Late Night

Messing around with javascript and the new blogger. I know some folks get an error when they load this page. Mainly that was from the javascript menu system. Blogger didn't like the blank space commands so I took them out, which resulted in the error. Playing around with the new blogger build now and it seems to be working, but if you still get debugging errors, please let me know.

In other news, head hurts. Tired. I have the first 8 strips for this season all mapped out, but I just have to get some sort of gumption to write. I've been lazy lately, my mind is totally on getting my DVD burning setup fixed (don't ask), so everything suffers for it until I get this problem solved.

Sleeping soon.

k9
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Sleepy Afternoon

It is one of those afternoons that feels like a friday. All day long I've felt like tomorrow is Saturday and that this week is actually shorter than it really is. Of course I don't know WHY things would be different if it were Friday. I work 7 days a week. I rarely get a day off and when I do, I usually come in and work an hour off the clock. Tonight I'm working 5-midnight because it is the NBA draft. I start early because we have yet another phone meeting to start the day off entirely wrong. We're up to 3 meetings a week, soon to be 4. We spend so much time in meetings that it's getting hard to, oh, get actual work done without having to stop and get on the phone.

Since we're having Tuesday night meetings again, I think I'll turn the webcam on Tuesday nights so you can see me spin in my chair if you really want to see that. I haven't been doing it because we've been having too many daylight meetings and there's no one around to watch. I mean it's absolutely no fun when the cam is on but no one is around to see me act like an idiot.

Saturday I'm off (for real!) and I'm writing at least a week's worth of strips. I don't have a storyline yet, but as Brit pointed out, today is Patrick's birthday so consider the whole monster storyline (which concludes tomorrow), a birthday present to Mr. Norton.

Thinking about the new season, I have to figure out what day July 4th is so I can resolve the storyline with Mr. Gates getting married. Since I'm hopefully writing so many days in advance (if not an entire season), I'm going to be brainstorming for the next day or so to find ways to fill another 16 strips.

Oh well, almost time for the Thursday meeting.

Kill me.

k9
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Bored?

Go here and download or listen to the MP3 of "A Different Kind of Love."

It's currently my favorite song.

k9
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Meanie Head

I have a mean headache. I think it is a combination of allergies and being tired. All I know is that it's making me grumpy and I don't want to be grumpy right now.

Had 50+ mails in a work-related e-mail SPAM today. Well, sort of work related. The girl who went to personal finance started a SPAM chain and everyone was chiming in. When someone turned it into "blondes rule, brunettes drool" and started the SPAM all over, I put my foot down. I think the line I used was "Geez, someone gets a bottle of Mz. Clairol #7 blonde and the SPAM starts up again ..." I hadn't been included on any replies from that point on, however, I'm sure my box will be filled again when I go back to work in an hour.

It's that time of year again. My best friend is going away for 2 weeks to see her family. I didn't expect it to be so hard this year. I mean for online best friends we've had a lot of ups and downs over the last year. In some ways we're closer than ever, in others we're strangers. I really don't know why something inside of me is saying "No, don't go on this trip."

I'm alone a lot and I look forward to talking to her at the end of a day. With so many of my other friends gone or vanished or just plain angry, I guess I'm latching on to the one that I can count on to always be there. Last year, it wasn't this way. Last year was much different. I was riding a support group of close friends here getting through one of the most difficult times in my life. On top of it all I was trying to make a friend's dream come true by bringing one of her idols to Canada.

Canada was a fight. All I cared about really was two days where one friend got to meet another. Out of it, I'm glad that I did the B&B vacation, everyone has to do it once in a while, but I'll probably not do something for friendship like that again. Too many complications, too many one sided trade offs, and a year later I barely talk to many of those people for one reason or another.

The Talking Heads' "Once in a Lifetime" is blaring on my TV PC right now.

Canada was weird in a lot of ways. It was the first trip that I wasn't in love with anyone. I wasn't blinded the way guys get on the first trip with someone they love. My heart was quite a ways from Canada. In many ways I didn't need to be there. After the second day when everyone met, really, that was my goal and I accomplished it. The rest of the trip I was a zombie, without a goal really, since I'm not used to vacations where every second had to be packed with something.

