I'd like everyone to join me in congratulating Terri.
She is determined to quit smoking and not to waste this second chance. She's tried to quit before, and has always slipped or faltered in a matter of days. Nicotine patches and other measures have not worked to help her kick the habit of thirty-plus years (she started at the age of 13).
Having her chest sawed open and her heart rewired is proving to be a far more effective incentive.
Her last cigarette was on July 15th, 2016; August 5th marks her third week smoke-free. I'm proud of you, Terri--keep it up. :)
Blushes at Rose.. Thank you. And your right .. I do not want to waste this second chance. .. shivers at the thought of them sawing open my chest.... yay visuals!
I'm red colorblind, and the text was a bit harder to read against lighter backgrounds, but nothing too troublesome IMO. (There is a grammatical error in the first red line though, that caused me to have to reread it a few times)
some of us 'Y' chromosome types have a real problem with orangy reds on a greenish or brownish background (or vice-verse). I had to enlarge to 4X to make out the last panel.
It really is strange. But the coding for the "Red" cone cells of the retina appear to be sex-linked, and guys don't get them working as reliably as girls.
Sometimes "normalcy" fails instead of "functioning" and you get guys whose eyes are sensitive to slightly different wavelengths of red instead - a bit more to the infrared, or a bit closer to yellow. That usually goes undetected, except that we find men and usually not women complaining about how their monitors never get the red colors right.
Aaand, this is completely unsubstantiated by any respectable research (ie, probably bullshit), but some evolutionary-biology enthusiasts think it's because red was more important to women for the "gathering" task than it was to men for the "hunting" task.
Yeah, some scientists also seem to find that men have better spatial awareness and spatial memory.
Some even claim men have better "movement vision" ... ie. they are better at spotting things that move in the periphery of their vision.
Possibly one of the reasons why men often enjoy driving cars more as well.
Overall, Professor, I add my thanks to the community for your efforts. I particularly liked the rendering of the final pose with Calliope on D604's lap. I think that was the most evocative of them all and quite sweet.
Thanks! I really wanted to get that image in there, and hopefully get it right, given the importance of this bit to the story overall. Plus, little Calli is ADORBABLE. :)
I am surprised you would hand out so many yards for a single penalty on a single pun ... did you get a deal at a "yards sale"? ^_^
Normally it's five yards for an illegal shift (of meaning), ten yards for a holding action, and fifteen yards for offensive behavior. (Except when that offensive behavior leads to a score -- but since this behavior led to three-score, I guess we're all good. ^_^)
I can understand there having been a narrative choice which, on further consideration you did not like and chose to revise. I don't understand why you keep referring to it as a "plot hole". To me, a plot hole is similar to a continuity error in film. An example would be that three people get on an elevator in the lobby, they go up to the second floor and both people get out, leaving the elevator empty. Where did the third person go? That's a plot hole.
The old story had a malfunctioning piece of medical equipment that did stupid things. Maybe not the story you wanted to tell, but nothing grossly implausible that I noted. (Of course, I can't go back and re-read to see if I missed anything. ^_^) The new story has a malfunctioning Doctor doing stupid things. Hopefully closer to the story you wanted to tell, but (to my mind) not that much more plausible. Yet you seem to imply that, to you, the new version is a VAST improvement over the old. No offense is intended, and I apologize in advance for my obtuseness, but what makes the new so much better than the old?
Originally, we had included a detail that a very large number of readers assumed was vastly more important than it was ever intended to be, particularly in light of later plot exposition. Mention of this detail got so goddamn annoying to us that, when we were discussing the reboots, we elected to completely remove said detail.
There was a much larger reason to remove that detail, however; at the time of the original writing, we had not yet established that New Rome's medical technology is pretty sophisticated. In light of that, having malfunctioning, outdated equipment in the medical bay of the goddamned Palace became outright fucking ludicrous, so revising the entire sequence was necessary.
In one of several women's clinics in Nova Roma, an email is automatically generated and sent to an orphaned account in the palace:
Dearest and most virile Emperator,
Clinic #017 is pleased to report that zygote #327 of the 20,000 allocated to this facility, has been successfully introduced to a human incubator. As usual, the incubator and the human medical quack have no clue that an implantation has taken place.
