#264 – Size

I have a little window air conditioner unit that I have to put in the bedroom window every summer. A 40 year old house and a 5 year old air conditioner don’t play well together. Even though I do it every year, installing it is still an ordeal each time. I have to use all kinds of shims and screws and weather stripping to get it to fit correctly. I’ve almost dropped it through the open window a few times. I think the worst part is in the fall when I take it out of the window. I always manage to forget that there is some water still sloshing around in the drip pan and I get it all over my bed. 🙁

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0 thoughts on “#264 – Size”

  1. Bassferret says:

    Yay for air conditioners, though have you found anything useful for keeping out tiny bugs in particular? Seeing as how you and Biff apparently have aquired quite a bit of experience.

    Annnd posting mostly just to have first post, only been reading since a couple weeks ago; one of the greatest comics out there!

  2. Masak says:

    Wow, I know -exactly- what you’re talking about. I’ve got an air conditioner too, but I was stupid enough to get a big one. We have to install it and uninstall it with the seasons, and its a pain.

  3. Jokuki says:

    You should try getting one that can work on the outside like I do. And if you are wondering why im saying this when I said im young, by young I mean in my early twenties. Second Post

  4. jo says:

    at least you HAVE air conditioning, 40 degree (celcius) is no fun when your house is like on oven.

  5. Seraphine says:

    Ummm… Chris, the daily pressure of making a comic has finally gotten to you. In the hurry to complete the strip, you forgot to draw the second-most thing– the air conditioner! Now, everyone is going to think 1) Biff dropped it to the ground and 2) Biff wet the bed. *tsk *tsk

  6. Robin says:

    It took me a moment to realize what had happened to the air conditioner, but oh, how sweet the laugh was when it came.

  7. dragonbrad says:

    bif looks like a kid today for some reason, chris thank you for a nice time waster.

  8. Kryhavok says:

    Haha, my dad does that every summer too (if he remembers to take it out in the winter). Our house 10+ years older I think and I know what you mean. We don’t have and slide open windows, theyre all on the hinge and open like a door. My dad has to remove the window to put the air conditioner in along with a “home-made” top window to keep bugs out. Before this we had a balcony door that we put a HUGE airconidtioner through a modded door :). Now the balcony is a deck with a sliding glass door. But it is fun sitting watching him trying not to drop it two stories ^.^

  9. Countchunko says:

    I have actually never had this experience… My grandfather had a couple window-mounted AC units, but my uncle went ahead and screwed them in place, so they stayed there for a good long time. during the fall, we basically taped plastic over them and let them be. was a nuisance when we had to clean out the house and remove those ancient suckers.

  10. Gobbledegook says:

    I’m afraid I’ll do this every time I put in my air conditioner in the summers…. I always end up putting it off until I can’t sleep at night because of the heat anymore.

  11. THIS is my new favorite comic for really no reason, but when I was a kid we have 3 (4 maybe) window Air Conditioning units fall out of the window, thanks jebus no one got hurt

  12. Lucretiel says:

    Half-Mouth = Awesome

  13. Bullet Fiend says:

    I think Biff’s facial expression looks like something from Invader Zim. I love that insanity!

  14. Bullet Fiend says:

    Oh, and to Blargen-Vargen:

    Happy Gilmore, anyone?

  15. Tinned Moron says:

    I always thought sticking a piece of machinery in your open window is just asking for trouble.

    Americans are weird.

  16. Garrett says:

    We just leave the air conditioners in the windows throughout the winter. They were hard enough to install the first time and we don’t have any good storage area for them.
    We really should at least cover them in winter. I think we did the first winter, but the cover blew away.

  17. dragonbrad says:

    i know he has a few cheese bricks left so he shoulkd use those

  18. Brett says:

    We have an air cooler of some sort, on the top of our house, all we ever have to do to set it up, is take the cover off, and screw on the hose.

    Very easy, and very cooling!

    I feel bad for all you people out there with window air conditioners, mine is just so much easier…

  19. Robert says:

    Ahhh…

    I had no idea where the funnay was in this strip until I read the comments…I feel so ashamed. This is the first time I wasn’t able to figure it out.

  20. DMC_Run says:

    This once happened in an episode of “Hill Street Blues”! LOL-Thnx4reminding me!

  21. kangaroosexy says:

    why couldn’t you just turn it off i’ve had to deal with them i would ither turn it off or un plug it

  22. DaVince says:

    Seraphine: he DID drop it to the ground. 😉

  23. Dark Jaguar says:

    My region is different, and honestly I was surprised to find out that further north people just don’t have air conditioning for the most part (I guess if it’s not needed it’s a waste of money, but it still seemed odd). I guess it’s the same look I get from people when I have to explain I don’t have a basement, that I lived in a LOT of houses as a kid, and in NONE of those houses, or any neighbor’s houses, or any family in this region’s houses, have I ever seen a basement.

