty.
+1
Well done!
+1
+1
+2
Never really thought about it, but her comic shop is remarkably small. Or at least smaller than every comic shop I’ve ever been to in Florida and Nevada.
I’ve seen them that size in the UK. It was a two person operation until Sydney became the biggest name in Superhero comics and pushed customer numbers so high that they needed to move to a larger premises.
My favorite shop was smaller than that for the first year or so of its operation. It was one of the lucky few to establish a regular clientele and actually turn a profit, so it eventually moved into a somewhat larger storefront.
Most of the comic stores I used to see were around that size. You have to remember that retail space rents are determined by the the square footage, so depending on where you are, your rent for a big store can get pretty exorbitant. Particularly if you’re in the DC metro area.
It’s actually quite a bit bigger than our local comic shop was when we had one.
In Chicago there used to be a comic shop built into a newsstand that was the size of a small closet. You couldn’t look at the comics on the bottom shelves without sticking your butt out the door.
That’s not an exaggeration. It was literally that small. The sales clerk sat in the newsstand which was physically outside the comic shop.
It’s going to be great to see Sydney back at the comic store after all this time. I wonder if the guy she was crushing on will show up? It would be interesting to see how the New and More Confident Sydney reacted to such a situation.
Heh. I can see Sydney’s reaction now. “Oh yeah, you’re hot and you exist. I’d completely forgotten.”
I suppose this is when we get the shop shown in the opening scene of the comic.
Good thing she hired someone to help “last Wednesday,” huh?
Heh – what is lorem ipsum?
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet … One of the oldest blindtexts. Invented by a typesetter shortly after the printing press. Used to show off a typeface without having the viewer distracted by the text content and still looking like real text.
Also used to fill empty spaces where text should be.
It’s not the wikipedia entry for Lorem ipsum, I’m wondering where he got the text from. Yes, its readable on the Hi Definition patron version.
I haven’t seen the hi-def version but I think It’s the first two paragraphs from this website. https://www.lipsum.com/
…zupe r’cali fraj ilist ickex pea allido shous…valar doheris
Stop trying to summon Cthulu
Jeff NME
Because, that would be truly quite atrocious.
…and absolutely terrible to have pop-ins from an Elder God.
Oh no, even worse they are trying to summon Ma Rypo Ppinz
TAULYWATH
YNAFRLTHA’FDA
WECN’CLUH
GTALATHETRF
Cthulhu Fhtagn!
I was seriously considering a one time Patron donation just to read that text.
Also used as an actual spoken language by some people from the ‘Bookworld’ in some of Jasper Fforde’s ‘Thursday Next’ books.
What do you mean, you’ve never read any of those? Go and find them, NOW!
^_^
Seconded. All the Jasper Fforde books are fun and thought provoking. Thursday Next series, Nursery Crimes series, and my personal favorite, Shades of Grey.
Been a while since I heard that name. There are probably several I haven’t read yet.
Lorem Ipsum? -,-
the actual explanation of what Lorem Ipsum is, which I find amusing
And there I went, logging into Patreon to get a sneak a peak into a possible explanation and to where the shop went, only to be “Lorem Ipsum”ed by DaveB .
While I know this thing from my work as a web developer, the ever creative ways people put it to use never ceases to amaze me.
Looks like I’ll have to wait till monday to wisen up, just like everybody else. ;-)
I was wondering what it said, and I smelled a lorem ipsum, but the header text looks almost readable and didn’t seem to be lorem ipsum
At least it wasn’t etaoin shrdlu!
If you don’t get the joke, look for a story by Fredric Brown titled “Etaoin Shrdlu”. While you’re looking at Fredric Brown stories… Pretty much any thing he wrote was really good, including the one that’s 17 words long.
It’s also the linotype version of “qwerty”. I have an older friend who’s name is “Shrudeli” – I’ve always been too afraid to ask if her parents were connected to the newsprint business, in case she doesn’t know her name is punny and I’m forced to explain why.
I take it Syd’s phone is permanently set to “silent”?
When she got back in range of her cell network (during atmospheric entry and navigation to Archon), she may have been distracted. ;)
She’s had plenty of time since then to check her messages, hence my comment.
This is Sydney,Her ADHD is so bad at this point it classes as a dangerous mental illness so it could be days of her clowning around before she even realises she has a phone.
It must depend on carrier. If my cell dies I do not get any text messages sent while it was dead. I get voicemails, but not texts. And I’m gonna assume that even if Sydney’s cell battery didn’t die while she was away (mine would have, for sure) that being across the galaxy counts the same as being dead.
So either Sydney has a carrier that knows that texts didn’t reach the recipient, and caches them to keep trying to deliver, or all of the texts came after Sydney returned and she managed to ignore 27 text alerts.
