{{comic
| number = 1086
| date = July 25, 2012
| title = Eyelash Wish Log
| image = eyelash wish log.png
| titletext = Ooh, another one. Uh... the ability to alter any coefficients of friction at will during sporting events.
}}

==Explanation==
This comic is based on a common {{w|superstition}} that when someone's {{w|eyelash}} falls out, that person can make a wish on it. This comic appears to be a page from the fictitious Wish Bureau in charge of granting or tracking said wishes. And of course the wisher is [[Black Hat]] and he has quite a few wishes, most of them attempts to jailbreak the wishing system for his own advantage. A common trope in fiction is that wishing for more wishes is prohibited and for many of his wishes Black Hat attempts to circumvent that.

Later, in [[2741: Wish Interpretation]], Black Hat again gets a chance for making a wish, where the rules are discussed by the Genie that will grant him a wish.

;January 9: That wishing on eyelashes worked
:*This wish is pointless. If wishing on eyelashes worked, then this would do absolutely nothing (because it already works) and if it didn't then nothing would happen because wishing on eyelashes wouldn't work. However, there are plausible reasons for a wish-granting entity to require an initial wish of this type (filtering out most potential wishers, making permanent a wish-granting entity that had flickered into existence like a virtual particle, etc). He could have also obtained this wish from [[2741|another source]], and counted it in his log due to it being the start of his eyelash-wishing.

;January 12: A pony
:*This wish functions as a test to see whether or not previous wish worked. It can be assumed that it did, as Black Hat then continued to make additional wishes. Wishing for a pony is a stereotypical wish made by very young girls; since Black Hat is an adult man (with a very dark sense of humor), the contrast is humorous.

;January 15: Unlimited wishes
:*This appears to have failed, due to the traditional ban on wishing for additional wishes in conventional folklore.

;January 19: Revocation of rules prohibiting unlimited wishes
:*An attempt to circumvent the ban in the previous wish by wishing the ban away.

;January 20: A finite but arbitrarily large number of wishes
:*Another attempt to circumvent the ban on unlimited wishes by asking for a number of wishes that is limited, but as large as he likes (and there are some very large finite numbers out there, such as {{w|Graham's number}}).

;January 28: The power to dictate the rules governing wishes
:*Yet another attempt to circumvent the ban on unlimited wishes.

;February 5: Unlimited eyelashes
:*This wish likely caused Black Hat to grow unlimited eyelashes, which could be quite inconvenient and painful. And, yes, one more attempt to circumvent the ban on unlimited wishes.
:*Alternatively, perhaps the eyelashes were provided to him already fallen out so that he could not use them for wishes.

;February 6: That wish-granting entities be required to interpret wishes in accordance with the intent of the wisher
:*This wish is likely a response to the previous day's misguided wish. It's actually quite a common problem that people making wishes leave them open for misinterpretation.

;February 8: That wish-granting entities be incapable of impatience
:*An attempt to prevent whatever being is powerful enough to grant wishes from becoming angry with Black Hat while he gives very specific instructions so wish-granting entities cannot misinterpret what he said. (It would appear that the previous wish failed.)

;February 12 #1: Unlimited breadsticks
:*The first wish of this day seems to be a reference to the unlimited {{w|breadsticks}} offered at {{w|Olive Garden}}.

;February 12 #2: Veto power over others' wishes
:*A power that could be interesting to have. It also very much fits with Black Hat's character. It seems to suggest other people have noticed that wishing on eyelashes works and Black Hat is encountering some that inconvenience him.

;February 19: Veto power over others' wishes and all {{w|United States Congress|congressional}} legislation
:*An improvement of the previous wish. This would be very interesting to have indeed, especially if you are Black Hat, because you could veto any federal law, a power normally entrusted only to the {{w|President of the United States}}. It may imply that, now that many people are wishing on eyelashes, laws are being made about it that dictate the rules governing wishes, overriding Black Hat's own.

;February 23: The power to override any veto
:*This wish would allow Black Hat to override vetoes which in addition to the previous wish would effectively make him control the US legislature and, to some extent, also all other governing bodies. (Notably the {{w|United Nations|UN}}, where the veto powers wielded by the five {{w|permanent members of the Security Council}} cannot be overridden and can have large impacts on global politics.) Note that it will not allow him to turn laws off (veto them) and on again (override the veto) at any moment, as once a bill becomes law it cannot be vetoed. Without the ability to propose legislation, Black Hat's powers are still limited. The wish may also refer back to the February 19 wish: by granting himself veto power over wishes, Black Hat just made vetoes more powerful than wishes; now he is trying to control other people's vetoes as well, lest they one-up him.

