There are a number of things I’ve pretty much given up in order to keep up with Schlock Mercenary, and every so often I miss them.

• Role-playing games. Every time I see dice, or sourcebooks, I get this itch. *sigh*
• Karate. I figured I was on track for 1st-degree black-belt within 18 months when I finally gave that up. The yellow belt I’d earned still hangs in the closet somewhere, but I’m not worthy to wear it.
• Legos. We’ve got at least $1000 worth of Legos in the house, and my only interaction with them is “you kids need to clean up this mess.”
• Web programming. No joking, kids… I used to write Perl, Javascript, and gobs-and-gobs of HTML. Now I outsource, and I can tell I’m missing out on all the fun new tools available in CSS and DHTML.
• Video Games. If I’ve got time to sit down and figure out a rich new virtual world, I’ve got time to draw.

That’s the list for now. What inspired this post? I was over at Spells and Whistles wondering if that talented l4m3r had updated yet, and there was an ad for these gorgeous metal dice. *sigh*.

If I were a full-time cartoonist, I’d play tabletop RPGs at least four hours a week. I know it. And I’d build my own miniatures and dungeon maps with legos. And I’d play video games. And I’d still let Chalain do all my web programming. And I’d be able to kick your butt.

–Howard

While I doubt any of you were actually WONDERING, this article describes a reorganization at Novell that DOES, in fact, impact me directly.

I’ll quote the relevant bit:

David Patrick will become general manager of the new product business unit for Linux, Open-Source Platforms and Services. Reporting to him will be Markus Rex, vice president for SuSE; Nat Friedman, vice president for the desktop; Angie Anderson, vice president of applications and services; Ed Anderson, vice president of product marketing; and Rob Kain, director of product management.

Without going into details, at the time of the re-org, I reported to Rob Kain, and I had a team reporting to me. What matters is that the reorganization posed an opportunity for me to step down as a manager. So I did. Interestingly, my replacement is a guy who used to be ON my team, so you could say we just traded shoes. I should have dumped the rocks out of them first, but you know, there was so little time that I forgot.

Whether or not this means less stress for me remains to be seen. It does NOT change my travel plans for the next month, and after talking to my new manager, it doesn’t really change the fact that my team (now my peers, rather than my direct reports) still needs my Unique Blend Of Skills.

There’s been lots of commentary about corporate reorganization in general, and a lot of it is cynical. I’m no cynic, but I also know that this will NOT be the last major reorganization Novell undergoes. See, re-orgs, layoffs, hiring booms, mergers, and acquisitions are all to the body corporate as eating, sleeping, defecating, and procreating are to organic critters. They’re just things that happen every so often as part of the process of being “alive.” Granted, this metaphor lends itself rather too well to the distasteful alignment of “layoffs” with “defecation,” but that’s just one of the hazards of working with metaphors.

My point is that I see the Re-org as a Good Thing, and my change in responsibility as one aspect of that. It’s good for me, and it’s good for the company. It’s probably good for our customers, too, though it’ll take some time for the change to shake out that far.

I’m very pleased to still be employed. And if I DO someday get downsized, it will be with a heart full of gleeful irony that I hearken back to my body-corporate metaphor with the phrase “Crap. I got laid off.”

–Howard

The next month of Schlock Mercenary contains some comics that are going to come across, at least to some people, as commentary on current politics.

For the record, they’re not. They MIGHT be general commentary on the nature of individual responsibility, agency, power, and the role of government, but only because for at least part of the story, aspects of each of those affect the characters I write about. The characters have their own opinions, and are at odds with one another and with The System (such as it is), just like real people in this world, only funnier.

Anybody who thinks that I picture Schlockiverse politics as anything other than comically dystopian needs to have a little sit-down with the word “satire” in the dictionary.

That said, I love America, and it truly saddens me to see the malice and hatred in our political scene today. I just don’t get it. It’s like the Two-Minute-Hate in 1984. Both sides are guilty of it. Regardless of who wins the election in November, unless we start Being Nice To Each Other in a hurry, everybody loses. Remember, in the course of your day (today, four years from now, or 40 years from now), NOTHING the sitting President decides will give you an excuse to be mean to your neighbor. NOTHING. If your little patch of America sucks, it’s YOUR FAULT.

Today I drew faster than I ever have before. The pencilling was done in less than 90 minutes for 9 rows (that’s seven days of strips, and yes, that’s less than 10 minutes a row). The INKING took 22 minutes per row for the Sunday, 19 minutes per row for two of the dailies, another two dailies took only 15 minutes each, and another two were completed in record-setting 14-minute inking sessions.

That’s 162 minutes of inking for an entire week of Schlock. Powered, at least in part, by three glasses of Nesquik and almost no food (I did have a pair of fried eggs and some toast for breakfast). When I fall off of the low-carb wagon, I leap clear into the ditch, roll into the brush, and then charge into the woods. And usually the consequences are huge emotional lows, no productivity, and Angry Sandra.

–Howard