Or she’s using “Texts” to include data based messaging like imessage or hangouts or something. Those queue up until you run a program to get them.
I believe that’s standard or at least it used to be. They disappeared after 48 hours if not received.
Remember how tired she was when she got back? As Oberon points out, her cell battery was probably dead. Even if she had her phone turned on, she probably slept through the text alerts. And she might have turned it off so she wouldn’t be woken up by an incoming call.
On a semi-related note: Microwaves move at the speed of light. So does radio or any other kind of electromagnetic emissions. Exactly how many light years away from Earth was she? I think it’s safe to say that even if she wasn’t out of range (which she was), it’s much better for Joel’s messages to be a few weeks late than a few years late.
That’s not even accounting for signal attenuation. Basically, for every doubling of distance, the signal gets four times weaker. Cell phones have a range of about 45 miles (72 km) maximum, and often 22 miles (35 km) or less because of timing reasons. Something tells me that even one light year is way out of range. To quote Apollo 13: “The president has personally approved your tax extension, because you are most definitely out of the country.”
So, a lot of people have asked me (not on this forum, obviously) that, since our TV signals have been radiating out into space for about 90 years, and radio for almost 120 years, if there is some sort of alien life out there, wouldn’t they have heard it by now? Well, that’s making a lot of assumptions:
(1) That they know what frequencies to listen to,
(2) That they’re even looking in the right direction,
(3) That they know how to decypher it (I find it unlikely that they developed NTSC or PAL, for example), and
(4) That their technology is advanced enough to distinguish the signal from background noise at that range because of signal attenuation.
Distracted is an understatement.
1st night she got back was spent freaking TF out as the weight of what she went through actually hit her.
The next day was spent being physically worked to death instantly following the prior night of freaking out and not sleeping combined with therapy session (betting she either didn’t sleep well that night either or like a rock for as long as possible)
The next day was the press conference and crap Peggy had her doing and the Fel assault
This is honestly the 1st day she’s legit had much time to do anything other than be traumatized, get PT’d to within an inch of her life, potentially had an actual night’s sleep beforehand and not been in a fight/meeting/therapy session
Actualy I know someone who’s phone is set to only ring when it’s her sister, her father or me. Literally her wife and her mom has to leave text messages with her or calls one of us three if she really needs to get ahold of her and she’s not on the office. And given her mom literally can’t stop talking when she’s on the phone so in her case I fully understand. Seriously she forgets who she’s talking to and just starts talking. Even if it’s just the answering machine. Seriously we had to block her calls to the office. With her wife it’s the polar opposite of marital stress. And our office conversations are recorded….
My messenger is set to silent.
I’m a sysadmin for a moderately sized cluster of machines. We have automated monitoring for our machines. While the monitoring is tuned as much as possible to only alert on machines that have a problem, there’s a few sorts of issues that can report a bunch of machines instead. One of these can report virtually all of the machines if a particular two of the machines has an issue, resulting in hundreds of texts going to my phone.
When one of these happens at the same time as a friend texting me, I never notice the friend texting me, even if I’m not on-call, and thus have those alerts set to silent. Based on what I’ve witnessed for lesser alert situations while I’m not on call, the phone gives the friend’s text alert tone for only as long as it takes the next automated alert to come in, at which point it sees that should be silent, and then cuts off the alert tone. When you’re receiving 200 alerts in a minute, that amount of ring tone/vibration isn’t very much.
I’d suppose Sydney’s carrier cached the pages because Sydney was out of range (she’d pretty much require this capability for her job with Archon), and she probably got a *lot* more than 27 text alerts queued up. As a business partner for a business doing fairly well, Joel was probably much more rational about his texts than others in Sydney’s life, such as her mother.
As such, when she returned, her cell phone probably went through much of a charge to tell her about all of the alerts, and the ones from Joel were buried in the tsunami. Even going to the text message app, since they’re probably listed in order of who texted most recently, they were probably several screens down.
Get a text app that sort by source. And if you got clusters then you need 2 monitoring apps (1 at DR/Cloud) running to poll your clusters and each other. That’s it.
25 years of Oracle in Data Centers – I understand the panic calls from CIO/CTO/MIS all at once because they would never sign off on a proper DR strategy
Good Luck
Sure. We do that. But you guys don’t pay me to tell you how to do my job. And it doesn’t change the fact that if two particular boxes break in a certain way, we get over a hundred alerts in roughly a minute, minimum. (Every box’s alert in one minute requires that the problem be detected on all of the boxes the first time in the same pass. Theoretically speaking, that should happen most of the time, given the interval between checks and the time to run all of the checks. So far, we’ve been lucky, both in this not happening enough times to expect anything resembling a statistically significant skew and in it usually detecting the issue on a portion of the boxes in one pass and the rest in the next.)
