2:22 PM
Another sad Friday afternoon here.

It was almost a week ago that TechTV took time out to catch up with its viewers. For an entire hour the programming focused on interact and community. The intent was to see if we, the viewers, were doing okay in light of the terrorists attacks that rocked the nation.

To me it was a powerful hour. It showed us all how important that we are to them -- and it was good to hear from a lot of the folks I've met in chat and that they were okay.

The hour was hosted by Leo Laporte and co-hosted by Laura Burstein, who was at the chat desk. Heather Frank handled the netcam calls. In the chatroom all of the volunteer chat hosts were on hand along with Robyn Huggiebear and Christopher Swanner. The hour went great. It was really powerful and frankly, this is the only thing I've taped to keep for myself off of TechTV in quite a long time.

TechTV had a lot of flack last week in the chat. Chatters questioned why TechTV went on with commercials (especially the inappropriate movie commercials that they scrambled to pull), while all the other stations were going commercial free. As the fallout in the networks over the past week has proven, the decision to run commercials, while seemingly inappropriate at the time, was probably a good thing as they didn't face the huge losses other stations faced by dumping commercials. Let's face it, no matter what we think of TechTV -- it's still a small cable operation and needs every source of revenue it can get.

I didn't really care either way for the commercial controversy. It was just another thing from chat among many many topics last week. Chat became a place to turn to in the time of tragedy. For a lot of the hardcore TechTV community, chat was the place we immediately turned to see what was going on in the world. Chat also provided a brief break from the events of the day. In the midst of the horrible events, what helped a lot of people through it was the fact that the folks at TechTV let us speak our minds and they let us get our grief out. I am forever thankful for Robyn H., Chris S., Heather F. and Laura B. for keeping their chins up and listening to our comments and our vents and for keeping a cool head during the crisis, even when their hearts were aching as much as ours were.

It saddens me that TechTV followed up a week that showed how important chat was to all of us with the announcement that they were cutting the on-air chat talent in half as Laura and Heather are being reassigned and taken off the air.

The timing of the news was horrible to say the least. Chat is a very tight group and a lot of us are quite fond of both Laura and Heather. They're the afternoon team. If we want to hang out and have fun we go talk to with Laura and Heather. Afternoons won't be as fun anymore with just Robyn or Chris at chat. While I like them both, they're not the afternoon team, they're the morning team and splitting them up is another issue to talk about at another time.

It seems like TechTV just doesn't get it these days. This is just another move that I don't agree with. As your average viewer I'll tell ya, I'm watching and taking part in TechTV a lot less than I used to.

When they cut the 9-11 AM chats I hated it. They changed the hours into market coverage and lately they have Erica alone on that gigantic set. Instead of compelling the viewer to watch with an incredibly active, vibrant, set, it looks like she's the last shopper at an empty mall. From 9-10 I watch WKRP on TNN. From 10-11 I flip channels.

When they dumped Becky from Call For Help and turned it into the Gnome Show, I stopped watching. I watch "Guiding Light" on West Coast CBS instead. Why? Other than I'm a weirdo and have been watching it off and on since 1983, the fact is I can't stand the Gnome. It's not his fault that he's annoying. To me it's like those people who used to get seizures when Mary Hart was on "Entertainment Tonight," his voice gives me a headache and I can't watch. He's toned it down, but still, I can't watch.

When they pretty much killed the chat and demo segments from 4-5 Eastern and went with more market coverage (ugg), I stopped watching that hour. I flip or I find other things to do.

And now they rob of us the fun that was the afternoon chat shift.

It just doesn't make sense. Are they openly TRYING to drive us away?

I so don't want to know the answer to that.

Heather, Laura, we'll miss you.

k9

10:42 AM Sunday 9/16/01

Writing on a very weird Sunday. Just some random thoughts on paper. Electronic as it is.

For the first time in my lifetime there will be no NFL, no NHL, no NBA or Professional Baseball on a Sunday when they were either in season or in preseason and games were scheduled.

There are still no flights out of the major airport in DC.

While most of the "local channels" from LA are back to normal program, the stations from NY are slow to go back to normal. After all, their city was hit the hardest by the events of this week.

