My friend Hal passed away today. He was checked into the hospital yesterday with stroke-like symptoms, and never woke up. I wanted to rush over to the hospital to see him when I heard, but they weren’t allowing visitors.

I wanted to be able to say goodbye. It’s hard not getting that.

Hal was around 30 years older than I am. We worked together at WordPerfect Corporation — he was managing a support team that neighbored on my own box in the cube farm, and I remember having lots of fun talking with him. He was bright, and quite wise.

A few years back he moved in to my cul-de-sac, and I loved having him as a neighbor. My kids love playing with his grandkids, and he and I sometimes had the chance to sit on his porch and speculate, muse, and discuss.

Back in July of 2004 he lost his son Ben to suicide. I remember blogging that in LJ, and I remember talking to Hal at length about tragedy, and especially about losing my own parents long before I expected to. I remember stumbling across a memory of Ben almost a year later, and wondering whether I’d stepped on a landmine, or into a patch of flowers.

I remember the dutch-oven chicken Hal made last year for our cul-de-sac’s barbecue. It was some of the best chicken I’ve ever had, largely because some of it was on the raw side of undercooked. I guess I’m a sucker for raw food… I wouldn’t let them throw mine on the stove.

I’m going to miss Hal, but I’m sure that over there on the other side he’s meeting up with old friends and long-lost family members whom he has been missing for much longer. It’s reunion time, and I’ll not begrudge him that.

I’d like to think that he’ll get the chance to talk to my Dad. Hal’s death reminds me of how much I miss my parents. I’m not in any hurry to go see them, mind you. I’ve got too much to do here. I just wish I could talk with them about stuff from time to time. Hal was a good enough friend that he got to stand in for them occasionally.

Can’t see the keyboard through the tears. Time to stop.

So… today I turn 40.

(I’ll give the leap-day jokes a miss.)

Statistically, this is probably a little past the half-way point for me, at least in terms of life expectancy. Since my dad only lived to be 56, and his dad died sometime in his 60’s (maybe early 70’s) I can be accused of optimism if I call 40 “half-way.”

In terms of physical ability I’m also past the half-way point. Oh, I may be able to push back the clock a little bit through healthy living for the next twenty years, but there’s no going back to age 25 (not without blood-nannies, or something similarly techno-miraculous.)

All of this might be kind of depressing. It’s also a very inaccurate way to look at things, since the only person for whom any of this is true is me. It’s a very selfish perspective, and it’s not worth dwelling on. Let’s consider some others:

My oldest daughter has had 12 years of shared experience with me. Even if I only live to be 56, this birthday is still a couple of years shy of the half-way point from her point of view — more if you account for the fact that she doesn’t really remember the first three.

My youngest son has had 5 years with me. If I live to be eighty (look! Optimism!) then the times we’ve already shared as of this point represent only one-ninth of the times we can share going forward.

Sandra and I have enjoyed fifteen years together. If we get another forty, then obviously today isn’t anywhere near the half-way mark.

I suppose the oldest of my siblings, who joins me in her forties next year, can claim that this is pretty close to half-way for the two of us, but she’s the only person I’ve known for that long (okay… there are aunts, uncles, and cousins OLDER than me for whom the halfway point has long since fled… but let’s not dwell on that right now.)

And now let’s consider you, the reader. How long have you known me? Maybe five years? Perhaps eight?

I plan to keep cartooning up until the end. If I hold true to that (and the indications are that I will) then you and I haven’t even hit the 20% mark. I may be “mid-life,” right now, but I’ve got decades in which to continue building worlds in my head and then telling stories about them. This ride isn’t half-way over. It’s barely started.

That’s my happy thought for my Birthday this year.

I’ve been sick pretty much all week. Oh, I tried hard to muscle through it on Tuesday and Wednesday, and managed to actually get a little bit of work done, but I think I only made things worse. Thursday I tried to aggressively convalesce, but even four hours in bed in the middle of the day accomplished nothing.

Today I sprang out of bed feeling better, and the feeling had worn off within 20 minutes. I had a few patches of lucidity, but I think most of the day was spent sleepwalking.

Maybe whining about it in LJ will help. I’ve still got a week’s worth of work to do, and I need to be all better tomorrow so that I can do it all in one day.

You can read the latest Schlock Mercenary (as well as the latest of each of the Blank Label Comics) at the new-and-improved Blank Label Comics home page.

Our initial page layout (credit: Maggie, David Willis, and Me) was pretty good, but Elizabeth Dean (espoused to Greg Dean of Real Life Comics) took one look at it and sprouted a patch of grey hairs. Then she got to work.

Less than six hours later she had a new layout mocked up. Twenty-four hours after that, Greg had made her design live.

I have never seen this woman touch a page design without turning it into gold. She is Queen WebMidas, with a golden touch. In this case the gold comes in desaturated cerulean shades highlighted with shining Blank Label Orange, but it is gold nonetheless. It is gorgeous… kind of like the tri-color Black Hills Gold, only without Indian Burial Grounds or Mount Rushmore.

So… go have a look. Read all of the Blank Label Comics in one handy place.

Now then… here are some answers to common questions:

Q: What will this do to ad revenue?
A: The same thing RSS feeds do. It will dilute ad revenue slightly, while expanding the reach of the comics and increasing page-views overall. Ultimately, it’s OUR problem, not yours. This page is for readers to enjoy. If you feel guilty enjoying it, you can buy some merchandise someday.

Q: Can I have an RSS feed for this new page?
A: Hmmm… No. The page refreshes every ten minutes, and updated content (especially blog entries) may appear at any time during the day. If you want to be up-to-the-minute on all that stuff, the best way is to subscribe to individual Blank Label Comics RSS feeds. This page is a once-a-day trawl spot for people who don’t want to bother with all those feeds.

Q: But Schlock Mercenary doesn’t have a feed.
A: Yet. I’m working on that. It’s a separate project.

Q: Why is Real Life on top?
A: Because for now we all wanted it there. The vertical orientation is perfect. Eventually we may auto-rotate the position of the strips, but that’s a version 2.0 task.

Q: Shouldn’t there be plugs for your merchandise, and store links, and forum links, and all that?
A: You’re absolutely right. There should be. That’s a version 1.1 task, and to hear Greg bubble enthusiastically about it, some of that may be in place before this blog entry gets posted.

Q: Do you have plans to add any other comics to the lineup here?
A: No, but the architecture is flexible enough that it would be easy to do. Six seems like the right number right now.

Q: What happened to the Blank Label Comics blog?
A: You can find it at www.blanklabelcomics.com/blog. Yes, this probably broke a lot of trackbacks and pings. Sorry! We’ll look at getting it incorporated into the main page at some future point.

Q: I have a bug to report!
A: Email it to me, or use the “contact” link at the top of the Blank Label Comics home page.