I had the moments of being in a strange country where I wrote someone a daily post card as the last thing I did each day. I enjoyed that, my feet were killing me, and the only way I could escape really was either through reading or through writing. On the feet issue, man it has been a bad year for those. I have traces of the blisters still. Plus my two toes never healed properly from breaking them this winter. So my right foot looks like a lineup from crippled toes quarterly.

Sometimes I go back to the freedom of Canada. Montreal was fun, if frustrating. I've never been in a city for an extended period. I've never roomed with anyone but myself. I'm used to setting my own pace and doing what I want to do. I tend to avoid big cities. I'm not good with huge crowds, never been due to my hearing problems as a kid, so it was a culture shock of sorts on many different ways.

Turning things to domestic news. Reading how the RIAA is now going to be filing thousands of lawsuits against music swappers on the major music swapping sites. I rarely use Kazaa or anything else. I haven't had new music in a long time. When I do, I'll look for one or two songs on Kazaa-lite but I won't share and I probably won't buy a CD unless it's marked down to $12. Paying $18-$20 for a CD these days when there's usually just one or two good cuts on a CD is extortion. I won't pay it. The more the RIAA has a heavy handed approach to this stuff, I'm even less prone to buy new CDs.

Madonna swore at everyone to get her point across. I'm even less likely to buy Madonna CDs in the future because of it. Did anyone notice how fast her album faded away after that? One day it was at the top of the charts, the next it was gone. I'm sure she's still wondering what happened to her hits. I bought a lot of Madonna's stuff in the 80's. It's on tape. I didn't make the change over to CDs because I couldn't justify the price increase and I didn't have an actual CD player until after most people had them. Now? No way. No justification for the extortion fees and "Internet taxes" will make me cough up money.

What is strange is that I have a different point of view when it comes to movie DVDs. In the 80's and 90's it was easy to copy movies to video tape. I did my share of it. As my tapes are getting older and find more and more DVDs priced at $9 or less, I'm replacing all those old movies with "legit" copies. As I start my home-brewed DVD collections, most of the stuff I'm putting on DVD is either fresh from the cable channels (showtime and HBO), or not yet in distribution at a price point that I can afford.

I guess the magic price point is what gets me to buy and was why I didn't buy in the 80's and 90's. Tapes were always $24. I wouldn't pay it when I could tape it off of HBO or rent a copy and make a tape. Does this sound familiar?

God, I hope the RIAA starts to get it and soon.

k9
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Blahing for Dollars

I have exactly six minutes until I have to get into the shower. 36 minutes until I have to be to work. 3 hours and 36 minutes until I'm off and about 4 hours and 36 minutes until my afternoon nap.

I'm half awake. I'm doing the usual grind here. Had strange dreams. Woke up earlier than I normally do, tossed and turned for three and a half hours until I got out of bed. Nothing really going on other than I think I was too tired to sleep.

Had a 1 minute dream that the Screen Savers had some mistletoe and they were trying to make Patrick and Jessica kiss. Leo got pissed and stormed next door and locked them all in the studio. Then they went live to Call for Help where he had Chris Pirillo's flying stripper showcase as a guest. I have no idea what it means, but I got the hell out of THAT dream before anyone took anything off.

I didn't watch TSS last night. I only watched it for 3 minutes the night before. I hope someone is reading all of these TechTV blogs and realizing that most of the hardcore fans are a lot like me. The more they get away from Tech, the more they lose the die hard viewers. I really don't think that they're picking up new viewers. There are better things to look at than Jessica's breasts for an hour.

Maybe that'll do it. Put the snarling Sarah and air headed Jessica in thong bikinis for an hour and just let them gab. Forget tech, unless it's the tech of the latest penis pump, and just let the eye candy host the show. They can have segments where Patrick works out in a kilt and have Leo banned from the "young and sexy Screen Savers" show altogether.

Nah. They'd only spoil it by putting Cat on. Even though her show consists of some Tech and every male caller hitting on her. That's one of the major reasons I won't watch Call for Help. If you're going to take it out of your pants and call a show, at least have the decency to call the playboy channel.