As yet, there have been no signs from the wretched refuse, that they are aware that each of their families have received a free genetic upgrade - a zygote from parental line: 44 2E 20 4C 69 76 69 75 73 20 2B 20 4C 2E 20 54 61 79 6C 6F 72
Praise and gratitude to our Emperator,
- Clinic #017 Autodoc All our babies are belong to Decimus!
---------------------------------------------
(*leaves planet before Rose decodes parental genome identifier*)
Congrats to Terri on deciding to quit smoking, and good luck on accomplishing that. It took me three tries over the course of a year, and I had only been smoking for 4 years at that point. That was in 1974, and been clean since.
She'll find that her senses of smell and taste get better, and that's (generally) a good thing.
And thanks the the Prof for his work.
I find that having things like gum and licorice really help (quit twice myself - the first one failed after tenonths due to stress and hanging out with a smoker).
Smoking was a good part of the reason you became a member of the, "Zipper Club" refers to the scar where they opened you up. I know, what caused mine and no way do I want to EVER go through that again. I quit after almost 45 years of huffing and puffing,(Three Packs a day) you can too.
I smoked for 25 years then one day started to light one and said "that's enough of that foolishness." I carried that half-pack of cigarettes around for six months then pitched it, that was 19 years ago. I'm not saying everyone can do that and I barely believe I did, but I went from a pack and a bit a day, plus the cigars and pipe I preferred when I could have those instead, to zero. It wasn't easy and I still suddenly want a pipe from time to time (oddly enough I never crave cigarettes) but it can be done. I'm just stubborn but I have complete faith that anyone with the talent and sticktoitiveness to turn out a comic like this can do that a lot easier than I did, especially with the added incentive of not wanting anyone's hands inside your ribs again...now, if I could just ditch potato chips the same way....
congrats on smoking cessation, Terri! When I used to work in a health food store, one customer told me that Lysine, b6 and Vitamin c helped him stop smoking, using drugs and alcohol.. it comes as a combination supplement from TWIN LAB company-and can be ordered @ LuckyVitamin.com
I'm not going to preach against the evils of smoking, because what's done is done. I WILL, however, offer my continuing support with your battle to fight the disease (and addiction IS a disease) every day. My grandfather was a 2-pack-a-day smoker for decades and, after his first heart attack, quit COLD TURKEY (on his own, with no fancy nicotine patches or gum), so it CAN be done. As for Prof's comic...
The "ovaium unit" has been installed and commenced operation by the simple act of Calliope sitting on her CentComm's lap. Heck, she's so cute, she'd make ME install an "ovarium unit"... lol
I think I got 3/4 of the Calliope's dolls - Anne (Wastelanders Anonymous), Santa (Indifferently Evil), and Eric McDonald (Winners & Losers). I'm sorry to say that I can't place the doll in her hand, though... :(
actually sig you nailed them all - The one in her hand is a " generic toy" but the others ytou got spot on.
And yes i have been smoke free sense the 15th roughly of last month. Im still rather terrified of it, My Cardiologist Cara has zero sympathy in this regard . Shes more like .. good be afirad .. be very afraid.
You know you have a rocking doctor who actually makes Doctor Who refrences without meaning too and is a gamer geek. She actually KNEW what fallout 4 was. i am a happy camper.
and yes im not using gum or patches or pills to quit .. just plain old fear.
I already had the one in her hand done when (due to my obsessive "is this okay" PM narrative with Terri) she suggested some CF-related toys. Those were just the first ones that came to mind... :)
I am not an artist. I don't expect to be an artist. The mindset of artists is foreign and remote to me, and I do not expect this to change at any future time. Also, I know it is embarrassingly easy, as well as generally regarded as bad form, to suggest that other people do work when you have no intention of performing that work with them.
So why can't I stop myself?
I know that artists occasionally draw one another's characters for fun. I believe these are called "art exchanges". I believe sometimes art exchanges have themes. I particularly like the Comic Fury NSFW art exchanges because I moonlight as "Creepy Anonymous Internet Guy" in my spare time. ^_^
It occurs to me that an amusing theme for one of these art exchanges might be if artists drew the characters of others -- but as a child's toy or action figure. I don't know if that appeals to anyone else here, but it seems it might provide some fertile ground for inspiration. Just a thought.
arg, you are one of my very good friends, and once the toy idea came along, I immediately thought of you. I hadn't done anything Santa-related yet, so there you have it! :)
I still think that this shows that CentComm is closer to being human than she realises. If she was more of a machine, her thoughts would be independent of what was happening around her to a very large extent. However, her thoughts follow the conversation. For example, the weather is mentioned and that doll checks the internal weather generators.