It's a Sunday of silence from a lot of folks. Maybe that's a good thing. With no distractions we can get together with our families and enjoy a distraction free Sunday together. To be grateful that we can be together and grateful that even though the worst events in the country's recent history happened this week, we're still standing together, as one big dysfunctional family and that we are here to help one another cope with surviving.

We will get through the pain and the heartache that's going on right now. We *will* survive this. If we don't, the terrorists will have won.

Ground zero coverage on CBS right now. Ground zero is at least sixteen acres big. The FBI may move in and go square by square in a big grid because this is a crime scene.

Right now if you're looking to donate, donate blood at your local red cross. While NY can't use it right now, dang it, the red cross can. Our blood banks were in a state of emergency before this event happened and let's hope that people realize that there's an on-going need for blood even after these weeks and months and years of healing are over.

Also, they're saying that if you donate other things, water and food -- they're good on. They need work boots, gloves, hats, rebreathers (with canisters that can be changed), foot powder, and those sort of supplies. While the workers on the scene of the WTC are working super-heroically, never forget they're men and women and have all the needs that men and women need when they're working under high stress. They're going to need foot powder, corn remover, you name it. That's just the reality of being human and working in a scene like that.

Next week there's a huge gathering in New York's central park to honor the firefighters and police officers who were killed on Tuesday. While I can't go, I hope that as many of you who can make it there go.

On our front two big birthdays were over-shadowed by events this week. Again, happy belated birthdays to both Laura Burstein and Robyn Huggiebear. If you want to send them belated birthday greetings, check TechTV's web site for their e-mail addresses. Every smile counts right now.

I was moved on Friday from the special feedback hour TechTV put together. They covered every aspect of TechTV and brought in as many on-air personalities as they could get on to share in the hour. In chat everyone had been working their butts off to keep the room and the community alive -- and it was great that they all pulled together to put an awesome hour together to check in and see if we were all okay.

It's times like this the best comes out in America. I was so proud of TechTV on Friday.

Take care all,

k9

7:39 PM 9/12/01

Sitting here on a Wednesday night. I really should be in EQ since I promised my best friend that I'd go in, but I sort of want to say a few things before I go in there. Besides, I can't do anything else in EQ. While I want to hang out with some friends, I can be more of a help and get things off my mind better out here for now than in there.

I'm watching a prayer vigil with congress right now. A huge flag went up on both the tower of the wreckage of the world trade center and the pentagon this morning.

For me I was okay today until I got to downtown Williamsport. Between the Wegman's and the Raddison Hotel there's a huge American flag. I've gone by that spot a thousand times and never really noticed it before. It was, of course, flying at half staff. I had to hold back tears and keep driving when I saw it. It just sort of hit home.

On the road doing mystery shops today most people were still in shock at the shops I went to. A lot were glued either to the TV or the radio for news on survivors. At the post offices they didn't know what the mail would be like because the commercial airlines were not flying yet.

At work it was a big debate as to what to promote since a lot of events were canceled. No one feels like promoting big events because we're all still in shock and the decision hasn't been made about a lot of things for this weekend. I mean, do we go back to having big entertainment events or do we give it more time to mourn? What does the nation need to do now?

In the car this morning we picked up the Howard Stern show. Howard's signal runs out right before you get to Williamsport coming up the river from Harrisburg. I only get to listen to him when I'm mystery shopping. Callers were begging him to stay on the air because his humor was helping them forget. Call after call saying that for the hours his show was on yesterday (he extended from around 10:30 am to 1 PM or so yesterday), it was the only thing getting them through and keeping them from breaking down. When he was on being funny the world went away. They needed to laugh again and while he made light of it, you could tell he was kind of touched that so many people were calling in and needing him to go on.

In our case we went on with the show and did two strips last night. It wasn't really a statement on my part. I just needed something to do during the coverage last night. I just found myself at Dreamweaver putting a couple of strips together. I had planned a birthday strip for Robyn (and one later this week for Laura), and I had an idea or two to work out and I'm sort of glad I did. It helped put aside some of the emotions I was feeling and having something to do helped get through the night.