Oh well. Work calls.

k9
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Being a Doofus

I was half awake before I realized that I was in a shower and the cats were fed. Stumbled out the door and to my allergy shots. On the way over I realized that I forgot to take my medicine this morning. So, to my surprise, my blood pressure was actually 110/80 in my half awake state. It's usually 120/90 without fail. So I didn't know what the hell was going on.

It's weird. I've been going to that office for years. I know the nurse and I know the secratary. They got a new girl in the office and she's a goddess. Tall, thin and beautiful. Exactly the type of girl you forget having a chance with because you're too busy trying to get off the ground after tripping over your own two feet. It's weird. It's not like I have a thing for the girl, but it's not the same comfortable office that I'm used to.

When I get uncomfortable I get impish. I'm not the sort of guy that can walk up to a girl and ask her out. I always end up doing something insane. Something stupid, something bratty or impish. Of course all of my relationships are doomed from the start (I give them three weeks before they realize what an idiot I am and what the heck they've done by getting involved with me), but for three whole weeks they're wild, out of control and just plain silly. But that's digressing. I think.

So I have plans for a long evening of work. I also can't get my mind off the fact that I'm planning on going on vacation sometime next month. The big twist here is that my sister had decided that she's coming out with the kids for 10 days. RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE OF WHEN I WAS PLANNING TO LEAVE. So now I'm not going. I haven't seen my Niece and Nephew in almost two years. I miss them like crazy. So I have to figure out how to go on vacation without missing them. What timetable to work with and when I can get the hell out of here and be alone for a week.

It's one of those dilemmas. Family. Last year I was going on vacation around the same timetable. The fabled trip to Canada. My sister decided to stay home that time. Now she's coming. Now I really don't know what to do other than I have to be here. I'm probably not going to get to see the kids again for years. On the other hand, I dream of being in the car. I want to leave so bad that I can't escape the urge to get out.

I'll do the right thing.

I always do.

That's what's so sad.

k9
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Testing Testing

Wrote 5 strips today and I'm currently still messing around with video.

The bad news: Pinnacle is a wonderful product when it works. It's not working. I don't think it WILL work any time soon and that's that.

The worse news: Adobe Premiere was waaaaaaaaaaay too complex for me to figure out.

The semi-good news: I was able to get an upgrade to my old copy of Ulead Video Studio to version 7.0. So far it let me crop video so I was able to get two of the files that I wanted to use in order to take out the extra video. It rendered them both in about 20 minutes tops. Compare this to Adobe Premiere, which told me it was going to be NINE HOURS for it to render the cropped file.

The up in the air: I still couldn't figure out complex menus in Video Studio so I bought their Movie Maker 2 software. I'm downloading it now and between the two, I'm crossing my fingers to hope and to dream that this is going to work.

Someone wish me luck.

k9
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Longest Day of the Year

Today is the solstice and the start of Summer. It, of course, has rained nonstop since last night. Our little device says we've had about 3 inches of rain. I'm up waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too early for the start of the longest day of the year. I was woken up by the sound of my answering machine screaming "PLEASE SETUP NEW GREETING!" and my alarm flashing 12:00. Yes, the dreaded power surge started the day.

I'm a little pissed because my Pinnacle Studio 8 has been so damn flakey this week. One of the things I left going last night was my Pinnacle Studio. It was rendering a DVD image so I could burn it later. I've been trying this for 4 days now. It takes nearly 3 hours to render a 2 hour DVD. It usually gets through 2 hours of rendering then either it crashes or the whole machine crashes and that's that.

I did get it two render properly twice using the stripped down lite version. The first time I was stupid enough to reopen the program. It asked me if I wanted to save, I said yes, and it erased the image files that it had processed the night before. The second time I actually went ahead and burnt the file to disc, only to realize that for some strange reason it totally screwed up the menu. So that's a DVD-R down the drain.

I switched back to the "real" version of the program because the lite didn't have the animated preview menu icons. I know, "Stupid, if the lite actually gets to the point of burning a frigging image, why switch?" "Stupid, if the lite is more STABLE than the REAL version of the software that you paid $100 for, why switch?" My only answer is that I'm an idiot.

I love Pinnacle Studio. I do. I've used it for a couple of years now and I love the product. However, it hates my new computer. They just don't get along. I've updated drivers, I've tweaked the hell out of the system using performance guides from various tweaking sites, I even switched to the latest beta of Pinnacle Studio (which got all the way to the end of 3 hours last night when it crashed and broke my heart). I'm to the point where I feel like I should borrow a friend's copy of Adobe Premiere and see if I can make heads or tails of that.