Cent-Comm is responsible for the smooth running of the entire city of New Troy; at any given moment, she's handling hundreds or thousands of system status updates and reports. Her stream of consciousness is more like the Mississippi at flood state. In writing the story, I felt it appropriate to pick out a few threads that related to the conversation which the remote unit was having with Dolly and Calliope. :D
@HiFranc, you don't miss them until some well intentioned idiot innocently asks, "You're still not smoking right?". You then have the almost uncontrollable urge ti light up blow smoke in their face, put the cigarette out in their ear, or possibly a more appropriate part of their anatomy and reply sweetly "None of your fucking business ***Ass Hat***"
Terri, Keep at it. I quit after 30 plus years too. I was in my mid 40's laying on a table getting an angioplasty done. I was told quit or die... Was a real simple choice. I know you will make it through this and out the far side.
So, I was re-reading this little vignette, and pondering an issue of tone. The pink captions with black text represent, as best I can tell, the logs captured by Doll 604. We are told that dolls are, essentially, remotely operated drones with no individuality or local personality, so, although the point of view (POV) is that of Doll 604, the perspective should be that of the operating telepresence (i.e., CentComm).
However, it seems to me that a couple of times the perspective slips. The strongest example (in my opinion) is in part 1 where the log speaks of the narrating entity's 'arrival'. From Doll 604's perspective, she is just arriving -- but from CentComm's perspective, doesn't she keep the Taylor's under 24/7 surveillance and doesn't she already have security remotes and sensors already in-place? It wouldn't really be accurate to speak of CentComm 'arriving' under those circumstances, would it?
There's the aside about not being introduced with the 604 suffix, but if the entity being introduced is CentComm, not Doll 604, why would that even be a consideration? You introduce the person, not their big toe.
The weakest example is at the end -- I include it here only because the evoked image amuses me. The log speaks of Calliope seating herself on 'my lap', but presumably at any given instant CentComm has hundreds of laps. Wouldn't it be more from CentComm's perspective if the log referenced "Lap 604"?
Trivialities and nits, I admit. And nothing to diminish the overall worth of the tale, but a question that occurred to me, nonetheless.
My take is a bit different. While I'd agree the Cent dolls don't have their own personality, I disagree that they have no physical individuality. Whereas the red sections of text are snippets of CentComm as a whole, the black sections are from this particular doll's perspective. As to sections of the black text referring to "I", many of them based on context are clearly from the doll's perspective, the rest whether the POV is the doll or Cent as whole doesn't really matter as the dolls share memory and processing.
I agree, @Tahg, that when this story is looked at in isolation, Dolls appear to have an individual consciousness and personal perspective. It is only that I thought we had been told in previous comment sections that they were no more than telepresence drones, hence my request for clarification.
I can't stress enough that dolls are simply telepresence drones. They do have individual perspectives, but only because of how the hardware's set up.
Think of it like this: you can have a comprehensive camera network covering an entire building, with each individual camera delivering a single feed back to you in the control room. You have dozens of "eyes", yet each one has a distinct perspective. To make the best use of the information you're receiving, you have to not only be aware of the overview of the entire network, but also the individual feeds. Cent-Comm has a vastly greater multitasking capability than a human possesses, but for the purposes of this short story, I chose to keep the focus relatively limited while still making it clear that she's simultaneously handling many unrelated reports and situations.
Congratulations Terri. I had my own wake up call when I went to the doctor a few months ago and found out I tipped the scales at 270. That got me back on my diet immediately. For the most part I'm sticking to it. Though of course I figure giving up soda and French fires and the like isn't anything compared to giving up smoking. It isn't easy just remember you can resist any temptation in the world. You just have to want to. It sounds like you want to and I wish you the best of luck.
First things first: Yea, fear! Sometimes it motivates us to do good things. Seriously, gratz on going smoke-free. My dad struggled with it for years. He finally quit when I was about ten, but then died of lung cancer a bit more than fifteen years after that.
That out of the way ... Cent, how much do you charge on commissions? 'Cause I'd really love to get some good 3d sets and models built. Unfortunately the first one is extravagantly complicated.