Is there, like, a right arm missing in that 3rd panel?
No, never mind, she just let go of the shield orb in preparation for landing.
Something I was about to post about the last comic since it’s not worth adding to its comment section Sydney could probably use the com ball to confirm Dabbler’s readings
You think Suit Boy will believe Sydney? She can’t “prove” it anymore than Cora and Dabbles can
To be fair as well, Sydney can’t exactly tell what the Comm Ball readings are, although she would be able to confirm that SOMETHING is there.
The better solution is the Twilight Council. I’m sure they would have some non-technological methods to detect psychic phenomena and while they do have the Ambassador for other worlds the majority appear to be Terran, probably even a good few from the U.S. itself that they’d be willing to take the word of.
They had the guy from the TC there, I hope suit guy was cleared to know about them otherwise the vail would be hiding his identity which would make suits behaviour more understandable.
Oh yes, good point, had forgotten about the Veil
Although, Suit Boy probably wouldn’t trust Irra any more than he would trust Cora or Dabbles, or Ingie
“Gentlemen, to put your minds at ease that we are serious about the hazards posed by the crashed alien space ship we will now have a presentation from a man dressed in a Dracula costume.”
Who probably looks like the guy behind the counter at the local deli if you’re not excluded fruom The Veil…
+1 to you both.
I’m cracking up with laughter at both of your posts. Well done :)
It might be a little more believable coming from someone who wasn’t an extraterrestrial.
Not that he’d believe her, mind you.
Also the truesight is super ultra classified so they probably wouldn’t let her tell them about that anyway.
Yeah I can’t really fault Sydney there. unless I literally hear the notification I’m only likely to check my text when I’m getting ready to send one
Well ironically we saw the new shop here
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-4/
Was because the old now abandoned shop was first seen here
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/gp0005-2/
The fist look outside the shop was here….
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-16-marketing-101/
And the first actual detailed look outside here.
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-21-i-can-tell-you-whats-not-in-there-the-truth/
Weird when you realize the story is taking place 9ish years ago now (2011 registry expiration on the car).
Nobody builds an extinction on a mall in 60 days…
Dave, comic stores are storage intensive. Just call it was a half-width storage area and it’s been rented after being emptied.
Note that the required storage space increases the longer the store exists. The oldest comic shop in KC has more storage than floor space (fortunately its under the shop, which helps with pilferage).
That depends on whether you can afford to pay for the right super-powered construction crew, and you really think it’s going to be worth the payout.
Just a measley $1,000,000 per man-hour, and the Instant-SquareFoot crew will build your extension before the day is out. (Rates double if you mention anything about the square foot. Instant is kind of embarrassed about it.)
I really want a shirt like Sydney’s shirt in the last link’s last panel. If anyone ever finds a link to something like that feel free to let me know :).
https://vvstore.jp/i/vv_000000000103328/
https://www.teepublic.com/de/t-shirt/477913-training-to-be-power-girls-husband-unofficial
all not quite it , strange i would have thought that to be a popular design
thank you :)
Oh and the fist canonical appearance of Yorp was @lso in 16.
Well I did post links to the pages the 2 shops apeared in. Not sure what happened. Alas Poor yorp.
Oh it’s still awaiting moderation.
But Why was that posted to my twitter notifications and my email? I get linked need moderation after what happened on the Bethesda forum(again)this weekend just puzzled about the routing going two ways.
And it yes showed up in my email as well. Although that may Be my settings on Twitter and gmail sending notices both ways.
I don’t think there is any moderation. The site just has some odd delays in posting comments for whatever reasons. Usually you’ll see them if you:
1) Wait some amount of time and refresh;
2) Make another comment which sometimes posts your prior, unposted one and probably caches the new one;
3) Force a refresh using F5, or whatever works on your non-Firefox browser.
It didn’t used to, a while back. The site’s database software is probably reaching its limits. Or there’s some corrupt entries in the database. That’s always fun to fix.
The web site’s load balancing causes some caching delays. The problem doesn’t show up when there are infrequent updates to a page, but is annoying when it fails to keep up with frequent updates.
Multiple linkages has always caused delays in the post going through
If you say so; I never noticed it.
Clearly you either haven’t posted anything URL heavy here lately or Dave trusts you more than Steven or myself.
I say for certain that there’s moderation because I’ve seen my posts have a disclaimer in italics that they’re waiting for moderation, on this very website, pretty much whenever I include a link. I always find this a combination of hilarious and annoying when the link is to the website’s archive. I mean, while making an extensive whitelist is very problematic, the one website that *may* be easy to say won’t have pages spammers will want to make more prominent with their spam forum posts is the website with the forum. I do say may, though, because there are some orums on websites with unrelated content, so that single white list entry should be a configurable option. But it should be a configurable option, and I’ve never heard of it being one (or, rather, the sites where I heard it being an enabled option had the same behavior from my perspective, so it didn’t seem to be working.)
