Thanks to a ton of help from a friend of mine, the NewNew Computer is finished and running. NewNew Computer is filled with magic and joy and awesomes. Everything works better and moves faster without any freezes, stutters, greasy buildup or burning sensations. My brain is still telling me, “Hurry up and do this before the computer freezes! Hurry! FFFFFFFFFFFFFF!!!” because that’s the kind of panic-slathered fun I’ve had with the NewOld Computer. But NewOld is old news and NewNew is new news. While it’s too late to make the ScrollBoss 9th Anniversary the big to-do that I wanted it to be, it’s really early for the 10th anniversary and it’s just in time for what’s about to start September 9th. What’s that? You’ll see next month.

I was going through parts of this blog as I fix some things with the template and I decided to check out the older ScrollBoss Anniversary posts. It wasn’t until I looked at the 8th ScrollBoss Anniversary post that I remembered how plans for a big update were brutally murdered by computer problems much like they were this year. Thanks to a good friend of mine who helped me out by getting a bunch of the bigger parts of it, I’ll have yet another new system some time this month. Thanks to a sale at Newegg.com, I was able to buy a new hard drive that has more space than all my old hard drives put together but was cheaper than any of them (not counting the 20 GB drive that came with my 1st computer). Hopefully the whole shebang will be put together next week. Sorry for not being as productive as I used to be and I hope that upgrading from “the NewOld computer” to the “NewNew” computer will let me annoy you with more of my lame creations than every before.

(from this post)

Overheard at San Diego Comic-Con while I was having lunch on the balcony of the Convention Center on Sunday July 27: a bunch of guys looking at the digital photos on the camera of another, while he narrated: “These were the Ghostbusters girls. That one, I grabbed her ass, ’cause I wanted to see what her reaction was.” This was only one example of several instances of harassment, stalking or assault that I saw at San Diego this time.

1. One of my friends was working at a con booth selling books. She was stalked by a man who came to her booth several times, pestering her to get together for a date that night. One of her co-workers chased him off the final time.

2. On Friday, just before the show closed, this same woman was closing up her tables when a group of four men came to her booth, started taking photographs of her, telling her she was the “prettiest girl at the con.” They they entered the booth, started hugging and kissing her and taking photographs of themselves doing so. She was confused and scared, but they left quickly after doing that.

3. Another friend of mine, a woman running her own booth: on Friday a man came to her booth and openly criticized her drawing ability and sense of design. Reports from others in the same section of the floor confirmed he’d targeted several women with the same sort of abuse and criticism.

Quite simply, this behavior has got to stop at Comic-Con. It should never be a sort of place where anyone, man or woman, feels unsafe or attacked either verbally or physically in any shape or form. There are those, sadly, who get off on this sort of behavior and assault, whether it’s to professional booth models, cosplayers or costumed women, or women who are just there to work. This is not acceptable behavior under any circumstance, no matter what you look like or how you’re dressed, whether you are in a Princess Leia slave girl outfit or business casual for running your booth.

On Saturday, the day after the second event I described above, I pulled out my convention book to investigate what you can do and who you can speak to after such an occurrence. On page two of the book there is a large grey box outlining “Convention Policies,” which contain rules against smoking, live animals, wheeled handcarts, recording at video presentations, drawing or aiming your replica weapon, and giving your badge to others. There is nothing about attendee-to-attendee personal behavior.

Page three of the book contains a “Where Is It?” guide to specific Comic-Con events and services. There’s no general information room or desk listed, nor is there a contact location for security, so I go to the Guest Relations Desk. I speak to a volunteer manning the desk; she’s sympathetic to the situation but who doesn’t have a clear answer to my question: “What’s Comic-Con’s policy and method of dealing with complaints about harassment?” She directs me to the nearest security guard, who is also sympathetic listening to my reports, but short of the women wanting to report the incidents with the names of their harassers, there’s little that can be done.

“I understand that,” I tell them both, “but what I’m asking is more hypothetical and informational: if there is a set Comic-Con policy on harassment and physical and verbal abuse on Con attendees and exhibitors, and if so, what’s the specific procedure by which someone should report it, and specifically where should they go?” But this wasn’t a question either could answer.

So, according to published con policy, there is no tolerance for smoking, drawn weapons, personal pages or selling bootleg videos on the floor, and these rules are written down in black and white in the con booklet. There is not a word in the written rules about harassment or the like. I would like to see something like “Comic-Con has zero tolerance for harassment or violence against any of our attendees or exhibitors. Please report instances to a security guard or the Con Office in room XXX.”

The first step to preventing such harassment is giving its victims the knowledge that they can safely and swiftly report such instances to someone in authority. Having no published guideline, and indeed being unable to give a clear answer to questions about it, gives harassment and violence one more rep-tape loophole to hide behind.

I enjoyed Comic-Con. I’m looking forward to coming back next year. So, in fact, are the two women whose experiences I’ve retold above. Aside from those instances, they had a good time at the show. But those instances of harassment shouldn’t have happened at all, and that they did under no clear-cut instructions about what to do sadly invites the continuation of such behavior, or even worse.

I don’t understand why there’s no such written policy about what is not tolerated and what to do when this happens. Is there anyone at Comic-Con able to explain this? Does a similar written policy exist in the booklets for other conventions (SF, comics or otherwise) that could be used as a model? Can it be adapted or adapted, and enforced, for Comic-Con? As the leading event of the comics and pop culture world, Comic-Con should work to make everyone who attends feel comfortable and safe.