I'm a loyal paying Pinnacle customer. I don't want to switch to a "borrowed" adobe product (which retails for hundreds more), but if I have to I have to since all I want to do is burn a frigging DVD with menus that work.

In other news, I managed to screw my stomach back up. How, you ask? I tried one of those McDonalds Griddlecake breakfasts. My stomach can't handle pancakes. Never has been able to. WHAT THE HELL WAS I THINKING?? I mean eating a pancake sandwich for breakfast and following it up with more McDonalds for dinner was probably the most insane thing I've done in a while (well, since getting rid of Pinnacle Studio Lite).

I don't have to be to work for another twelve hours. I have the whole day to waste and I'm going to do it with an upset stomach because I had to try that neat new sandwich.

Someone please buy me some sense. I really need it.

k9
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Getting Better

Blogging for the first time in a few days ...

Catching up on life here: My stomach is finally feeling good again. After three weeks of pain and discomfort I finally broke down and bought some fiber tablets. Lo and behold, after 4 days of taking 2 "Fiber Choice" tablets a day and blam. I'm a new man. Of course I've also eliminated anything from my diet that I could think of that would possibly upset my tummy, but I think upping my water intake and taking these tablets was enough to keep my stomach settled and out of the doctor's office for now. I was told I had "possible diverticulitus" about 4 years ago (it's hereditary), so having more fiber in my diet is a good thing anyway.

I hate doctors. It's not that I don't like being treated, it's just the fact that I wish there wasn't a catch. Like when I hurt my back, I knew if I went to a chiropractor I'd be stuck with adjustments and fine tuning for the rest of my life. Thankfully that pain went away after a month or so. One morning I had severe pain, the next I was fine. I already go once a month for allergy shots. I go once every three weeks to have my skin checked for psoriasis (again hereditary and actually not that bad in my case), and I really don't want to add another monthly or weekly visit to my schedule.

I could list about a dozen serious illnesses that I've probably inherited from my dad's genes, but I really don't have room for them here. I'm just glad that I'm 32 and I'm in much better shape than he was at this age. I can put up with dry skin, acne and tummy troubles as long as I'm not having heart surgery, diabetes or stroke-like symptoms. I probably should be on 100 different meds a day, given his genes (and he does take about 100 pills a day), but I'm not and I'm happy to be where I am without another load of doctor's visits. :)

Switching the news from me to my cat. Cat the cat is well again. He had some sort of scratch on his face and a scratch on his eyeball. It was pretty bad. I've been taking him to the vet every Thursday for the past 3 weeks. Today the Vet told me that he was okay and I don't have to bring him back. Sadly, he's mainly an outside cat and state Rabies' law requires you to keep animals inside for three months when you don't know the source of their injuries. He's getting used to being inside and learning to use a litter box. but damn, it's hard since he is constantly meowing to go out.

With that said, I have 1 hour and 17 minutes until work, so I think I'm off to lay down.

Be bad,

k9
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Stiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiill Going

I was finally able to go back to a semi normal schedule for just one day. At 1 PM I was ready for a quick afternoon nap to get refreshed for my 4-7 shift today. I know daily naps are weird but I live on them. I can't think without them and with my job, where literally millions of people see my work and come to my communities, I need to be at my best at all times. Today though ... a pair of birds got in the overhang above our porch. We thought it was hollow just above the porch. It's not, it stretches all the way along the side of the house. How do I know? They, of course, had babies. DIRECTLY ABOVE MY PILLOW there are chirping baby birds. There's no way to get to them, I'm just going to have to put up with them until they either grow up or die. The parents are still coming and going so that's good, but there go my naps.

Stef made me want to marry her the other night. We had a discussion about the really bad comedy segments on TechTV these days. I've purposely cut the shows I watch on a regular basis so when I do captures I'm not doing caps of comedy. Why? Because I don't feel right parodying comedy, especially bad comedy. While my comedy might not be to everyone's taste, what would happen if I took one of their bad comedy skits and made it funny? Would the world explode? The way she described it (which I should have written down), was so wise on a cosmic level that I wanted to marry her. Underneath all the goodie good stuff everyone says about her, there's the soul of a mad woman. Perfectly mad. I'm watching her now and hiding the knives.