Yes, there is moderation, of a sort, just not a manual moderation
Have not had a disclaimer about posting links here, and posted one just the other day
I’ve had the moderation message as well. The trigger seems to be anything over 4 links in a single post.
Ok my bad apparently somehow I set Gmail to auto forward notifications to twitter messaging. Sheesh.
Hopefully we will soon see the start of the RPG Campaign that is to the final boss in the first arc before the flashback. Jo-El and Olivia are regulars but we haven’t met the blond and brown haired characters who round out the players yet.
I would personally find it funny if the business started doing amazingly well once customers realised that they wouldnt have to deal with Sydneys randomness while trying to buy their comics and so on-So much so that they could afford a bigger and better store.Given her personality I imagine that pre 15 mins of hero fame she was probably dreaded by more than a few people who just wanted to grab their stuff and not deal with the random minded disorganised wierdo.
Sydney just mentions that “there should be a line” which is a complete turnaround from a business which was about to close due to lack of revenues. It seems far more likely to me that Sydney being an actual superhero in a comic book shop which probably makes most of their sales from the superhero genre is the reason for the turnaround, rather than the customers being relieved that Sydney is (was) gone. And I don’t believe that the news that there actually are superheroes and that Sydney is one of them is something which would be a merely ’15 minutes of fame’ or even just a a ‘2 months of fame’ thing.
The last time we saw Sydney at her shop, there was a line
Oh, also when she was training Olivia Sydney seemed to be very organized and on point. Grab customer pulls if they have them, offer bags and boards, etc. No “random minded disorganised wierdo” stuff was involved there at all.
Now we can see why the shop in the first few pages didn’t line up with the shop after the flash-back started :D
Earbuds would be bad, but there’s always bone conduction headphones.
You get your music/podcast/etc music and your ears are uncovered so you can still hear ambient sound.
Or open backed headphones (They do exist in earbud form too).
Bone conduction headphones don’t have stellar sound reproduction.
Upon arriving at the new location,Sydney learns that she’s no longer employed there!!!!!
Shed part owner. The only way that could happen is if she’s legally declared dead.
And, since they failed to recover a body, she can’t have been legally declared dead in this short a period.
Or maybe Tony’s cousin/sister would’ve bought out Sydney’s shares!?
Sydney would have to be there to sell them, and authorize the sale.
And Olivia is a college student who works part time jobs. All of her money goes to living expenses, books, and tuition.
How many time has Olivia appeared in the comic?
Hmmm.
Her first appearance was issue #3 before the start of the flashback.
Then she shows up in issue #19 and #20 with her half brother/ cousin.
We next see her at Event Horizon the morning after the restaurant fight in issue #303 through #306 where she gets hired. I think she was still working her two weeks notice for her previous coffeeshop job until Sydney went into the time skip so that was probably the last time.
She came back at the evening.
Then had a party, and a slight hickup in her plan to start dating leon.
Then she had a sleepless night, except for the parts that were filled with nightmares.
Then she had to get up at zero dark for PT and the day got worse from that point. She mostly zombied through it and not even medically inadvisable amounts of caffeine helped.
Then there was the distraction of shooting the big gun and the abortive invasion and being drafted as firefighter.
Under the circumstances I think I can forgive her forgetting to check her messages.
…
…
…
This once.
Of course mr Dunning will not believe Sidney any more than he believes Cora or Dabbler.
He wants that FTL drive and all that alien hypertech far too badly to be distracted by facts, logic or reason.
Which also, of course, means no other expert they could get from Arc Light, Arc Dark, the Twilight Council, or any other group which could possibly detect it, despite it being something that science, as defined by Earth’s scientist community, would not even consider as a possible subject for research.
I suspect if they *had* detected ionizing radioactive decay, he’d have asserted that “the radiation levels aren’t too bad, we have radiation suits and things to deal with that.”
I seem to remember in Mz Scoville’s original orientation with Maxima that she was told that she needed to wear the wrist com while flying. It has a transponder to alert civilian air control of her presence, and also to alert Archon air defense when she is flying in to work that she is not a hostile cruise missile or something. (especially since their latest close encounter of the hostile kind)
P.S. Dave: In Sydney’s new store see if you can find one with handicapped accessible parking.
It’s probably also important to keep Archon air defense apprised of her location even when she’s just flying around the city. I mean, they probably alert to *any* cruise missiles launched in the city, not just those that appear to be aimed at them.
Also, roughly 8% of the time, Sydney’s flying around the city would appear to be within 15 degrees of aimed at them. For a missile that can turn, this is probably more than close enough to be as concerning as aimed directly at them.