I’ve never been to the SDCC, but the other cons that I’ve been to always seemed like a chance for different types of people to hang out without having to put up with any harsh nonsense. Whether she’s wearing regular street clothing or dressed like a comic character, women and girls should be able to comfortably enjoy themselves at a convention as much as we guys can. From now on, we need to keep a sharper eye out for stuff like this and keep it from happening and alert security when it does. If some sickos were doing the same to somebody’s kid, would you just stand by and let it happen? I hope not. Don’t let it happen to female con goers either.

My original computer stopped working in late May. I’m currently using a used computer that a friend hooked me up with. There are a few problems that I still need to work out with this.

1.) Everything that I was working on is trapped on the hard drives of the old computer which won’t power up now. My backup CDs are pretty out of date (most seem to be Nov. 2007) and I can’t even find all the backups now. The HD enclosure I ordered from TechSunny is on the way and it will (hopefully) let me pull the stuff off the old hard drives. If I was working on something for you recently, it’s probably trapped on one of those two drives. Oddly enough, I just started making back-ups of stuff and started with things I planned to delete to make HD space for some video captures. So I have backups of useless stuff!

2.) Here’s the the current big issue: freezes. This computer freezes at random times and doesn’t start back up unless I restart the machine. It froze twice this afternoon within the span of 3 1/2 hours but sometimes I can go hours with no problems. There are times that I forgot to retype and send messages that were lost after having to restart the system. If you’re wondering why most of my responses to everything are so short, this is why. I’m trying to work this out myself before asking for help. Of course, this is slowing down any computer-based work.

I’m sorry for the delays on everything and I’ll add new posts in the NewOld Computer category to keep you updated on this.

It was a regular workday on the 12th so I have to celebrate tonight. I’m going to watch two films that I’ve never seen before: National Lampoon’s Movie Madness and the Shaw Brothers classic kung-fu film Come Drink With Me. Movie Madness may turn out to be bad, but the Shaw Bros. flick is said to be one of the best in the genre. I’ll probably get some video gaming in, too. There is only one meal worthy of such a night. That’s right: Pizza and Root Beer.

The Boodocks season 2 DVD set is out and Newsarama’s Steve Fritz did his usual job of writing a good review of things that he knows about. He mentions in one of the commentaries mentions someone that comic fans have been bugging him about for years: Caesar. Yes, Caesar. For those who don’t know, Michael Caesar rolled into the Boondocks comic strip later into the run, hung out with Huey, and just tried to get the poor dude to lighten up a bit. They formed an unstoppable tag-team that fought injustice, tried to get Condoleezza Rice a man and hosted “the Most Embarrassing Black People of the Year Award” ceremonies. Word has it that they are waiting for the right time and voice actress to bring Caesar to life. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that Brooklyn’s favorite son gets his chance to shine in animated form.

Besides current problems with sound and my scanner, nearly everything else works. One big thing is adjusting to Windows XP after years of using Windows ME. Just about everything I installed worked nicely and I can now run stuff that wouldn’t work for W-ME. The first one that I ran to was the Lego Digital Designer and I’ll probably get that Amazon.com MP3 Album thing once I can hear things on this system. I’ll have to set up DosBox to use a lot of my favorite programs (M.U.G.E.N. tools) and emulators (Genecyst and NESticle for graphic-extracting purposes).

My sites won’t have any big updates until I get the data off the old computer. There isn’t much of a reason to update Illmosis until I can scan artwork again and there are a lot of bits on ScrollBoss that were only on my old hard drive. Plus, I want to wait until everything is stable before installing the Apache and PHP programs that let me test out all those funky PHP features. Of course, all Works-in-progress are on hold until I can pull them off the old PC. The irony is that I finally started making data backups but started with unnecessary stuff so I could delete it to make room for raw video captures. S-M-R-T.

Anyway, I apologize to anyone that I’m doing work for and I’ll try to get things back on track as soon as possible.

Work: Started working a third cleaning account two weeks ago but I’ll be back down to two next week unless more sudden news pops up.

Hands: Right hand still has a clickly middle finger and is at 90% and the left hovers between 50% and 80%. Good enough to draw without pain. Progress slowed down by working three accounts instead of two.

Ear vs. Steak Knife: The steak knife is gone for now but I still have some throat pain and a buzzy headache. Progress slowed down by working three accounts instead of two.

Legs & Spine: Not really getting better since having to move during the crappiest week this winter. All these aches may worse thanks to the Ear vs. Steak Knife virus/allergies/whatever-the-butt-it-is. I spent part of last weekend walking with a cane but was still faster than most people walking through Wal-Mart. Progress slowed down by working three accounts instead of two.

Illmosis site comic design: Most this week’s free time went into writing a comic script/template/page design for the site that works like my galleries do. You can see a poot-butt preview version of it by clicking that link. For now, it only needs to be just good enough for the upcoming Nutroll:the Illness including redrawn panels. Guess what? Progress slowed down by working three accounts instead of two and aching hands that hurt when typing.

Sorry for not being around on the internet too much lately. I’ll try to post some good news, fun stuff and reviews once I get the chance.

• a pain like Sonny Chiba punched me in the throat hard enough to make my neck explode in slow motion.
• my head being inflated by the guy from Dig Dug but not enough to explode because he had to turn around and pump up a Pooka that was sneaking up on him.
• the feeling that someone tripping off Angel Dust is feverishly rattling a steak knife around inside my right ear as if there’s still some peanut butter stuck in the corners and grooves.
• that time Monday night when I coughed up Slimer from the Real Ghostbusters cartoon.

If you know me from anywhere else, I apologize for not posting much and for how my posts are more garbled than usual.