I have to go back to work in a few then I'm scheduled to write strips tonight. I need something for tomorrow yet. If you haven't noticed, I've purposely stuck to a set number of panels per strip. It is to a) cut our huge bandwidth fees and b) to make it easier to write. Well, easier it's not, well not yet. I have to think more with less space. I'm used to characters who just talk and talk and talk to set up the punchline. Now I don't have that space, it's hard not to bang my head against the limit. Sometimes, like today, what would be minor jokes in strips of old are the center of the strip. I'm not sure if it's going to work, but I'm trying ...

Now I have to go to work. God I need a day off.

k9
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The Battle

I haven't been feeling that great lately. My stomach has been a mess. I finally realized that I haven't been drinking as much water as I should be; well drinking anything for that matter. Last summer I was going through 2 or three pints of bottled water a day. I realized today that I've been nursing water and sometimes a pint goes from afternoon to overnight, finishing it in the morning. I haven't upped my fluids by replacing water with anything, I just have been so busy that I forget.

So today I forced myself to drink as much as felt comfortable. Wouldn't you know it? My stomach is feeling better. Not sure if it's a one time deal or not, but if I can get life back to what it was then we're in business.

The NBA finals continue this weekend. God I'm sick of basketball. It feels like the playoffs were as long as the season. Since I inherited the NBA right at the start of playoffs it meant uprooting my life. I'm working odd hours, I'm not sleeping like I should be and I'm compulsively reading any book I can find. I haven't been in the mood to write and I have to find a way to get a whole bunch of strips done tomorrow if we're going to continue daily strips.

Today a strip didn't go up until late afternoon. I really came close to ditching the whole daily strip idea. I've been writing them for 2 and a half months now on a daily basis. I think I put out more strips than I ever thought I could do and today I simply didn't have anything to work with. I'm not sure where we're going tomorrow. I do have a 3-strip plot in mind but it has to be properly set up ... then again ... since I didn't resolve the reality situation, anything could happen ...

Part of me wishes I had remembered and just gone with that idea to open the season. Oh well. There's always tomorrow.

k9

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I don't want to move.

I'm hardly awake. I have to take Cat the cat to go for a checkup on his eye later. He scraped it last week and it got all yucky looking so we took him in. $120 later ... well it's a scrape on the eye itself and he has to be on 2 kinds of antibiotics. This is the one week checkup and it really is looking much better than it did. The bad part to this is since we don't know how he did it, they're assuming he was in a fight and he's stuck inside for the next 3 months to watch for rabies. He's an outdoor cat. His adjustment to indoors is ... well not that great. He's driving everyone nuts.

Speaking of nuts, I overslept by a whole 10 minutes this morning. Our dogs promptly pooped all over the kitchen because I wasn't up to put them out. I made my mom clean it up since she was up for an hour and didn't bother to put them out. Plus she's getting her revenge as I have to take Cat to the vet and he always poops in the carrier on the way over. It's wonderful. I have another headache. I have strips to write.

Shoot me.

k9
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Dear God, and other issues.

I woke up after my afternoon nap with a massive headache and a "Flock of Seagulls" hairstyle. I really can't describe it as anything other than that. If I didn't feel like hell and didn't want to move, I think I'd spend some time trying to make it look a little less retro and more generic white guy. With that said, I have a headache and I want to go back to bed. I still have a ton of strips to write and I'm seriously not ready to go to work tonight from 7-midnight.

Following up on yesterday's blog: Leo was much better with his obsession over the Sarah/Kevin romance yesterday. Though the show was total crap (come on, not even Jessica's breasts can carry the show when she's co-hosting), he only mentioned it twice that I saw (when the TV wasn't on "the Simpsons"). One thing I should note is that when he starts to go off on their romance, he sounds like a total pervert. Like an old man watching a soft-core porn on showtime. If porn spam e-mail makes kids feel "icky" then anytime Leo acts like a pervert makes me feel "icky."