;February 27: The power to see where any {{w|URL shortener|shortened URL}} goes without clicking
:*This wish relates to a common practice especially in tweets or other short length media where full-length meaningful web addresses such as <tt>www.somewhere.com/articles/specificdate/title-of-the-page.html</tt> would not be feasible. So a more compressed but nonsensical string of seemingly random characters is used which links to a link of the full text address. This creates some problems for people who are security or privacy conscious and prefer to be informed beforehand where they will be traveling on the Internet. The use of shortened URLs is also central to many types of {{w|Rickrolling|trolls or practical jokes}} (see [https://bit.ly/IqT6zt <tt>bit.ly/IqT6zt</tt>] for an example), by directing someone to a different location than the link would initially suggest. Thus Black Hat might be wishing to be able to tell where the links go for the purpose of avoiding this sort of trolling.

;February 29: The power to control the direction news anchors are looking while they talk
:*This wish likely appeals to Black Hat's mischievous side, allowing him to cause news anchors to look at the wrong camera during live broadcast. Repeatedly switching to the incorrect camera would cause havoc in the studio. Additionally, Black Hat may also attempt to get a news anchor fired by having them stare where they should not.

;March 7: The power to introduce arbitrary error into Nate Silver's predictions
:*A reference to [[Nate Silver]], who is a former writer for {{w|Baseball Prospectus}} working on predicting baseball players' stats and now writes for ''{{w|Five Thirty Eight}}'' in which he predicts the outcome of elections based on polling data. Influencing Nate Silver's predictions would allow Black Hat to indirectly influence the result of elections, by adjusting the {{w|Overton window}} of which candidates and policies are considered to have "broad public support" or "electability" or the like. This may tighten Black Hat's control of the US even more.

;March 15: A house of stairs
:*This wish refers to the {{w|lithograph}} ''{{w|House of Stairs}}'' by {{w|M. C. Escher}}, or perhaps another of his lithographs, ''{{w|Relativity (M. C. Escher)|Relativity}}''.

;March 23: A universe which is a replica of this one sans rules against meta-wishes
:*Another attempt to circumvent the rules against wishing for more wishes by creating a {{w|parallel universe}} without such rules.

;March 29: Free transportation to and from that universe
:*While the previous wish may have worked, Black Hat notes a problem with it: he is still in our universe with no way to get to his new one. He also requires it to be free, so money wouldn't be a problem.

;April 2: A clear explanation of how wish rules are structured and enforced
:*It appears that one or both of the previous two wishes failed, so Black Hat tries to discover exactly what is offending the Bureau. Having clear rules and how they work would help him finding loopholes in them.

;April 7: The power to banish people into the TV show they are talking about
:*Black Hat is obviously fed up of hearing people talking about certain TV shows, and would like to be able to banish them into the show, thus prevent him having to listen to those people. Depending on the show in question, it could be quite horrifying for the person getting banished.

;April 8: Zero wishes
:*An attempt to hack the wish-granting system by using a quite common vulnerability in input validation: an unexpected value. There may be multiple vectors this can work:
::* in many computer systems, 0 is reserved for unlimited or undefined
::* in Assembly languages, do-while loops are more efficient than while loops, but famously do not check their condition on the first iteration. This means that 0 is effectively 256 for 8 bit counters, 65536 for 16 bits, etc. If the wish granter wrote the wish laws in assembly and used this optimization, initializing the wish count to zero would give him a large number of wishes dependent on the size of the counter.
::* the number may be used as a divisor in some equation and this will make the system {{w|divide by zero}} and probably crash
::* there also may be an assertion like "<tt>number of wishes granted == 1</tt>" which would fail, again crashing the system
::* similarly, if viewed as a computer system, it is possible that the wish decrement (subtracting 1 from the number of remaining wishes) is performed ''after'' the wish is granted, thus resulting in either −1 wishes (another common placeholder for unlimited numbers), or an {{w|integer overflow}} if the wish counter is stored as an unsigned integer; the overflow can result in an exception, otherwise −1 becomes represented as one less than the size of the integer – basically, an extremely large number.
::However it seems the eyelash wish-granting system does proper input validation on zero because it did not crash or grant unlimited wishes
:*This wish may also be a reversal of the January 9 wish. Black Hat is attempting to win his game by introducing a {{w|logical contradiction}}: if he gets "zero wishes", this is one wish granted; however, if it is not granted, then, de facto, he will have been granted zero wishes. This is a common technique used in logical proofs to show that an earlier assumption does not hold (in this case, the possibility of eyelash wishing to work).