There are some folks who disagree with my decision. "Now's not the time for laughter," they say, and I agree to a point. I also agree with the idea that we have to remember how to laugh. We have to remember how life was before this and we have to go on with our lives after the grieving is over. We can't let the people who did these horrible events change our worlds to the point where we forget who we are and how we live, how we love, and how we laugh. If we forget these things, they've won.

When it is time to laugh again, the strips from this week will be here for those who need a laugh. More so, since I write these things primarily to make *me* laugh, they will be here for me to help sort things out and remember this week. If anyone wants to give me flack for it then so be it. E-mail is reallycoolsite@aol.com.

There will be changes after this week in my strips. Might as well close with that. For now the invasion of Microsoft has been scrapped. If anyone cares, it happened in the future in the story anyway, it will be addressed at a later time. You all know me, I'm scatter brained anyway so I'll probably address it in a flashback somewhere down the line. Obviously, the NASDAQ strips as we know them have to be scrapped until they figure out what the NASDAQ is going to do and if the building that houses the big board remains standing. I had something neat planned for Jean Lee and I'm so glad she, and everyone else in the NY offices of TechTV are okay (and hopefully Boogie Bill Tucker too even if he's no longer with TechTV), but that will wait for things to clear with the markets and where they will broadcast from.

On that note, I really should go. Be safe. Take care and again, our hopes and prayers go out for those hurt this week.

k9

P.S. Note to self: Summer says Moxy Fruvous doing "And So It Goes" is a really cool song to DL. Putting it here because I won't remember otherwise.

P.S. Van report turns out to be untrue. Van was pulled over. No explosives.

k9

11:38 PM Tuesday Late

First, I hope that everyone is safe. Just way out of it now and free flowing Blogging.

I'm Blogging on one of the worst nights in the nation's history. Four Planes went down today, three of them striking national landmarks. New York is in chaos, Washington DC is a mess, and across the country things are shut down.

The latest reports have a truck filled with explosives was pulled over by the George Washington Bridge that leads to NYC in NJ. I'm hoping this is just one of the weird rumors of the day, but god only knows at this point.

So far everyone I know is safe. I have a friend who got word that her dad was in the Pentagon this morning but he got out okay. Another's brother was in World Trade Center 1 and got out okay. Both took a couple of hours to find phones that worked because everything was shut down.

Chat rooms are buzzing even now -- 13 or 14 hours later -- with people that are just stunned.

Today for me started with getting up early. I had allergy shots and another doctor's appointment.

I got up late and ran to the shower. I guess I was in the shower for the first blast because the 2nd blast was happening just after I got out of the shower.

I got in the car and the horror hit. Two planes hit the world trade center.

Got to allergies and while I was getting my shot, my blood pressure ironically lower than ever even though my heart was beating through my chest, and we listened as the reports came in that the pentagon was hit by another plane.

I got home for the 4th plane to go down then had to go out as the aftermath was hitting the country.

The drive to my second doctor's appointment was in a haze. I mean personally, I had a big look of disbelief on my face and I was driving just staring at the radio half the time. Everyone else was going slow on the road and when I looked, most had the same shocked look on their faces.

Back home and chat was buzzing with people. I can't blame anyone for their reactions to this event. I'm sure there were folks who did believe that this was the end of the world. World War 3 was repeated, even by some of the moderators, but I tried to make it clear that we have to wait for the smoke to clear before we jump to conclusions.

Maybe it's me. Maybe it's memories of being 9 years old and having Mt. St. Helens blow up in my backyard. We thought it was the end then. Ash in the backyard every day. My homework assignments were covered in doodles of volcanos and old hermit Harry Truman running for his life with his cats. For months we thought that the end could come the next day, but it didn't and that's probably changed my outlook on things.

I just have this belief that we should take the time after an event like this to mourn and grieve the dead. While folks are calling this the end of the world, it isn't. We will survive this. America is a lot stronger than you'd think. There will be a tomorrow and tomorrow hand in hand and side by side we will rebuild and we will get through this together. Let's hold our heads up and be brave for those who are still missing. Let's hold those who didn't make it in our hearts and take their memories with us as we get through this.