My only advice to him is to put it back in his pants. His rants about TechTV turning into "TrashTV" on Leoville would be more valid if he weren't ADDING to the mess that's turning off more viewers than it's adding per month.

As for the happy couple; I wish them the best. It's hard to find love. They made this decision to out themselves and make it a part of the show. Now they have to live up to the expectations that go with it. I mean the eyes of about 30,000 viewers are on them each night. That pressure has got to be incredible. If one strays or they have a tiff, things could get ugly on TSS and FAST. Their inevitable breakup might actually attract 35,000 viewers if done properly!

k9
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A couple of days later

I know I promised to get off the subject but ... you know, as soon as I took all the graphics out of the gallery and put up the link to donations on a plain text page, traffic stayed the same but the bandwidth usage was cut in half. We're good right now. It's getting somewhat better as the fark.com people come in and look and see that big donation graphic and RUN LIKE THE WIND. I don't know what it is about asking people to donate but it's the easiest way to scare people off who were just coming to look at boobies.

Ah, boobies. TSS has been awful to watch lately. Between the horrible chemistry between Kevin and Sarah (Leo "outed" them last night but I guess I was the last to know about their romance), Jessica going braless and jiggling her boobs around, and the total lack of anything geek like (well there are the "dark tips" but let's face it, they're there to be "cool" and NOT to help anyone), TSS is turning into a clone of MTV's total request live. You know beautiful people making in-jokes that no one gives a damn about whenever Leo and Patrick aren't around. I will give Leo credit though; last night's prank on a viewer was perhaps the dumbest segment in the history of Techtv. It made "Unscrewed" look great. If there were an award for "pointless segment designed to be mean to a viewer" then it should go to Leo. It wasn't cool or hip, it was just another lame attempt by TechTV to steal someone else's idea (the MTV show, the Sci-Fi show, Candid Camera ...).

I really think that they should take Jessica and Sarah and give them their own show. Jessica goes braless while Sarah will be in the mighty pushup bra of doom. They can film it on the Techlive set (like they do with X-Play), take the couch from Unscrewed, and just have them talk about whatever is on their brains for a half hour. Between jiggles and giggles, I'm sure it will be a ratings hit with guys who watch Techtv with the volume turned off. It doesn't have to be about anything, just something to fill their time and help to return TSS to the oh computer advice show that got us into the channel. I really don't care that Sarah is sleeping with Kevin. I really don't know why Leo kept bringing it up last night, but again, if that's what they want to talk about -- put Jessica and Sarah on their own show so I DON'T HAVE TO WATCH IT.

Heck, on the nightly Sarah and Jessica show (have it replace the crap that is Xplay), have Morgan Webb as the weather girl. She can come in and the three of them can bounce, jiggle and giggle, while she gives the forecast for the San Fran. area. I will say this: Morgan doesn't work on Xplay. Seriously. The writers write the same for her and Adam, however she doesn't have the delivery skills to make the jokes work. When she reviewed the pirate game last week she sounded like a two year old playing pirate. She didn't change the pitch in her voice and she really sounded like she was phoning the whole thing in because she had something better to be doing with her time. She's like that for every review and unless they start writing for her, she'll continue to be the biggest flop since Leo pitched the idea of "Leo up Late."

Getting back to the show idea, they really should get Morgan, Jessica and Sarah (Cat doesn't have the body for it), and make their own bikini calendar. I mean if anyone in TechTV's management had half a brain they would do this. Guys would flock to it! Or how about this: Take, Morgan, Jessica and Sarah, send them to a tropical paradise, and do weekly "Tech Babes in paradise" videos. That serves two purposes: 1) it gets all the wonderful babes, err "Tech Girls" off of TSS and OUT OF THE COUNTRY so we don't have to see them spoil TSS and 2) it crosses TechTV from the wanna be soft-core porn channel all the way over to the full time soft-core porn channel. Tape and DVD sales would go through the roof and it might actually make money for a change.

Hell, if you're reading from TechTV, I GIVE YOU PERMISSION TO STEAL THESE IDEAS! I don't want money from them! If it means getting TSS back to what it was then you can steal my ideas all you want!

Just give me a TSS that doesn't have 30 reminders that Kevin and Sarah are sleeping together or the constant reminders that Jessica has boobies and all the guys hit on her on the BIT CHAT segments (let alone BIT CHATs that show the entire interview and don't cut off in the middle of a thought).