Important to note that she might not even show up on conventional radar very well. She’s smaller than a flock of birds and her shield orb might shield her from radar scans a bit also. *shrug*
I don’t know a whole lot about radar sensitivity, but I do know that the radar on a ship as small (relatively) as a US naval frigate can spot seagulls. And a seagull, despite being a fairly large bird, has got to have a vanishingly small cross-sectional density due to the hollow bones, etc. needed to enable flight. I don’t think that spotting a person-sized object at person type density in the air is going to be very difficult for Archon.
The background behind the flying object makes a significant difference. Out on the open ocean, there’s not much of anything, so the small ‘something’ of the seagull is relatively easy to see. Against a land environment, particularly one as complex as a city, it takes a much larger radar cross-section for the signal to outweigh the noise. [spoiler] I won’t comment on whether the ‘seagull’ claim is accurate: I’m not sure of the quantitative abilities of any given system, and they’d probably some under the Official Secrets Act if I did.[spoiler]
If the shield reflected radar, it would make her seem bigger. But most of the time, the shield only bothers blocking harmful stuff, and the radio waves are probably not too damaging to people for the orbs at the power level we’re talking about for the orbs to care. Also, have we seen Sydney getting cell phone reception or radio reception in bubble? They aren’t the same band, of course, but they are at least very similar phenomena.
Wish my phone would last for almost two months before I had to pay the bill.
Depends on what sort of plan you have
An old one was a pre-paid phone, as long as it was topped up at least once a year it was okay, unfortunately, seeing how barely used it, forgot to put more money on it and didn’t realise until about two weeks later when attempted to use it: lost the number so decided “fuck them!”, barely used it anyway so went back to another old phone from a different company (which hadn’t used in over seven years), they changed their network so now have to top that up at least once a year (the top up is greater than the amount used, so the credit keeps going up :P )
Depends on what sort of plan you have.
My phone continues to work fine. I haven’t paid my cell phone bill since something like 2005, ever since my employer decided it was in their interest to make sure all of their IT staff had cell phones that they controlled, and came up with a limited personal use policy to get around the reservations of those who didn’t want to carry another cell phone.
I’d strongly suspect that Archon is doing something similar for Sydney.
I’ve got my phone service (and most other monthly bills) on “autopay” — each month when the bill is due it just automatically withdraws the appropriate amount from my checking account.
Yep, I have always hated postal mail and I was an early adopter of automating my payments. First through one of the first non-brick and mortar banks (Wingspan) which offered bill pay, and these days I’m just set up with all of my recurring creditors individually with the debit going to either a bank account or where possible for the points to a CC.
She could be on an auto-payment plan.
Adrianna told Sydney that Archon took care of keeping Sydney’s rent paid. It’s not a stretch to assume they would have handled keeping her cellular plan paid up, too. Firstly, it’s courteous. Secondly, it supports the official story of The Mighty Halo being in intensive off-site training (which, since she leveled up her orbs killing Mega-Nega-Squidwards, “was true . . . from a certain point of view” (Obi Wan “Forgot to Tell You Not to French-Kiss Your Sister” Kenobi)).
No ‘D’ in Ari’s name (she’s a ‘C’ at best :P )
Her phone was adjusted for security and that may have included changing her network and payments not being connected to her personal account.
Personally… I like to think Sydney’s car is STILL parked at the bank.
Ordinarily, if a car was left at the bank that long, it’d have been towed.
However, everybody knows it’s Sydney’s car. One of the businesses that’s cropped up selling Halo merch has built their kiosk around it like a holy relic.
If they’re honest, they’re sending Sydney royalties every so often, but she hasn’t noticed, and probably won’t notice until around grrlpower 4793, when she finally happens by that bank, and is shocked to find that the bank moved to another location because said Halo merch business bought their entire lot and building.
They probably bought the restaurant too, if possible. While the bank is the site of Halo’s discovery and the unofficial unveiling of supers via the security footage and interview, the restaurant marks the debut of basically every known super as well as being the first battle site. It’s gotta be worth way more to investors.
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-309-conservation-of-momentum-into-your-head/
The car was retrieved here.
I believe that she would have driven it to Archon before going on duty and then later vanishing.
I like to pick nits too, but you could allow for an additional day or three for initial investigation and travel of the suit guys. This is the kind of thing for which we should give leeway to Dave.
Hahahahahaha it’s funny because her parents probably thought she was dead and she hasn’t apparently communicated with literally anyone yet.
Fairly sure Maxi would have personally gone to visit Sydney’s parents
That’s a tough call, but there is a REALLY good chance that maintaining the cover store would have forbidden that.
Great power politics sucks that way.
There’s practically no chance that it would have been possible to maintain the cover story at all without bringing Sydney’s parents in at least partially on what happened…because Sydney is still only a recruit.