It's a mass-transit station in a zero-gee environment. Described as
"
The chamber was spherical, mostly. The tubes came through at various random-seeming angles. The 'platforms' - which is a weird thing to call a frame where nets gave people something to anchor to and wait for connections - were clustered wherever a few of them passed close together, mostly on the side opposite the big round door that led to the zeegee mall.
The station walls were old, scuffed, and in places dented or caked with junk. The air here in the tube station had a lot of junk in it - dust and detritus, food wrappers people had lost dashing for the tubes, et cetera. There were pigeons flying around crapping in random directions. I could feel a ventilation breeze but the fans and the filters just couldn't keep up.
Vendors were yelling at the crowd, some clustered around the platforms but mostly feet-down to one of the bulkheads with their goods lashed under nets. A few of them operated in complete freefall drifting randomly around in the middle of the tube station. Some of the shoppers were towing shopping bags about the same size as themselves.
Moving grablines between platforms provided the safe main routes for the commuters, but the kids - swirlgirls and their neopunkabilly boyfriends - were sailing hither and yon in huge leaps that completely ignored the shoppers and commuters, in a sort of slow-motion zero-gee parkour display. There were safety nets strung here and there so people who'd missed a jump could stop before going all the way across the station, but the kids were using them, and the platforms too, mainly as trampolines. A feral cat went sailing by, having missed the pigeon it leapt at halfway across the tube station.
I was glad I didn't have to live in this neighborhood....
Cent doesn't build our 3D sets and models; they're all commercially available through places like Daz3D and Renderosity. She may be able to put a set together out of existing assets, though.
I don't know how you girls feel about it, but now might actually be a good time to do another one of those while Terri is on the mend. I actually have questions for a couple of the characters!
OR!.... I can sit quietly in my corner like a good little commenter....
The quit smoking thing... Did that when I moved to the US. The bad thing, it takes a long time before the physical addiction is gone from your system. But the good thing, in the long run you will feel better and be healthier! Be strong Terri and don't give up! It's worth it, I promise!
Yeah, I first saw the comic last week and have been reading through all the episodes to catch up. It was well worth it! And, like many apparently, I'm saddened about Ceci. One of the most lovable characters ever, which is quite a feat in itself.
Oh I can think of some fucked up things on this subject alright, but I'm not sure you want to hear those, and I don't need the FBI on my doorstep. I don't want to clean up after they step on my mine field. Well, that's their own fault for not taking the warning signs seriously.
But seriously, I like all of the comic, it's really fabulously good, but I'm not sure that you and Cent know what a great job you did developing Ceci. It's all good though, I know she's just a fictional character in a comic and she didn't die for real. (But I'd love if there was more to her story, somehow, some day)
Coughing was very painful, so they gave me this heart-shaped, heavy pillow to hug each time I coughed. Hug your pillow tightly before you cough. Try not to sneeze. I almost passed out first time I sneezed. I took off 6 months, but I think 3-4 months would have been good enough. It has been 12 years since my surgery and I am still going strong. I cannot find the 4 small draining scars, anymore, nor the leg scar. I walk all the time and try to stay fit. I would probably be doing better if I lost more weight, but since my cholesterol is good, my cardiologist is not pushing that.
Keep strong, Cent. I had to give up passive smoking a couple of packs a day when I moved out, and it was HARD.
And no, this isn't a joke, after I moved out I hung around smokers and obsessively sniffed their smoke like the addict I was. Never actually smoked a cigarette, though...
I am a huge fan of what Cent and Rose have created, so it was an honor and a pleasure to get a chance to help bring some of that to life.
And getting new readers is always a bonus! :D
Sometimes "normalcy" fails instead of "functioning" and you get guys whose eyes are sensitive to slightly different wavelengths of red instead - a bit more to the infrared, or a bit closer to yellow. That usually goes undetected, except that we find men and usually not women complaining about how their monitors never get the red colors right.
Aaand, this is completely unsubstantiated by any respectable research (ie, probably bullshit), but some evolutionary-biology enthusiasts think it's because red was more important to women for the "gathering" task than it was to men for the "hunting" task.
Some even claim men have better "movement vision" ... ie. they are better at spotting things that move in the periphery of their vision.
Possibly one of the reasons why men often enjoy driving cars more as well.
intersect for a moment
first light of understanding
that will reach across the years
Congrats on kicking a hard (and nasty) habit, Terri. Keep it up!