;April 15: Veto power over clocks
:*Midnight, April 15 is the deadline for filing income tax returns in the United States.
:*It may also be that Black Hat, now in control of all human legislation, is attempting to extend this to further control also rules of nature – in this case: time. The strange wording is likely to be due to Black Hat having consulted with the wish-hacking manual he acquired April 2.

;April 22: A Pokéball that works on strangers' pets
:*A reference to the {{w|Pokémon}} series of video games. A Pokéball can be thrown at a Pokémon (or in this case, a pet that the Pokéball thrower finds either annoying or cute) to capture it and achieve ownership of it. Unless cheats are used (and in {{w|Pokémon Colosseum}}, in which a criminal organization uses illegally modified Pokéballs), Pokéballs cannot be used on Pokémon owned by other people in the Pokémon games . Many players wish to obtain the often high-level Pokémon of NPCs, and Black Hat may also be interested in pranking other players by stealing their powerful Pokémon. This was later revealed to be one of Randall's wishes in the title text of [[1705|1705: Pokémon Go]].

The title text, a wish to have control over coefficients of friction during sporting events, is yet another mischievous wish. The coefficients of friction, though usually not noticed as they are unchanging, are all-important when performing physical activities — imagine trying to play hockey on a field of sandpaper or sprinting over a sheet of ice. In addition to the difficulty going where you want or getting any balls that might be in play where you want them to go in a changing friction environment, angular momentum would also be very difficult to control.

Note that when Black Hat makes meta-wishes no follow-up wishes are logged. Since the meta-wishes failed, no valid eyelash wish condition existed and the illegal test wishes were not logged in the eyelash wish log. This means that, ironically, his attempts to get extra wishes have wasted many of the wishes he did get.

==Transcript==
:{|
! align="left" colspan="2" |Eyelash Wish Log
|-style="color: gray;"
|
|align="right"|Wish bureau ID#:
|-
|
|align="right"|21118378
|-style="color: gray;"
|
|align="right"|Date range:
|-
|
|align="right"|Jan-Apr 2012
|-
|}
:[To the left of the above text, a picture of Black Hat above the gray text "Wisher"]
:{|
!align="left" width="50px"|Date
!! align="left"|Wish
|-
|Jan 09
||That wishing on eyelashes worked
|-
|Jan 12
||A pony
|-
|Jan 15
||Unlimited wishes
|-
|Jan 19
||Revocation of rules prohibiting unlimited wishes
|-
|Jan 20
||A finite but arbitrarily large number of wishes
|-
|Jan 28
||The power to dictate the rules governing wishes
|-
|Feb 05
||Unlimited eyelashes
|-
|Feb 06
||That wish-granting entities be required to interpret wishes in accordance with the intent of the wisher
|-
|Feb 08
||That wish-granting entities be incapable of impatience
|-
|Feb 12
||Unlimited breadsticks
|-
|Feb 12
||Veto power over others' wishes
|-
|Feb 19
||Veto power over others' wishes and all congressional legislation
|-
|Feb 23
||The power to override any veto
|-
|Feb 27
||The power to see where any shortened URL goes without clicking
|-
|Feb 29
||The power to control the direction news anchors are looking while they talk
|-
|Mar 07
||The power to introduce arbitrary error into Nate Silver's predictions
|-
|Mar 15
||A house of stairs
|-
|Mar 23
||A universe which is a replica of this one sans rules against meta-wishes
|-
|Mar 29
||Free transportation to and from that universe
|-
|Apr 02
||A clear explanation of how wish rules are structured and enforced
|-
|Apr 07
||The power to banish people into the TV show they're talking about
|-
|Apr 08
||Zero wishes
|-
|Apr 15
||Veto power over clocks
|-
|Apr 22
||A Pokéball that works on strangers' pets
|}

{{Comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics featuring Black Hat]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Nate Silver]]
[[Category:Pokémon]]
[[Category:Time]]
[[Category:Animals]]
[[Category:News anchor]]
[[Category:Video games]]
[[Category:Video games]]
[[Category:Genie]]

3248: 182.8 Meters

2026-05-21T09:12:10Z

GSLikesCats307:

3248: 182.8 Meters

2026-05-21T09:03:42Z

GSLikesCats307:

Talk:3248: 182.8 Meters

2026-05-21T09:01:32Z

GSLikesCats307:

I remember seeing a sign for a university saying it offered “more than 17 programs.” I can’t think of a reason for them to phrase it like that if they had anything other than 18 programs in total. [[User:KelOfTheStars!|KelOfTheStars!]] ([[User talk:KelOfTheStars!|talk]]) 04:16, 21 May 2026 (UTC)
:Perhaps the sign was made while a potential 19th program was under consideration or when one of 19 programs was being considered for elimination. Another possibility is that it had small "programs" that were less than full-fledged programs and there was an internal dispute about whether those "programs" should count. My hobby: Thinking about possible excuses petty bureaucrats can use when drafting signs. [[Special:Contributions/150.221.155.241|150.221.155.241]] 04:54, 21 May 2026 (UTC)
:: Or it has a variable number of programs, with some only running at certain times, but never less than a core 18 programs. [[Special:Contributions/82.13.184.33|82.13.184.33]] 08:28, 21 May 2026 (UTC)

Fun fact! There's never been a US President measuring either 186 or 187 cm tall: https://potus.com/presidential-facts/presidential-heights/ [[Special:Contributions/86.23.176.63|86.23.176.63]] 04:34, 21 May 2026 (UTC)

why is it that when i look at the page this shows up:
This is a comic in the "My Hobby" is a series of xkcd comics in which Randall suggests (hopefully fictional) hobbies he has. The hobbies tend to be clever or smart-aleck things to do. They do not always fall under the type of activity that would generally be described as a "hobby", but often are merely things Randall (or Cueball) does when certain situations arise. "My Hobby" comics are not presented regularly, but there have been a number such strip.... (yada yada yada)
but when i actually edit it it shows an really short sentence??? --[[User:Utdtutyabthsc|Utdtutyabthsc]] ([[User talk:Utdtutyabthsc|talk]]) 04:54, 21 May 2026 (UTC)
:It's fixed now.[https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=3248%3A_182.8_Meters&action=historysubmit&type=revision&diff=413210&oldid=413206] [[Special:Contributions/150.221.155.241|150.221.155.241]] 05:07, 21 May 2026 (UTC)

I remember having a book about tabletop games and different sports, which was originally written in the USA. During translation all units got converted to metric, so the book had gems like "the billiards table needs to be 213.36 cm long and 108.68 cm wide". Eventually we reverse engineered it exactly like in the comic. --[[Special:Contributions/2A02:6BF:8009:1404:A0BE:9C5C:1FBA:A96F|2A02:6BF:8009:1404:A0BE:9C5C:1FBA:A96F]] 07:35, 21 May 2026 (UTC)
: I come across this apallingly often in my daily work. I work with patient information sheets for clinical studies. They are supposed to be worded "patient-friendly", so the people who write them convert those nasty mL into much nicer teaspoons and tablespoons. And then you get gems like "During the entire study, a total volume of approximately 31.33 tablespoons of blood will be taken from you." Which is EXTREMELY reader-friendly and easy to grasp, apparently. Recently, I even had a comment trail by previous editors attached to this, where one editor asked "shouldn't we round this to something more usable"? and the other one answered "Nah, you'll only get problems with rounding errors from inconsistently rounding up or down throughout the document, and then someone will complain. Just leave it like it is" --[[Special:Contributions/93.241.210.5|93.241.210.5]] 07:55, 21 May 2026 (UTC)
:: A better solution there would seem to be to find an everyday object of about the capacity of the amount to be taken (a coffee mug?), and use that as a comparison. A volume in mL is likely to be just as meaningless as the 31.33 tablespoons. [[Special:Contributions/82.13.184.33|82.13.184.33]] 08:39, 21 May 2026 (UTC)
: In that case, though, it probably is appropriate, (at least to the mm, if not to the 0.1mm) in that the sizes have been specifically defined within the laws of the game, and then translated to metric for use in the modern world, without wanting to change the actual sizes of the tables. A professional player might well notice if the size of the table was 4mm out. [[Special:Contributions/82.13.184.33|82.13.184.33]] 08:39, 21 May 2026 (UTC)

This sort of stuff would be unfathomable if we didn't have Randall. --[[Special:Contributions/134.157.254.7|134.157.254.7]] 08:22, 21 May 2026 (UTC)

It always makes me smile when I get my milk delivered by the quaint old traditional milk man in '568mL' glass bottles. Should we have some notable real-world examples on the page? [[User:JeffUK|JeffUK]] ([[User talk:JeffUK|talk]]) 08:46, 21 May 2026 (UTC)
:I don't know. There are a lot of times where packets have wierd measurements on them - I've found packets with '168g' on them. [[User:GSLikesCats307|GSLikesCats307]] ([[User talk:GSLikesCats207|talk]]) 10:01, 21 May 2026 (UTC)