That can go both ways. Perhaps they gave her folks a second cover story. There are LOTS of reasons that the truth could not get out.
The point is, they would have told her parents something, and considering how stressed out Maxi was, she would have done it personally
Also, its generally one of the official duties of the commanding officer.
Moreso when the CO has adopted you as a little (annoying brat) sister :D
As close to the truth as possible.
“Mr and Mrs Scoville –
Sydney is sequestered in training… and she’s jumped about two months in the future.
You will excuse us for not explaining THAT part to the media, or giving any more details, because honestly we’re not sure exactly how she managed it, but we know where and when she went.
We’ve arranged for pickup at the place and time she went to, and we expect her to be fine.
We will let you know the minute we get confirmation of her pickup, but for about two months there will be literally nothing to tell anyone, except, ‘Halo is sequestered in training.’
Yups, sounds about right, and Maxi would have told them that in person, so it wouldn’t come across as impersonal and possibly viewed as a lie
Mh. In the prologue, Sydney is driving her car. Does she get tired of flying? Does she want to connect with the “normal man”?
It is just to avoid all those annoying photo-drones.
Or, it was to avoid a giant Spoiler
As for music,. Sydney could get a Bluetooth speaker and install it on her backpack.
I’m just going to assume the comics shop moved twice, and this location is the middle, off-screen location.
I have been wearing various pairs of bluetooth stereo speakers for the last five years. I work alone a lot.
I have work colleagues who wear their earbuds constantly for music. I wonder how much it impacts their productivity, as I cannot concentrate on my work with that kind of distraction. Gaming, sure I’ve got music coming from my comp because the background music in most games is repetitive and mostly crap and I’d rather be hearing tunes I pick or at least in a genre I enjoy. But not for creative work which requires (from me, at least) a lot of concentration. I can tune out some distractions, occasionally to the point where someone will have to speak my name more than once to get my attention, but not music directly in my ears from buds/headphones.
Some of my work gets repetitive.
But three generations of the family work at it, so that’s an incentive.
And the business is down here in Texas where there are hardly any employees to be hired who can drive on Ice. When we have actual winter here we need somebody who can get to important accounts.
I’ve been thinking about taking a job out of state, but I would only see my son maybe once every five years and so I keep waffling.
Sydney could so have the clothing ninjas make her clothes with built in speakers running off of the pipboy. And loud enough to be a P A system.
If Sydney ever got a personal sound system I am sure she would program it to play “Ride of the Valkyries’ every time she flew into combat, for dramatic effect.
Am sure she would find a place (if not the time) to play The Pink Panther theme, and certainly Yakkety Sax :P
It can depend a lot on both the person and the music. For me, any song with lyrics would be distracting, but purely instrumental music can help me focus.
Exactly. I loop repetitive instrumentals that have the right tonal quality, and it keeps me in a particular frame of mind for whatever I am doing.
Voices, in a language I understand, interfere with my thoughts.
It’s not just for the music, it’s to drown out all the office noise. Lots of developers I know listen to music while working; there’s some studies that show low-level white noise and/or low-key music help people focus on their tasks better.
There’s also a few people who have the noise-cancelling headphones and listen to just the white noise without music, but I have no idea how they stand living in the cone of silence like that.
What we also have to think now is, after two months and the store moving you just KNOW its selling action figures, statues and other merchandise of the Archon. So did they pull a first run one off for Sydney?
…..
…..
…..
Then we have to ask. Has Sydney called her parents personally once shes back to let them know she’s OK? Because she’s not like forgotten to keep them in the loop before or anything…
I imagine her contract includes a batch of first runs, no way she didn’t negotiate for that. After 2 months, I’d be shocked if there weren’t already some Archon comics on the shelves; good action figures take longer to design and mass-produce though.
But now that she’s back, she can start signing merch – I foresee a store event in the very near future.
Spare a thought for all those online accounts she’s gonna need to reactivate/recreate having let their 30 day inactivity periods lapse.
…
There are sites that people use that automatically inactivate accounts at 30 days of inactivity?
Why do people put up with that? My online life is not a job. I can understand a need to clear out accounts of people who posted once and then never again. But disk space is pretty cheap, and if somebody’s been an active poster for an extended period and goes away for a bit, it feels like complete insanity to me to just inactivate their account, or even delete it.
For services that need to really value security, I could see them inactivating someone’s account after they let their password stay expired for a bit, but that’s not most online things. I mean, there’s basic security that every website should be mindful of – don’t let people do cross-site scripting attacks, make sure your code isn’t vulnerable to code injection or other common bugs, support https if there’s anything important at all on your site, including if you have static passwords or partially static passwords that people use to log in.
But beyond that, most websites do not have security needs so great that they need to require everybody to change their passwords every x days.
