You’re no good to us, eggplant mike

The MobilePro crisis has been rectified as best it can be. (I’m writing this entry on it right now, in fact.) It took about 3 hours of
concentrated work to restore what there was to restore – wireless card drivers, various pits and pieces of software, restoring stuff from backups, and putting my Okudagram wallpaper back where it belongs. (Nothing says “this isn’t really a slightly outdated, pre-Palm Pilot handheld PC from 2000, this is a computer from THE FUTURE!” like Okudagram wallpaper.) Can’t replace the articles-in-progress file that I lost though.
I just paid a visit to Spamusement, still my favorite web comic despite Steven F.’s prolonged absence. (Hey, he just got married. I’d find better things to do than update a website too.) Not only are there a few new comics with his Far Side-meets-inbred-inbox-invaders patented style, but there’s also a line at the top of the page proclaiming NEW: NOT AS GOOD AS IT USED TO BE!
Sad thing is, I know how the intarweb works. I don’t doubt that he’s got a bunch of people actually e-mailing him to tell him that. Figures. It’s way too easy to get critical when the guy stops amusing you on command. Homestar Runner took a similar breather for much of the spring this year; I admit to being enough of a Homestar junkie that it took me about three weeks to realize that they were out to lunch until further notice. When that break stretched into two-month territory, my first thoughts were not “damn, Homestar Runner sucks now!” My first thoughts were: I hope the guys are okay. Second thought: I hope they’re not getting too much hate mail for this.
Given that Spamusement is seriously underground compared to Homestar, and Steven F. has apparently taken a beating via e-mail from something other than spambots, I can only imagine what kind of treatment the Chapman Brothers were getting.
Y’know, there are honestly times when I’d love to hit the pause button on this site for a bit; with frantic work going on in the background to transfer the site’s contents into database form, I’ve gotta say it’s really tempting to think about a vacation. But part of me kinda needs that deadline in my life, once a week (as if I don’t get enough deadlines at work every night), to give some small semblance of purpose to my life.
That, and I don’t want a bunch of hate mail that sounds like I just reviewed Cube and still didn’t like it.
Homestar, Spamusement and theLogBook all have one thing in common – they were projects that started out because some crazy nut had an entertaining idea they thought they’d share with you. That there was a way to actually “monetize” that (now there’s a made-up word that I hate) was just a happy accident. So think twice before lobbing a big ball of disgruntlement at your friendly neighborhood webmaster. Even Hollywood goes into reruns. Taking a break and regrouping your creative energies is the difference between a little vacation and hanging it up for good.
I sure hope everyone goes easy on me if I should ever take that break. Though if my site can be as “not as good” as Spamusement, that’s good company indeed.