This is more of a pet peeve than a hobby. Ugh! [[User:Alcatraz ii|Alcatraz ii]] ([[User talk:Alcatraz ii|talk]]) 08:51, 21 May 2026 (UTC)

3248: 182.8 Meters

2026-05-21T08:58:58Z

GSLikesCats307:

3248: 182.8 Meters

2026-05-21T08:56:51Z

GSLikesCats307:

3248: 182.8 Meters

2026-05-21T08:52:36Z

GSLikesCats307:

2026-05-18T19:36:53Z

GSLikesCats307:

3247: Particle Census

2026-05-18T19:35:04Z

GSLikesCats307: Just saw a stray '&' and fixed it up

3247: Particle Census

2026-05-18T19:28:18Z

GSLikesCats307:

2026-05-14T10:13:39Z

GSLikesCats307:

Talk:3245: Results Age

2026-05-14T10:10:06Z

GSLikesCats307:

oh god these are uncomfortably accurate...though sometimes the post age is the next time rung down. i hit an issue recently which sent me to mozilla forum posts from 2008, migrated twice, where the people having the problem seem to have stopped caring about it a decade ago - '''[[User:Vaedez|Vaedez]]''' ([[User talk:Vaedez|talk]]) 18:43, 13 May 2026 (UTC)

Man, I’m not even 24 ''years old'' [[Special:Contributions/2A02:6B6F:E226:B00:803D:CE4C:ED8:DED4|2A02:6B6F:E226:B00:803D:CE4C:ED8:DED4]] 18:45, 13 May 2026 (UTC)
:Can we block this IP address? [[Special:Contributions/82.13.184.33|82.13.184.33]] 08:33, 14 May 2026 (UTC)

I guess once we finish the table in the explanation we can convert that to a similar table in the transcript, rather than doing them independently. [[User:Barmar|Barmar]] ([[User talk:Barmar|talk]]) 19:13, 13 May 2026 (UTC)
:No. [[explain xkcd:Editor FAQ#What is the format of the transcript section?|Tables do not belong in the Transcript.]] It serves a different purpose. And it'll just be the text that's there, so would be far simpler (and more likely to be 'finished' any time soon) than the Explanation table which will get tweaked to add or clarify explanatory descriptions.
:You ''could'' copy an Explanation table (having the comic text, in various rows and columns) to the Transcript then 'de-Table' it (remove the table-formatting) and 'en-Transcript' what remains (add the ":[This bit looks like..]" stuff). But that's not much less effort than rewriting such a relatively small comic's from scratch.
:It can also go the other way, though... Someone gets the Transcript done, and then ''from that'' the base text of the Table is 'en-Tabled'. It'd depend on who visits the newly-created Comic page and what they decide to concentrate on to start up the otherwise blank page that the BOT put together. [[Special:Contributions/81.179.199.253|81.179.199.253]] 20:56, 13 May 2026 (UTC)
::I added the content of the table to the transcript based on the format of [[3120: Geologic Periods]] which also has a table. --[[Special:Contributions/208.59.176.206|208.59.176.206]] 00:49, 14 May 2026 (UTC)

I will add an explanation of an edge case [[User:SomebodyElse|SomebodyElse]] ([[User talk:SomebodyElse|talk]]) 19:40, 13 May 2026 (UTC)

If it's negative time old you are in a Tardis. If it's sqrt(-1) time old, give me some of whatever it is you are smoking. [[Special:Contributions/64.201.132.210|64.201.132.210]] 22:02, 13 May 2026 (UTC)
:''Which'' sqrt(-1)? If it's imaginary i then you're in weird territory, but if it's quaternionic i, j, or k, you can interpret that as a spacelike separation, so it just means that you've found someone with an FTL drive i.e. the flowchart arrow also goes to TARDIS.[[Special:Contributions/185.146.232.73|185.146.232.73]] 10:03, 14 May 2026 (UTC)

Yeah it's even better when there's no god damn results at all.[[User:RG|RG]] ([[User talk:RG|talk]]) 00:29, 14 May 2026 (UTC)

What about when the post is more than 13 years old and you see that the post is from yourself, you had just forgotten about it? [[User:JohnHawkinson|JohnHawkinson]] ([[User talk:JohnHawkinson|talk]]) 01:52, 14 May 2026 (UTC)
:Same vibe as googling early warning signs of alheizmers for the first time but all the links are purple.[[User:RG|RG]] ([[User talk:RG|talk]]) 02:08, 14 May 2026 (UTC)

I once discovered a scanned magazine article from 1999 or so that briefly mentioned how to use a hidden Mathematica feature that a) still existed more than 20 years later and b) was in fact directly applicable to my problem. Sometimes things do work out![[Special:Contributions/185.146.232.73|185.146.232.73]] 10:03, 14 May 2026 (UTC)

