I have been very busy lately. I had to rebuild a server last week and then last weekend we had an extended power outage that caused even more problems. Monday our gateway lost it’s anti-spam settings so users were getting hammered with all the SPAM we normally stop. The users were a little vocal about it. Nevermind that usually they are “protected” from this stuff. I finally got it all working at about 2 and the SPAM stopped. I had one person actually bothering to say thanks for fixing it. After our crash last week I had a lot of loose ends and file restore to perform. I was here almost solidly for 2 days, I did go home and sleep. As busy as everyone knew I was they never ceased complaining. “When are you going to….”

Not all my users are like that but sometimes this can be a thankless job for sure. I guess it beats working for a living though. Luckily I have this webcomic to vent myself through. Otherwise I’d probably brink my 45 pistol in and clean it all day at my desk. Hmmm, that may be a good idea. It sure would cut down on drop-bys to my office and I imagine complaints would go down as well.

   A inter-web cartoonist buddy, Samantha at  http://www.witchytech.com/lifesawitch/ came up with the idea of a sketchout group for a few of us wanting to improve our skills as a cartoonist. The idea is to take turns handing out assignments on Friday. This week Samantha assigned us “Characters in motion”. I did the assignment and it came out just OK.  This exercise showed me I need a lot of sketching exercise, so this group will help me out so much. Check them all out here. Check back later to see more as they get added.

Enclosed you will see the work in progess, the final drawing and an *animated GIF file of the work in progress taking a cue for Sam.

*(if it works right, it does at photobucket  at least) 

   I love the show Medium on NBC. I recorded Monday night’s episode and finally got a chance to watch it last night. Like most episodes she (Allison) has a dream about some killer, in this case someone wanting to kill her. She goes to the people she works with, the DA and police, and tells them and they don’t believe her. OK, later on she gets some dreams wrong in the episode, but come on. So week after week she has dreams and identifies the killer and solves the case but each week she must convince the same people that she is right. Man that is so frustrating!

  So it occurred to me last night that really Scooby and Shaggy have the same problem. Week after week they are the first to see the “ghost” or bad guy ’ du jour’ and what do their friends say? They don’t believe them. So yeah the last fifty times I told you what I saw I was right but this time I just imagined it, yeah right! How about some credit here folks. It matters little that the ghost or monster turns out to be Old Man Jenkins, they still saw what they saw.

   These issues will not stop me from watching Medium, or Scooby Doo (watching for nearly 40 years now) but I think Allison, Scooby and Shaggy should dump thier current teams and join forces. What a team they would make. Maybe no crimes would get solved but at least someone would believe them.

So if you do webcomics have you done this? You work hard on a background and then some of the best details are hidden by characters or other objects and can’t be helped. I still think all the details, even unseen, are important to me.

So, taking a queue cue from my interweb buddy Samantha at http://www.witchytech.com/lifesawitch/ I’m posting what the full image would have looked like. Maybe it’s boring but I spent a lot of time working on it. BTW, if you have never seen “Life’s a Witch” you should go right now and check it out. She is funny and safe for he whole family, even though her humor is targeted for adult type people like me.

  The single most professional thing about this site is clearly the banner at the top. Of course I did not design it, it was designed by Krishna M. Sadasivam. Krishna is the genius behind the brilliant www.pcweenies.com and the slice of life www.uncubedthecomic.com webcomics. He did the design for me for a very reasonable fee, so reasonable it feels more like he did me a favor.

  When I was first doing my webcomic, Krishna’s PCW was one I kept going back to to see “how it’s done”. What was awesome, though I doubt Krishna even remembers, was I emailed him about his process and he quickly emailed me back. He took his time and explained it so even I understood. He has helped me on other things, mainly through his blogs.

   By far the best thing he did for me was my banner that you see at the top. He did it with some room so I could add my characters on the right side. It may diminish his work with mine intertwined but I’m very pleased with the look. I’m so pleased with the look I had some custom coffee mugs made up and IMHO they look great! Even some of my friends who are not all that interested in my comic were very excited when they saw the finished project. Here are some low quality images of the mug taken with my cellphone.

  If you are not familiar with Krishna’s work I highly recommend you do so now. What I appreciate along with the humor and art of his comics is that he never crosses certain lines and the sites are completely safe for my kids. So many webcomics will seem family friendly then drop an f-bomb seemingly out of nowhere.  It’s just nice to know when I link to Krishna my kids can see it and I have no worries. They may not get the humor but it is safe, they probably do get the humor as they are geeks in training. I really can’t say which of his sites I like more. While I love the geek humor of PCW the honesty of UnCubed is excellent. While he calls Un3 a comic about an “Indian Guy Named Krishna”   I find many relateable moments in it.

   Anyways, Krishna thanks for being out there with your comics, tips, and for doing your live streams of your process. You are an excellent resource and I always learn a lot. Also thanks for such a great design on my banner.

   Be on the look out for future give-aways of my DFTG coffee mugs. Not only do they look good, thanks to Krishna. but they make your coffee taste even better.

 As you may know I had some custom coffee mugs made. I am going to have a few contests and give away some of these mugs. I’ve been told that coffee even tastes better in these mugs, of course that was by two of my employees whom I gave mugs to earlier. It is Friday afternoon and I have decided to conduct a quick experiment. I’m going to give away one of these mugs to the first person who emails me at contest@dontfeedthegeek.com and tells me their favorite all time Neil Young song. I’m a huge Neil fan and it’s my mug and contest, so I get to make up the rules. If you already have one of these mugs, and a few of my favorite readers already have them, you can’t enter the contest, sorry.  I’m curious how long it will take for someone to read this and respond. If it goes on very long then I’ll post on Twitter/FaceBook about it and see how long that takes. You don’t need to enclose you address yet, if you win I’ll notify you and get your shipping info. I’ll I ask is I can name you as the winner in a follow post, the name/ID of your choice and that you send me a photo of the mug once you receive it. You can take a picture of you holding the mug or on a desk or whatever. I would like to use the photo later as well. If no one responds I’ll have to re-think give-aways. Anyways, good luck and have a nice weekend.

UPDATE: We have a winner(s). Gene Anderson actually responded within 10 minutes of the post with an answer. Gene is a missionary in Taiwan, just need to figure the best way to send it to him. Jeff Moore of Chicago was the 2nd winner. Gentlemen, prepare yourself for better tasting coffee!