Is it just me or are the TSS LAN party segments revolving around bootie and boobie shots of Jessica and serve no other purpose than to fill five minutes of airtime that no one gives a damn about?

Oh well. Back to the real world.

k9
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The Curse of Fark

I think this explains everything: "Hey look at Laura Swisher's enormous jugs!" with a link to us in one of Fark.com's forums pretty much decided the fate of the galleries. They're gone. They're not coming back.

I was about to put in an enormous amount of time and effort into designing coffee mugs and T-shirts to help cover the costs of running this site, but I realized something: people just don't give a flying frig. They want the Internet for free and they seriously don't care about anything that costs them money. I also realize that the dreams that people will donate a buck to keep the site alive are pretty much that and I'm going to be stuck with another extreme bandwidth bill this month. It's one thing to go to a page to see Laura Swisher's breasts, it's another to give $1 (and I'd make the donations less if they'd let me) to ensure that those boobies will be there for you to see each and every day. Insert Jessica Corbin, Morgan Webb, Erica Hill, etc.'s name in there, you get the drift.

I'll probably go ahead with plans to do both the shop and the donation link on every strip, however, I have this dreaded feeling that it's going to be a whole lot of work for no return. Plus, for every $12 or so for a product, I'll get maybe $1 from it to actually help the site stay going. That's how most of these instant shops work. They charge you a basic fee (oh say $12 a T-shirt) to print the shirt and send it out and then anything over and above that is what you get from the sale. For example, Leo's shop at Leoville isn't so expensive because he's a greedy bastard, it is so expensive because they're charging him an arm and a leg per shirt and he's only seeing a buck or two in profit from any shirt he sells.

Since I'm SO not going to turn us into a banner ad site or a pop up site, so I'm going to have to scale back on the # of strips we have online (and possible targets) until this whole craze over boobies passes. I'm working on it now. Looks like we'll have 5 seasons up at a time along with possibly 1 "flashback" or "greatest hits" season. The flashbacks will change every couple of weeks and existing links will turn into blank pages in order to keep our hard fought google listings. I know my dream was to have a comic strip site where you could site down and go to a different page every day for a year; but let's face it, until the mindless boobie craze is over, that isn't going to happen either.

Drastic times call for drastic measures and all that.

This will be my last blog about the subject. So back to the show ...

k9
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Quick Update

Brit sent along an e-mail warning about paypal and how some folks won't want to use that so we've switched over to an amazon.com service. I'm not doing it for profit and I hate adding any sort of advertisements on the site, but we do need to get the money we're losing back by hosting the bandwidth fees. So please, if you enjoy the site, $1.00 is all it takes to keep us going.

The donations are fully refundable for 30 days and the site is secure. So please, I'm not gonna hit ya over the head with it -- save our site. Don't make me put pop ups on the site.

Thanks,

k9
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Dear God, Boobies.

If you've been following the site for the past week you can see that we're under seige because of Jessica and Morgan's popularity. Again, I'll say that it's great having people here, however, it's not so great when they're coming just to see boobies. I've made a joke out of it in our latest storyline, however, I'm on the verge shutting down the galleries as we know them. I've put up paypal donation links in the place of Morgan and Jessica's now and I'll be doing the same to the rest of the galleries soon enough. In 7 days we've gone through all my bandwidth.

A simple $1 donation via paypal helps keep the site alive. I'm not kidding. We're getting hit too hard and there's no sense to the links. Suddenly a million people have come to the site and it's going to kill it.

The next step is to take down all the early strips and maybe just feature the last couple of seasons, I don't know. I'm also scaling back on the size of strips. This is a natural move though. It just makes them easier to write and easier to download. Less bandwidth when people discover the older strips I guess. I'm really unsure of what else I can do but I do know one thing -- I can't afford to run this site as it is now. If it gets more popular and the bills mount, it will have to go away.

If anyone else can think of another option -- without going the banner ad route, I'd love to hear it.

Thanks,

k9
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Attack of the Killer ...