If Vengeance comes, it comes, but for now, let's take things a day at a time and survive, together, as a nation, as only America can.

It's past midnight now. A somber happy Birthday to Robyn H. Two new strips up tonight to keep me busy and to take things off my mind.

I'm off to bed.

Be safe all.

k9

4:56 PM ET 9/7/01

So Blogging again on a Friday afternoon and what a day it has been ...

Got up early to stack wood. Stacking wood is part of the duties I have around her in order to keep a roof over my head. My folks split the house and their downstairs area is heated by a wood stove during the wintertime. Since my dad gave himself a heart attack and a stroke (two different years) messing with the wood, it's been up to me to stack and haul wood each year so they have wood for the fire.

The wood situation is the funkiest thing you'll ever see. We have a gravel driveway that stops at a hill down to the backyard. The hill is at such a slope that it is difficult to walk up, let alone, walk down with a cartful or an armful of wood. My dad had the heart attack one year because they used to have the truckload of wood dumped down the hill. So he'd go out there and stand at this really awful angle and try to haul the wood piece by piece down the hill. It was the "manly" thing to do. Since he has no common sense and no idea that when you do stuff like this you're supposed to pace yourself, he'd go out for several hours on that hill until it was all done.

After his first wood related heart attack, I took over. Simply put, the whole dumping on the hill thing was something I tried once, ruined a pair of sneakers doing, and never repeated. It was just too damn hard to be at that slope (something near 78 to 80 degree), and haul wood down piece by piece. So I came up with something better: I had them dump the wood at the top of the hill on the flat driveway and then I just throw it piece by piece down the hill. Now that's exhausting in itself (my dad's stroke came the day after a day when he decided that he'd go out and throw/stack without telling any of us on a cold day when I wasn't dumb enough to go out and try it), but it gets the job done and I get to sort out the kindling from the regular pieces of wood.

In the past I'd stack the wood in massive piles that all went the same way. For example, I'd have three or four rows of wood stacked above my head in horizontal piles like this:

HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH (H = horizontal row of wood)
HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

It would be a real manly feeling of accomplishment as I finished because, dang it, I moved and stacked several tons of wood in a formation that went over my head. I could not see over the wood pile and that was good ... well, until winter came and the piles started to collapse. Or it was snowy out and I'd slip and fall on my butt when I'd try to jump up to reach wood. I mean while it was a rugged and manly thing, it really didn't make much sense to do it that way, as my best friend pointed out.

So last fall I thought long and hard about it. I swallowed my pride and I decided to stack the wood sort of like this:

HHHHVVVVHHHHVVVVHHHH (H = Horizontal stack, V = Vertical stack)
VVVVHHHHVVVVHHHHVVVV
HHHHVVVVHHHHVVVVHHHH

In Rows that alternated with each layer, so for example the layer on top of this would be:

VVVVHHHHVVVVHHHHVVVV
HHHHVVVVHHHHVVVVHHHH
VVVVHHHHVVVVHHHHVVVV

and the layer on top of that would be:

HHHHVVVVHHHHVVVVHHHH
VVVVHHHHVVVVHHHHVVVV
HHHHVVVVHHHHVVVVHHHH again.

There are a couple of advantages to this. First, when I was done, the same amount of wood that used to build huge piles over my head, was neatly piled in a rectangle formation that came up to my shoulder. No more having to climb up to get wood off the top. Second, it took up about half the space length wise (yes, size does matter -- small is good!), and lastly, it was a whole hell of a lot more stable than a big pile stacked to the sky going the same way.

I realize this is boring wood talk but hey, this is a journal of my life and right now wood is my every morning. I hate it but it's a workout and I owe the stacking design to my best friend. I don't really remember how she did this, but at the time she was slowly trying to teach me how to get things in order. How much better things would be if instead of always being on the verge of collapse, they'd have some order to them and any collapses would be small and could be taken care of easily instead of blowing up into something bigger. She was applying it to my life at the time, but hey, it sort of worked out that when I started applying the concept to other things -- like the gigantic piles of wood that fill my fall and wintertime.

