September 01, 2001

The unthinkable has happened. The monitor attached to the computer I use to scan Schlock Mercenary gasped its last breath, and I could no longer use it.

You see, it's an old Power Macintosh clone from Umax, and I while I do have an extra monitor, I don't have one of those wigged-out little adapter thingies to make it work on a Mac. Or if I do, I can't find it.

But don't panic. Even though I feel a wee bit of angst as I kiss my old pseudo-mac goodbye, and move 100% into the world of Windows, this is not the end of the world. My Dell has a SCSI card in it, and my ancient (but TRUSTY) HP Scanjet 4p is running fine attached to a different species of personal computer. In fact, since the bus on my PC is faster than the bus on my Mac, the scanner no longer has to pause in order to let the computer catch up with it.

The biggest problem I face is finding a spot on THIS side of the room for a great, big, 9"x14" scanner. And I hate moving furniture more than I hate troubleshooting broken computers. So much so, in fact, that I'd willingly trade the broken computer away to someone who would come by and re-arrange my office according to my instructions.

Don't everybody volunteer at once.

In other news, I'm looking forward to the long weekend. Twice this week at work my boss came down on me for being a bit too blunt with co-workers and making everyone uncomfortable. Sheesh... you'd think I was getting all the hostility out of my system with this whole random-acts-of-violence comic strip I'm running, but apparently I'm not. So I'm going to stay home over the holiday weekend and kill me some bad guys. I'm scripting my way into October now, and the October story promises LOTS of killing. Think "Schlocktoberfest."

Finally, my sincere apologies go out to Dan "Simon Jester" Frioli of The Crudely Drawn Adventures of Kan Kong, who is a wee bit upset at me for giving away the ending of The Lord of the Rings in my last open letter. Sorry, Dan. (But hey... that'll learn ya not to read so slowly, now won't it, pokey eyes?)