And yes, Terri, don't let the demon back into your lungs!
... Only misunderstood puns. ^_^
I am surprised you would hand out so many yards for a single penalty on a single pun ... did you get a deal at a "yards sale"? ^_^
Normally it's five yards for an illegal shift (of meaning), ten yards for a holding action, and fifteen yards for offensive behavior. (Except when that offensive behavior leads to a score -- but since this behavior led to three-score, I guess we're all good. ^_^)
Say, you wouldn't happen to have some extra eggs laying around in New Rome, would you ? :D
You'd almost thinks she's tired of people pointing out plotholes in the story ? >_<
Oh, wait. That particular issue no longer exists, thanks to the reboots.
"There was a PLOT HOLE here. It's gone now."
I can understand there having been a narrative choice which, on further consideration you did not like and chose to revise. I don't understand why you keep referring to it as a "plot hole". To me, a plot hole is similar to a continuity error in film. An example would be that three people get on an elevator in the lobby, they go up to the second floor and both people get out, leaving the elevator empty. Where did the third person go? That's a plot hole.
The old story had a malfunctioning piece of medical equipment that did stupid things. Maybe not the story you wanted to tell, but nothing grossly implausible that I noted. (Of course, I can't go back and re-read to see if I missed anything. ^_^) The new story has a malfunctioning Doctor doing stupid things. Hopefully closer to the story you wanted to tell, but (to my mind) not that much more plausible. Yet you seem to imply that, to you, the new version is a VAST improvement over the old. No offense is intended, and I apologize in advance for my obtuseness, but what makes the new so much better than the old?
Originally, we had included a detail that a very large number of readers assumed was vastly more important than it was ever intended to be, particularly in light of later plot exposition. Mention of this detail got so goddamn annoying to us that, when we were discussing the reboots, we elected to completely remove said detail.
There was a much larger reason to remove that detail, however; at the time of the original writing, we had not yet established that New Rome's medical technology is pretty sophisticated. In light of that, having malfunctioning, outdated equipment in the medical bay of the goddamned Palace became outright fucking ludicrous, so revising the entire sequence was necessary.
I'm a doggy !
And I like green eggs with ham. :D
EGGS ! >_<
In one of several women's clinics in Nova Roma, an email is automatically generated and sent to an orphaned account in the palace:
Dearest and most virile Emperator,
Clinic #017 is pleased to report that zygote #327 of the 20,000 allocated to this facility, has been successfully introduced to a human incubator. As usual, the incubator and the human medical quack have no clue that an implantation has taken place.
As yet, there have been no signs from the wretched refuse, that they are aware that each of their families have received a free genetic upgrade - a zygote from parental line: 44 2E 20 4C 69 76 69 75 73 20 2B 20 4C 2E 20 54 61 79 6C 6F 72
Praise and gratitude to our Emperator,
- Clinic #017 Autodoc
All our babies are belong to Decimus!
---------------------------------------------
(*leaves planet before Rose decodes parental genome identifier*)
She'll find that her senses of smell and taste get better, and that's (generally) a good thing.
And thanks the the Prof for his work.
Stay strong!
The "ovaium unit" has been installed and commenced operation by the simple act of Calliope sitting on her CentComm's lap. Heck, she's so cute, she'd make ME install an "ovarium unit"... lol
I think I got 3/4 of the Calliope's dolls - Anne (Wastelanders Anonymous), Santa (Indifferently Evil), and Eric McDonald (Winners & Losers). I'm sorry to say that I can't place the doll in her hand, though... :(
And yes i have been smoke free sense the 15th roughly of last month. Im still rather terrified of it, My Cardiologist Cara has zero sympathy in this regard . Shes more like .. good be afirad .. be very afraid.
You know you have a rocking doctor who actually makes Doctor Who refrences without meaning too and is a gamer geek. She actually KNEW what fallout 4 was. i am a happy camper.
and yes im not using gum or patches or pills to quit .. just plain old fear.
So why can't I stop myself?
I know that artists occasionally draw one another's characters for fun. I believe these are called "art exchanges". I believe sometimes art exchanges have themes. I particularly like the Comic Fury NSFW art exchanges because I moonlight as "Creepy Anonymous Internet Guy" in my spare time. ^_^
It occurs to me that an amusing theme for one of these art exchanges might be if artists drew the characters of others -- but as a child's toy or action figure. I don't know if that appeals to anyone else here, but it seems it might provide some fertile ground for inspiration. Just a thought.