It's June 5th and my bandwidth for the month is half gone. It's getting better now that the galleries are down, but damn, I don't know what the heck is going on here. Jessica and Morgan suddenly are the talk of the world and people are discovering anything connected with them I guess. In some ways, hey, it is pretty cool, in others, well, I don't know why we suddenly went from maybe 62 visits in a day to 362 visits (and 365mb of bandwidth), but hoping that it is calming down. Let's face it, those galleries were okay, but they were two year old pictures and they were never going to change. I'm not sure what people want from them.

It has everything to do with Jessica coming back to TSS. The fact is that the hits picked up as soon as she came back. They're not referral hits (other than from google -- though images.google.com is still disabled here), and all they were coming for was the gallery of Jessica or the gallery of Morgan. Now that I've replaced the gallery pictures with links, 90% of those visits go to one of the pages on the links (currently http://reallycoolsite.org/episode2/2tech3.htm is in the lead), then leave the site.

Search Engine Referrals
Pages Percent Hits Percent (for the month so far)
Google 644 69.7 % 644 69.7 %
Yahoo 192 20.8 % 192 20.8 %
MSN 44 4.7 % 44 4.7 %
AltaVista 14 1.5 % 14 1.5 %
Other search engines 9 0.9 % 9 0.9 %
AllTheWeb 5 0.5 % 5 0.5 %
AOL 5 0.5 % 5 0.5 %
Netscape 4 0.4 % 4 0.4 %
Lycos 2 0.2 % 2 0.2 %
MetaCrawler (Metamoteur) 2 0.2 % 2 0.2 %
Overture 2 0.2 % 2 0.2 %

Visits as of this morning:
Day Number of visits Pages Hits Bandwidth
01 Jun 2003 174 394 11083 128.09 MB
02 Jun 2003 177 423 12638 137.94 MB
03 Jun 2003 362 1563 37227 367.23 MB
04 Jun 2003 365 2012 45733 352.67 MB
05 Jun 2003 116 439 11816 118.31 MB

As you can see, we're not a big site at all. The June 5th figure is from last night at about 9 PM ET until now. We never get this many people so something has to be up. Look at the May figures for the same period:

Day Number of visits Pages Hits Bandwidth
01 May 2003 109 289 5626 61.79 MB
02 May 2003 95 177 3704 35.54 MB
03 May 2003 77 219 3723 43.33 MB
04 May 2003 96 218 4308 44.40 MB
05 May 2003 72 125 2768 25.38 MB

So it's the fact that Jessica is back I guess. I can't track down any other next external links going to us and people are going directly to our page without a referral. I mean here are our top referrals (last 2 numbers are number of referrals/visits):

- http://members.aol.com/_ht_a/reallycoolsite/index.html?mtbrand=AOL_US 7 7
- http://www.popdex.com 6 6
- http://www.leolaportefansite.com/thellffs.htm 2 2
- http://www.angelfire.com/tv2/bencurtisrocks/pics.html 2 2
- http://nobody76116.tripod.com/id17.htm 2 2
- http://www.techlaporte.com 2 37
- http://search.earthlink.net/search?q=%22cat+schwartz%22&start=60&area=ea... 1 1
- http://web.ask.com/redir?bpg=http%3a%2f%2fweb.ask.com%2fweb%3fq%3dwhy%2b... 1 1
- http://www.comcast.net/search/search.jsp 1 1
- http://www.technorati.com 1 1
- Others

So you can see that it's not the usual suspects. I'm stumped. If anyone else has any ideas please let me know. I'm seriously baffled as to why hits are up so much.

k9
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Killing the Galleries

Last night I had the painful decision to kill the Jessica and Morgan galleries. I got a huge charge for bandwidth last month and I just looked and we've used 1/4 of my allotted bandwidth for the month in a little under 3 days. Here's the deal: I thank you all for being here, but I just can't afford to keep them right now. This is a comic strip site. People aren't coming to see the comic strips. I'm keenly aware of that ... but we're not a girlie site. I'm not making any money off the site and it's my choice to do what I do here.

You now have links to all the strips featuring Jessica and Morgan. Please take 5 minutes to read some of them. They're funny and worth the read (well, unless your name is Kevin Adams of Hershey, PA, who makes his thoughts known in whines and "Don't make me read" whenever I send him a link); they're also what the site is about.

Thanks,

k9
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