DIsclosure: I’m pretty sure I’ve used Twitter this past year. I’ve logged into Facebook and LinkedIn within the past month, but that’s not normal for me. I started using stackexchange this year, and it’s been a few months, so I logged in to see if that account was inactivated, but it was still fine. I used to be active over on thedailywtf, but for the past few years, I’ve logged in on average less than once a year. Gmail and mailfence have allowed me to go on multi-month hiatuses without canceling my service. Back when I used livejournal, it let me take a break for over a year without disabling my account, but that was back when Brad was still running the service.
I realize I use a lot fewer Internet services than most people. I’ve heard that people have returned to Reddit after months or years of being away without complaints. I know there are literally thousands of Internet services that I’ve never heard of, and hundreds I have heard of that I don’t use.
There was a game I used to play where they’d erase your account if you left for 30 days. The company went bankrupt and the game is now open source. I’ve been assured it was for mysterious reasons nobody could possibly understand.
What game is that?
The Game of Life :P
Oh yes. It does still happen.
In fact, since I posted that comment, I’ve had to reactivate an account that I’d assumed was still active, because I was accessing it through a web portal for the first time in years, even though I’d assumed I’d had access to it via a third-party client regularly in that same time.
But, you’re right. Nobody knows every organisation out there, what their policies are for user account inactivity, or even if their system administrators are IT competent.
I just thought I’d mention, no, their system administrators are not IT competent. This is more a facet of the state of information technology than it is a comment on every organizations’ system administrators.
For some reason I now have a mental image of Sydney trying to ‘bookmark’ the comic shop and Archon HQ for an easier commute, not thinking about the effects of opening her warp portal inside the atmosphere. Actually how bad WOULD that be, if it was within the same world – no unbalanced vacuum right? Might just mess with air pressure differences and weather patterns, but not on TOO big of a scale since it wouldnt be open long. The real question is whether or not her flight orb can be THAT granular with its location saving.
The amount of pressure differences between two points on the same world can be surprising. Less bad, however, if it’s two points within the same city at the same altitude. That having been said, it could also potentially affect the structural integrity of the matter around the warp portal. I mean, it basically tells space to get seriously bent. The matter in that space might have issues with that.
The navigation interface is to mathematically arcane for Sydney at this point.
She had to have Altus and Galen enter some good location tabs for her back in episode #715 & #716.
So, what’s the weird blotch in panel 3? It appears to be lingering in mid air in the background, overlapping the asphalt and the greenway barrier. You could call it an exhaust cloud but we don’t see any vehicle that may have left it.
Therefore: NINJAS
It’s a serendipitous tumbleweed to emphasize the abandoned nature of the location.
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-154-predictably-unpredictable/
It’s uh… It’s the shadow of a tree. Try looking at the ground under a tree during the mid-afternoon, you’d be surprised how neat it can look. We often don’t notice those things because they’re so mundane.
Oh no, realistic world progression!
I’ll be amazed if she finds she still has a job when she gets to the new location. Joel likely thinks she abandoned him. Her family might think she’s dead or gone off to join the Rainbow family or something like that.
Or one of her paychecks from ARC (or some of Arianna’s scheming, as she was apparently “salivating” about the shop) probably gave Joel the ability to make a significant move up, so it will be MUCH flashier, methinks.
Harem was going to drop by, so even though he would have had no notion where she was he would be aware she would supposedly be back eventually. Also, she’s a partner in ownership not an employee.
And finally, were she an employee this would apply https://www.military.com/spouse/career-advancement/military-spouse-jobs/userra-right-to-reemployment.html so firing her for not being around is not an option in this sort of instance.
Interesting! Thanks for the link.
She’s part owner as well; we don’t know what percent, but it’s probably high enough that Joel doesn’t have the majority vote. Besides which, legal or no, firing a real-life superhero from working in your comic shop might be the dumbest possible business move ever.
“What about the comic store!?”
“We took care of all of that for you, Sydney.”
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-728-she-spent-two-months-not-existing-for-tax-purposes/
“Joel likely thinks she abandoned him.”
Joel probably thinks she’s friggin’ dead.
Also she can’t get “fired.” She owns the place along with Joel.
I just went back to her calling her parents and it got me thinking – did she ever call her parents after she was missing from Earth for so long? Did it happen off screen?
Most likely happened off screen. Too much time too little comic space.
Last time she mentioned her car, it still was at the bank…
Did she EVER get her car?
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-309-conservation-of-momentum-into-your-head/
Yes.
Thanks, I didn’t remember it because I didn’t see her actually use the car in any meaningful way.
But we did get to see Harem do cool inertial redirection stuff, which is how I remember how to find that issue.