That being said, I do think that would be a good exchange. :)
I am so sorry, I blindly missed it, cos I was intent on story.
Thank you for including her with Anne and McDonald!
However, it seems to me that a couple of times the perspective slips. The strongest example (in my opinion) is in part 1 where the log speaks of the narrating entity's 'arrival'. From Doll 604's perspective, she is just arriving -- but from CentComm's perspective, doesn't she keep the Taylor's under 24/7 surveillance and doesn't she already have security remotes and sensors already in-place? It wouldn't really be accurate to speak of CentComm 'arriving' under those circumstances, would it?
There's the aside about not being introduced with the 604 suffix, but if the entity being introduced is CentComm, not Doll 604, why would that even be a consideration? You introduce the person, not their big toe.
The weakest example is at the end -- I include it here only because the evoked image amuses me. The log speaks of Calliope seating herself on 'my lap', but presumably at any given instant CentComm has hundreds of laps. Wouldn't it be more from CentComm's perspective if the log referenced "Lap 604"?
Trivialities and nits, I admit. And nothing to diminish the overall worth of the tale, but a question that occurred to me, nonetheless.
All just my own take on it though.
Think of it like this: you can have a comprehensive camera network covering an entire building, with each individual camera delivering a single feed back to you in the control room. You have dozens of "eyes", yet each one has a distinct perspective. To make the best use of the information you're receiving, you have to not only be aware of the overview of the entire network, but also the individual feeds. Cent-Comm has a vastly greater multitasking capability than a human possesses, but for the purposes of this short story, I chose to keep the focus relatively limited while still making it clear that she's simultaneously handling many unrelated reports and situations.
That out of the way ... Cent, how much do you charge on commissions? 'Cause I'd really love to get some good 3d sets and models built. Unfortunately the first one is extravagantly complicated.
It's a mass-transit station in a zero-gee environment. Described as
"
The chamber was spherical, mostly. The tubes came through at various random-seeming angles. The 'platforms' - which is a weird thing to call a frame where nets gave people something to anchor to and wait for connections - were clustered wherever a few of them passed close together, mostly on the side opposite the big round door that led to the zeegee mall.
The station walls were old, scuffed, and in places dented or caked with junk. The air here in the tube station had a lot of junk in it - dust and detritus, food wrappers people had lost dashing for the tubes, et cetera. There were pigeons flying around crapping in random directions. I could feel a ventilation breeze but the fans and the filters just couldn't keep up.
Vendors were yelling at the crowd, some clustered around the platforms but mostly feet-down to one of the bulkheads with their goods lashed under nets. A few of them operated in complete freefall drifting randomly around in the middle of the tube station. Some of the shoppers were towing shopping bags about the same size as themselves.
Moving grablines between platforms provided the safe main routes for the commuters, but the kids - swirlgirls and their neopunkabilly boyfriends - were sailing hither and yon in huge leaps that completely ignored the shoppers and commuters, in a sort of slow-motion zero-gee parkour display. There were safety nets strung here and there so people who'd missed a jump could stop before going all the way across the station, but the kids were using them, and the platforms too, mainly as trampolines. A feral cat went sailing by, having missed the pigeon it leapt at halfway across the tube station.
I was glad I didn't have to live in this neighborhood....
"
I don't know how you girls feel about it, but now might actually be a good time to do another one of those while Terri is on the mend. I actually have questions for a couple of the characters!
OR!.... I can sit quietly in my corner like a good little commenter....
Yeah, I first saw the comic last week and have been reading through all the episodes to catch up. It was well worth it! And, like many apparently, I'm saddened about Ceci. One of the most lovable characters ever, which is quite a feat in itself.
But seriously, I like all of the comic, it's really fabulously good, but I'm not sure that you and Cent know what a great job you did developing Ceci. It's all good though, I know she's just a fictional character in a comic and she didn't die for real. (But I'd love if there was more to her story, somehow, some day)
Stay happy! The best is yet to come!
And no, this isn't a joke, after I moved out I hung around smokers and obsessively sniffed their smoke like the addict I was. Never actually smoked a cigarette, though...