I actually made my first table on this one! It took a lot of trial-and-error. [[User:GSLikesCats307|GSLikesCats307]] ([[User talk:GSLikesCats307|talk]]) 11:10, 14 May 2026 (UTC)

3245: Results Age

2026-05-14T10:07:19Z

GSLikesCats307:

{{comic
| number = 3245
| date = May 13, 2026
| title = Results Age
| image = results_age_2x.png
| imagesize = 478x669px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = Please, we need your help. Our research suggests you're the last living descendant of the person who knew how to format this config file.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|This page was created BY AN INTERNET GRANDPA. Don't remove this notice too soon.}}
This comic shows how likely it is that a bug reported will be fixed, based on the age of some past post that matches your search for details of the problem.

A table is shown below of the explanations of each table row:
{| class="wikitable"
!Age of post !! Explanation given !! Full Explanation
|-
|2 hours ago || A service outage. Not very long to fix - Just wait. ||The recentness of the information implies that it has just happened, and other people have noticed it and started to post about the issue. Large-scale problems like a service outage are obvious priorities, and will (hopefully!) be fixed quickly.
|-
|5 days ago || A new update just broke something big. High chance to be fixed, but you might have to wait for a patch || Similar to before, a large breakage would be very high priority to be fixed. However, as it's been five days since reporting it, the bug is likely taking a while to be found, so - as pointed out in the comic - you could have to wait a bit longer for this one to be resolved.
|-
|3 months ago ||A new product isn't working for some users. Decent chance of finding a solution in replies || This problem is clearly not going to be fixed by the creators, judging by how long it's been there, and it possibly isn't an issue affecting everyone, or even a large proportion of users. However, people are innovative, and no doubt will someone have found their own fix, patch or kludge to get around the product limitations.
|-
|2 years ago||You've ran into an edge case. Low chance to be fixed, but there could be help in troubleshooting||An edge case is a rare situation that the developers did not think to account for, usually causing a logic error, where the program works, but outputs something unexpected which might cause an error down the line. Very few people will suffer from this precise problem, although others may have encountered similar issues on similar software, and noting how they solved ''their'' problem might lead you towards how to solve your own problem.
|-
|13 years ago||You're the only one with this problem. Very Low chance to be fixed, and the post is likely irrelevant||Given how long this 'problem' has been around without being fixed, it is likely the problem is a problem the user has specifically. Possibly through the tech being corrupted through use, or not being compatable with the thing itself. More than that, it suggests that your search has only found an old post that just happens to match your search-query, because there are no more definite answers to your precise question and the enquiry results in nothing more relevant to show you.
|-
|24 years ago||Oh god how is the Internet so old. Maybe whoever posted the message's children can help you out. || This is another comic [[:Category:Comics to make one feel old|where Randall makes people feel old]]. In this case by pointing out that the Internet is very old, and people posting comments in the early period of the Internet are now grown up with kids. Something [[Randall]] has repeatedly shown that he is uncomfortable with. It is also (presumably) rare enough to be a [[979: Wisdom of the Ancients|DenverCoder9 situation]], and 13 years is longer than the time in that comic, so 13 years might be such a situation too.
The Internet is in fact significantly older than 24 years old, being over fifty years old. The World Wide Web (to many, synonymous with the Internet) hails from the early 1990s, and Google (one of the more commonly used search engines, through which this error search might have been made) started working in the late 1990s. The biggest surprise might be that some information found on a web-page in 2002 (and still relevant to your search) survives on some still live web server (or as an archive of that original information on some successor site). For example, anything hosted on a {{w|GeoCities}} site would have normally been made inaccessible in 2014.

Title text seems to be describing what a conversation with the child of that person could look like, it is phrased in a way a dramatic fiction would do it. This does seem to imply though that the problem in question is a rather major one, so how it would go unfixed for so long that only one person left knows about it is unknown - Of course though, it could have started small, and grown bigger over time.
|}

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript|Don't remove this notice too soon.}}

:Implications of the age of the posts you see when you Google an error message

:[A search engine prompt field is shown, containing part of an error code message (beginning with E-21 & what looks like a 9 & 3 next to it). Below this are search results shown as obscured text, except for a the phrase '3 years ago' in the first heading. This is expanded into an ellipse that obscures the rest of the search field.]
:[A table, with 3 columns, labelled "Age of post", "What it means", and "Probability of a fix"]

:[Row 1: Age of post:] 2 hours ago
:[What it means:] There's an infrastructure outage
:[Probability of a fix:] Very high -- just wait