I bring up my best friend here because her teaching me that order was a kind of cool thing was one of the reasons why I've spent the day uploading the new look of this page. We had been playing around with Macromedia Fireworks the other day for a project she was doing for in her off-time. She didn't know Fireworks at all and wanted to do a kick ass web page for the group she was doing it for. The concept involved layers of moving pictures that would change as someone hovered a mouse over them with all the pictures housed in a little database like area where she could reuse the file for different pages. I didn't know how the hell she could do it, but hey, we started messing with frames and with layers in Fireworks and we learned it together as we both messed around with the program.

She went on to create this massively huge kick ass site for the group. She's still working on it now but what she's done so far is simply brilliant -- it's a beautiful thing to see. When you click on the mouse overs the different layers pop up and there's 20 or 30 different small pictures for page. I'm really impressed with what she did and I'm proud of her for sticking with it. She's under a lot of pressure lately to get it done but she's keeping her own pace and frankly, I'm just happy that she didn't say F* it and walk away from it.

While she was designing her page I had an idea to take the concepts we learned together and apply them to this page. Let's face it, the main screen was getting a little cluttered. With the layout we had people weren't seeing all the options on the site and I was getting a lot of complaints from people who simply couldn't find the latest issue. I addressed this by putting the newest stuff at the top of the page and reversing the season list, but even then, the fact was something I had to face -- as we got more and more strips, the site was becoming harder and harder to navigate.

Sunday 9/9/01 9:06 PM ET

I had an idea for the main page with listings sort of like they are now. Straight down the side with seasons and pop up pictures to help navigate the site. Originally it was going to be the popup pictures and a caption to go with the pictures but after playing with Fireworks a little, I figured I couldn't get a constant space to add the text for the captions. Some of our captions are huge. Plus, I was concerned that I'd be giving too much away if I did that. It was bad enough that I was already giving away some of the plots with the pictures. Didn't want to spoil the stories by giving away more.

So Thursday night I designed the site. Had it all laid out with layers and frames to control the popup pictures. I really did work my butt off. I wanted to get the site redesign up Friday morning ...

THE FRIDAY FROM HELL.

Friday started with trying to nuke the old graphics on the site. Thursday night I had made some changes to our directory structure so a lot of the pages had to be reuploaded anyway. With this in mind I decided to nuke the old graphics on the site and reupload them when I reuploaded the site. I honestly thought this wasn't going to take any time. Last time I did it (season 3), it only took about an hour to nuke all the graphics and upload the new ones. Oh how we've grown since then. The process JUST TO DELETE EVERYTHING took 2 hours.

Reuploading and uploading everything after that ... well, let's just go with Friday was a pretty bad day anyway. My dad had another panic attack that landed him in the emergency room. He's fine and the doctor told him the best thing they've ever told him -- calm down, there's nothing wrong with your heart -- go home and try calm down. He didn't like it a bit, but it was true. If you look at his records we've been up here for four years now and he's been in the emergency room with panic attacks maybe 30 times.

Anyway, I used the stress of what was going on that afternoon to fire me up to do the re-redesign.

Did I mention re-redesign?

Oh yes ...

After the horror of uploading everything taking up most of the day on Friday I realized that with layers and frames the download times for anyone on 56k would be absolutely horrible. All of the pictures I used I had recycled from the strips and it didn't make any sense to me to have you all have to redownload them as parts of the indexes for the seasons. So back to Fireworks I go.

I'll says this, if photoshop is too complex for you and you're focusing on web pages, Fireworks from Macromedia is one hell of a product. Paired with Dreamweaver and you have a web addict's dream. The package is a delight to use and I'm highly addicted to both. When I went back to Fireworks this time all I needed was the names of the pictures and to change one part of the link on each mouseover to load the picture I wanted over the part of the slice on the page. It was that easy. Told you it was a cool little graphics program.

So Friday night was spent making the changes to the site and Saturday was spent fine tuning things and uploading again.

This leads to Sunday night where I'm brain dead, the site is up and working again, and I'm banging my head to "Smooth Criminal" by Alien Ant Farm.

Get down with your bad selves.

k9