    To be clear, I live in Oklahoma. We don’t have basements, but we do have central air conditioning in almost every house. It’s a simple thing to set up, it goes through all the same vents as the central heating. The only thing we ever have to do is occasionally clean or change a filter. Bedroom eh? I feel sorry for guests… Anyway, around here air conditioning isn’t a luxury. It is required. I mean it, people who for whatever reason don’t have air conditioning for too long tend to end up dead during the summer. There’s always a list of heat stroke victims turning up in the news every summer due to just hanging around a house with no power or whatever during blistering over 100 degree (F) weather. Everyone’s spread out so pools aren’t an option for a lot of people, and sitting around in a bathtub, well, some people just don’t think of that (we aren’t known for being a clever state, I’ll tell you that), and I guess if you can’t afford electricity, it’s not much of a stretch to see the water being shut off too.

  24. Eleanor says:

    If you want to keep tiny bugs and things out of the house, a sheet of cotton or a fine-mesh material works wonders. If you get the right stuff it can let quite a lot of light in too.

  25. J.R. says:

    Well, I’ve lived in a 98-year old house in Austin for nearly four years now, and done most of the maintenance for it in that time. I dropped an AC out of a second floor window once. Still worked, amazingly, thought the cord was still plugged in and broke off the AC when it fell, and then it took me the longest time to figure out which contacts it attached to. Popped a circuit breaker and a GFI, melted connections.
    As for taking them out in the winter: why? A permanent AC installation in a window allows for better insulation (though not looks) than the window anyway. I wish I’d thought of covers, though. One of our window units has to be prodded with a fork or somesuch if it rusts up.
    On Oklahoma: the heat’s not that bad, ya pansy. I lived in Stillwater for 7 years, and the heat’s usually dry and thus bearable. You should try south Texas. And as for basements, the Oklahoma soil’s just crappy. Most places have ’em. Ironic that that area’s also the most tornado-prone, eh?

  26. Kidain says:

    It really scares me how some of you do not get the jokes and puns he makes. They are very simple to understand.

  27. Sergeant Major says:

    With the luck we have, a window conditioning unit would probably malfunction and start blowing hot air into the house. Our current ducted system blows. We get cool air. Just not nearly enough.

    Fans are just easier to deal with.

  28. DEC says:

    have never had an air conditioner fall out of a window, have never seen a sliding window in Sweden, and have never had an airconditioner, allthoug in my former apartment the outer glass in a double pane window slidd out and hit the roof below.

  29. Isabel says:

    Our A/C fell yesterday! My husband was trying to get it in a better position and PLAFF fell to the ground. Got messed up, have to buy another one and have no money. I am trying to fix it, looks like an impossible task

  30. Miranda says:

    I have to agree with J.R. 100 percent. In southeast Texas we have one season with little change year round. The air conditoner stays in one spot and stays on most of the year because of high temps and high humidty. However, I don’t know anybody around here who has a basement because the land is so wet.

  31. Walker says:

    ops, oh damn, now i have to explain to the neighbor what happened to her cat, dammit

  32. Darkpheonix XIII says:

    He doesn’t have a central? He must be cheap.

  33. Chewbaccanator says:

    I live in Costa Rica (thats Central America) and almost no houses have central heating or cooling… Maybe some shops, but in the beach. Most people don´t have basement or attic.

  34. Elkian says:

    My mom talks about some friend of hers who have swamp coolers, a little north of us.
    Seriously. Who the hell has SWAMP COOLERS in TEXAS?!

  35. Psymon says:

    I like warm weather, which is good, because for the longest time, we didn’t have an air conditioner (In my home town, summer days habitually exceed 90°F (32°C), and often exceed 100°F (38°C). I don’t like it quite that warm). Instead, we had a swamp cooler that wouldn’t work well on humid days. As such, with my normal house temperature of 85 or 90° with 100° weather outside, I hate to walk into a 75° room straight from outside in the dead of summer—and so many buildings are like that, that I have to carry around a sweatshirt when it’s sweltering hot outside, because it’s too hot outside to wear it, and it’s too cold inside not to have it. A sweatshirt does, however, carry some of the chill along with it when you walk outside, so this also takes some of the edge off the walking-into-an-oven effect you get when you walk outside.

    Now we have central air, but we don’t use it much. How I miss that swamp cooler.

  36. jykcor says:

    my house is near 85-90 years old. it sucks getting the AC from the basement up creaky steps into a window (that’s frame may break, but thats my opinion).

    dont complain chris.

  37. Three of Nineteen says:

    We have an opposite problem. We had new windows put in and our swamp cooler vent will no longer fit through the new windows – so we have to have it sit outside and just have the vent against the window – always afraid that the stand will collapse and it’ll fall down and break.

  38. the walrus says:

    I personally have had an experience with this sort of thing. When our family was on vacation in Maine, we stayed in a cotttage. The room I was sleeping in had an air conditioner in the window, so when my friend’s dad walked into the room and opened the window to let some air in, the air conditioner took a two story dive into the ground. At 2 in the morning. Much fun insued.

  39. the walrus says:

    I personally have had an experience with this sort of thing. When our family was on vacation in Maine, we stayed in a cotttage. The room I was sleeping in had an air conditioner in the window, so when my friend’s dad walked into the room and opened the window to let some air in, the air conditioner took a two story dive into the ground. At 2:00 in the morning. Much fun insued.

  40. BrainpanSonata says:

    This happened to me once. My brother was on the outside helping me install it and it almost fell on him.

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