As I lamented on Twitter, designing convention banners is like building a ten-foot-tall book cover out of other book covers and ego.
Here, then, is the result:
If you’re at GenCon Indy, a couple of weeks from now, you can find me in front of this, and between Jim Zub and Tracy Hickman.
I blogged about the final round of the easily-spoofed Washington Post poll, and I made a mistake. I mentioned that it was easily spoofed.
This was not meant as encouragement to spoof, but apparently it was taken as such. For this I am sorry.
You see, when I blogged at 9:15pm local time, Schlock Mercenary had around 120 votes. Three hours later Schlock had 211,000. That, for those who are interested in this sort of thing, is more unique IP addresses than hit my own website in the course of an entire month. I don’t for one minute believe that more than 1,000 of those votes are legitimate. And by curious coincidence, during the one minute for which I’m not believing, about another 1,000 votes arrived.
I’m embarrassed and saddened. It’s much more fun to mock an easy-to-rig popularity contest when it’s not one of your own fans doing the rigging. You see, now if tens of thousands of Penny Arcade fans visit the poll (and they will) they will associate “Schlock Mercenary” with dishonesty.
Whoever you are, mister or missus Inappropriate Expressor of Enthusiasm, you are damaging my name with your antics. Worse still, you are making all of the smart, discerning, tastefully dressed, and bewitchingly attractive Schlock Mercenary fans look dingy and disreputable.
Shame on you.
Today I celebrate the 2nd anniversary of “doing it full-time.” On Monday, September 20th of 2004 I resigned from my position at Novell, came home to my home office, and wondered how I was going to be able to make it work.
I didn’t really figure it out until May of 2006. There were some really rough patches in there – particularly July of 2005, when Ad revenues were in the toilet, commission work had dried up, and we had to pay bills using a home improvement loan. And then there was the $100 Christmas.
Sandra was there for me (and I was there for her) throughout all of it, and I could not have done it without her. Of course, without her it would not have been worth doing at all.
It wouldn’t have been possible without you readers and fans, either. Thank you, everybody.
–Howard
ps. I’m celebrating by scripting, pencilling, and inking an entire week. I’d probably better get started.
Okay, the buffer dropped to 16, but the migraine appears to have vanished. I think this means that I’ll be able to get my proverbial game on. Thanks for all the nice migraine advice. Here’s hoping I won’t need it.
This evening, barring unforseens (like the return of the migraine, may it never be so), I’ll be drawing the last of the CSI parody strips, and diving into the next storyline.
In the spirit of teasing you, I’ll say one word about what’s coming next:
“Kreelies.”
–Howard