Ha. A good way to deal with the car would be it’s parked at hq and was destroyed in a minor kerfuffle. Insurance pays off the monthly payments and keeps her account solvent so she doesn’t lose her apartment till she gets back. After all she couldn’t cash a paycheque floating around the galaxy.
I’m pretty sure that she’s rich enough now to keep her account solvent even if insurance did not pay her monthly payments. A single biweekly paycheck was more than she normally makes in a year, and she’s now also getting paychecks for a portion of the 2 months that she’s been gone as well.
Just curious but what happened to the neck bands that she used to have?
She’s off duty and/or she forgot.
Really should have it and the Pipboy when flying.
I think the pipboy is thin enough to wear under her preferred long sleeve tops. DaveB just doesn’t draw the outline under the material.
No, it covers her wrist, with a strap around at least one finger, it would be clearly visible on either arm, and it was fairly bulky, not thin (remember, it managed to take the blunt of Shadowy Crushed-nuts’ attack)
Why would she carry shopping when she has the tentaorb?
Anonymity.
I’m really surprised that Joel was not invited to the Welcome Home party as well (just like I was about Sydney’s parents not being invited).
Earth doesn’t (didn’t) know about aliens. So Sydney’s parents and business partner were told she was lost in action, presumed dead, details unspecified because [CLASSIFIED]. Some one in the chain of command “should have” notified those people that she’d been recovered alive and in good condition; it wouldn’t have happened fast enough for then to be at a welcome back party in a secure facility.
The reason I said “should have” is because there was an alien invasion at the crack of dawn the next morning. Which may have delayed family notification some… which could result in here arriving at the new store and Joel going “You’re supposed to be dead”. It’s certainly going to confuse the regulars lined up outside when she arrives…
They would not have been told she was dead if they didn’t think she was, as this would be a pretty much absolute guarantee that:
1. They would go to the press to tell them their daughter was dead.
2. In the future they would be likely to go to the press anytime they thought something might be wrong and they were being lied to.
Nor would they be told nothing at all:
This isn’t and option because from the previous phonecall the impression is given that they talk a lot although distance limits the frequency of actual visits. And the press was reporting her sequestered for training yet she hadn’t called first. That can happen to service personnel, but not before they graduate bootcamp or an officer academy and become full fledged members.
The situation properly called for a personal visit from Maxima, and a redacted explanation that she was missing but they had a plan to get her back in roughly two months.
Someone from her unit should have been shown to have brought the parents to the welcome home party, but DaveB hasn’t the experience to understand just how important that is considered in the military, and he is likely still figuring out what they should look like. I blame her absence from the party
on ongoing art considerations.
When the team returned through the portal, Harem got recombobulated. She had experienced the entire 53 days in four out of five bodies, and could remember it all. They knew the day Sydney would be returning, if not the exact hour. They would know to pay her bills and tell her parents she’d be away on secret assignment for “about two months or less.”
Wouldn’t it have been with all 5 bodies, since she went back to relive them? Spacetime-warp Harem would’ve been living it the first time, but all 5 future bodies (and her 1 mind) should’ve remembered it and been able to clue in the ‘lost’ Harem. But she didn’t, so either she was too overwhelmed by information overload, or there were timey-wimey parallel universe hijinks.
Also, they didn’t know the exact day/time of return – they only knew when Harem would be getting deja vu, which coincides with the away team’s arrival time in the future, and that only lasted a couple minutes before she returned. That insight gave them a pickup date/time to tell Cora, and the rough travel time Cora would need to get to Earth, but they had no way of knowing a precise ETA until 53+ days later when she actually found Sydney and called Dabbler. And even then, Arianna still was off by an hour or so.
No, the four Daphne’s that weren’t on that mission experienced that time first hand, the Daphne who went to the future only experienced via Quantum Link-up (and then it was reversed when she got back to the ‘Present’: the four who staid behind now had knowledge of the futureOh right, the one who went to future would have also gone the long way as well, so for a few minutes there were six Daphne’s (or five plus one, seeing how the bodies are distinctive even if the minds aren’t)
Mind, there is only ONE MIND!!!
Except for a few minutes while there were 2 minds, which is how the knowledge transfer happened, allowing them to organize a rescue.
I still wanna see something about Harem either making a killing on sports betting, or being forbidden from any gambling / stock transactions for the intervening 53+ days.
I’m sure Harem used a third party in Europe or Asia when she was doing that.
I mean she never did that.
The money isn’t hidden in a shell corporation.
Harem might have been a bit too discombobulated during that time period to be able to do that.
A future mind and a present mind, just one the effects of time travel.
Yes, that’s what said
No, they didn’t. They knew the day that Halo would ARRIVE at Sciona’s planet. Past-Harem was gone from future-Harem’s time zone and mind before Sydney was picked up by Cora. No knowledge transfer on her survival was therefore possible.