:[Row 2: Age of post:] 5 days ago
:[What it means:] A recent update broke something big
:[Probability of a fix:] High, but you might have to wait for a patch

:[Row 3: Age of post:] 3 months ago
:[What it means:] A new product isn't working for some users
:[Probability of a fix:] Decent chance of a solution in the replies

:[Row 4: Age of post:] 2 years ago
:[What it means:] You've run into an edge case
:[Probability of a fix:] Low, but maybe the replies can help with troubleshooting

:[Row 5: Age of post:] 13 years ago
:[What it means:] You're the only person with this problem
:[Probability of a fix:] Very low -- post is likely not relevant

:[Row 6: Age of post:] 24 years ago
:[What it means:] Oh God how is the Internet this old
:[Probability of a fix:] Maybe whoever posted this message has kids who can help you

{{comic discussion}}<noinclude>

[[Category:Comics to make one feel old]]
[[Category:Computers]]
[[Category:Internet]]

3245: Results Age

2026-05-14T10:06:55Z

GSLikesCats307:

{{comic
| number = 3245
| date = May 13, 2026
| title = Results Age
| image = results_age_2x.png
| imagesize = 478x669px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = Please, we need your help. Our research suggests you're the last living descendant of the person who knew how to format this config file.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|This page was created BY AN INTERNET GRANDPA. Don't remove this notice too soon.}}
This comic shows how likely it is that a bug reported will be fixed, based on the age of some past post that matches your search for details of the problem.

A table is shown below of the explanations of each table row:
{| class="wikitable"
!Age of post !! Explanation given !! Full Explanation
|-
|2 hours ago || A service outage. Not very long to fix - Just wait. ||The recentness of the information implies that it has just happened, and other people have noticed it and started to post about the issue. Large-scale problems like a service outage are obvious priorities, and will (hopefully!) be fixed quickly.
|-
|5 days ago || A new update just broke something big. High chance to be fixed, but you might have to wait for a patch || Similar to before, a large breakage would be very high priority to be fixed. However, as it's been five days since reporting it, the bug is likely taking a while to be found, so - as pointed out in the comic - you could have to wait a bit longer for this one to be resolved.
|-
|3 months ago ||A new product isn't working for some users. Decent chance of finding a solution in replies || This problem is clearly not going to be fixed by the creators, judging by how long it's been there, and it possibly isn't an issue affecting everyone, or even a large proportion of users. However, people are innovative, and no doubt will someone have found their own fix, patch or kludge to get around the product limitations.
|-
|2 years ago||You've ran into an edge case. Low chance to be fixed, but there could be help in troubleshooting||An edge case is a rare situation that the developers did not think to account for, usually causing a logic error, where the program works, but outputs something unexpected which might cause an error down the line. Very few people will suffer from this precise problem, although others may have encountered similar issues on similar software, and noting how they solved ''their'' problem might lead you towards how to solve your own problem.
|-
|13 years ago||You're the only one with this problem. Very Low chance to be fixed, and the post is likely irrelevant||Given how long this 'problem' has been around without being fixed, it is likely the problem is a problem the user has specifically. Possibly through the tech being corrupted through use, or not being compatable with the thing itself. More than that, it suggests that your search has only found an old post that just happens to match your search-query, because there are no more definite answers to your precise question and the enquiry results in nothing more relevant to show you.
|-
|24 years ago||Oh god how is the Internet so old. Maybe whoever posted the message's children can help you out. || This is another comic [[:Category:Comics to make one feel old|where Randall makes people feel old]]. In this case by pointing out that the Internet is very old, and people posting comments in the early period of the Internet are now grown up with kids. Something [[Randall]] has repeatedly shown that he is uncomfortable with. It is also (presumably) rare enough to be a [[979: Wisdom of the Ancients|DenverCoder9 situation]], and 13 years is longer than the time in that comic, so 13 years might be such a situation too.
The Internet is in fact significantly older than 24 years old, being over fifty years old. The World Wide Web (to many, synonymous with the Internet) hails from the early 1990s, and Google (one of the more commonly used search engines, through which this error search might have been made) started working in the late 1990s. The biggest surprise might be that some information found on a web-page in 2002 (and still relevant to your search) survives on some still live web server (or as an archive of that original information on some successor site). For example, anything hosted on a {{w|GeoCities}} site would have normally been made inaccessible in 2014.

Title text seems to be describing what a conversation with the child of that person could look like, it is phrased in a way a dramatic fiction would do it. This does seem to imply though that the problem in question is a rather major one, so how it would go unfixed for so long that only one person left knows about it is unknown - Of course though, it could have started small, & grown bigger over time.
|}

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript|Don't remove this notice too soon.}}

:Implications of the age of the posts you see when you Google an error message

:[A search engine prompt field is shown, containing part of an error code message (beginning with E-21 & what looks like a 9 & 3 next to it). Below this are search results shown as obscured text, except for a the phrase '3 years ago' in the first heading. This is expanded into an ellipse that obscures the rest of the search field.]
:[A table, with 3 columns, labelled "Age of post", "What it means", and "Probability of a fix"]

:[Row 1: Age of post:] 2 hours ago
:[What it means:] There's an infrastructure outage
:[Probability of a fix:] Very high -- just wait

:[Row 2: Age of post:] 5 days ago
:[What it means:] A recent update broke something big
:[Probability of a fix:] High, but you might have to wait for a patch

:[Row 3: Age of post:] 3 months ago
:[What it means:] A new product isn't working for some users
:[Probability of a fix:] Decent chance of a solution in the replies

:[Row 4: Age of post:] 2 years ago
:[What it means:] You've run into an edge case
:[Probability of a fix:] Low, but maybe the replies can help with troubleshooting

:[Row 5: Age of post:] 13 years ago
:[What it means:] You're the only person with this problem
:[Probability of a fix:] Very low -- post is likely not relevant

:[Row 6: Age of post:] 24 years ago
:[What it means:] Oh God how is the Internet this old
:[Probability of a fix:] Maybe whoever posted this message has kids who can help you

{{comic discussion}}<noinclude>

[[Category:Comics to make one feel old]]
[[Category:Computers]]
[[Category:Internet]]

User talk:GSLikesCats307

2026-05-14T10:04:30Z

GSLikesCats307:

Hello! This page is for anyone that for some reason or other wants to discuss anything on my page! So if you do, just fire away!

Ok, someone has done that then.

== I apologise for making this the first Talk for you... ==

Hi there, just thought that since you've now established your Talk page, I could finally chat directly to you about {{diff|410923|an edit I just edited}}.

Firstly, you're keen on using ampersands, I note. But can I persuade you to spell out 'and' in prose like that? It's not like you're trying to keep the character count down, and stylistically it's a bit jarring (to me, at least). At least outside of some scenario where space (or the time needed to jot something down) actually ''is'' at a premium, and two less characters.

They have their place, like "/” in leiu of "or" also does, but I've been redoing them 'in full' a few times (and have seen others update it, too, clearly with the same idea in mind) a few prior times that you've applied. Ampersands rather draw the eye, disproportionately, at least for me. YMMV.

Secondly, the convention for the {{template|Citation needed}} tag (and aliases for that, and also the {{template|Actual citation needed}} ones, etc) is to follow the punctuation. Follow the link I just gave to see the examples.

As for using "cn" versus "Citation needed" template name (and other abbreviated or case-adjusted versions), the former redirects to the latter and gives the same resulting appearance wherever either is embedded. I wouldn't normally go in and expand it out, as a lone edit, but as I was in there shuffling the "." position (and spelling out "and"), I took the liberty. Again, no real need to spare the (markup) space, and I only made ''that'' change to spare the need to evaluate a redirect and be more obvious to hypothetical future editors. I'm much less personally worried about "cn" vs "Citation needed" vs "Citation Needed" or any of the other various aliases ({{template|fact}} used to be one!), so am not suggesting you stop using the 'wrong' version in anything like as strong a term. But thought I'd at least explain why I also made that alteration, along the way.

But, otherwise, let me congratulate you on your contributions, over the last month or so. You've been a decent contributor (the above points notwithstanding), and this little note (which isn't anything but my own individual opinion on the matter) is by no means intended to detract from your generally good style and authorship! [[Special:Contributions/82.132.238.56|82.132.238.56]] 21:31, 22 April 2026 (UTC)

== As mentioned above. ==

Could you please {{diff|412563|not do that}}? [[Special:Contributions/81.179.199.253|81.179.199.253]] 20:11, 13 May 2026 (UTC)
:Force of habit I guess. Out of curiosity though, why does everyone get so riled up over the ampersand? It's also a valid way to write 'and', so why does no-one like that? I just want to know. [[User:GSLikesCats307|GSLikesCats307]] 11:04, 14 May 2026 (UTC)

Category talk:Comics featuring Kidball

2026-05-13T19:22:47Z

GSLikesCats307: Created page with "Woah! Why did this section go unwritten? Well I've started it now."

Woah! Why did this section go unwritten? Well I've started it now.