Why I work with local folks: If you've visited this blog in the past couple of days, you noticed my frustrated posts about having probs with the blog's ability to publish (thanks for writing, Craig Taylor) -- turned out it was an internal problem, which my good friend Jane Wilde at Absolute Computing Solutions absolutely solved by this morning. Jane is working with me to build a brand new website for me and my work (to replace the defunct comicon site, where I've been unable to even update my homepage for months now!), and she's been fantastic. This is all a pretty steep learning curve for this particular Luddite, and thanks to Jane, this blog exists and soon a pretty cool site will, too.

Ever since the demise of The Kingdom (which crashed and burned with all hands on deck not once, but twice), where I hosted a fairly lively discussion board dubbed The Swamp, I've had repeated offers from generous folks (mainly ex-Swamp posters) offering to launch a blog for me. But my frustrations with online environments and long-distance attempts to maintain on online presence (beginning with Edge Marketing and what proved for me a costly and maladroit attempt at a Tyrant site in the mid-1990s) kept me shopping for someone locally to work with -- and bless her, Jane's the one. Thank you, Jane!

So -- Blog problems resolved. Apologies for the speed-bump at the end of my first week, but I'm still getting the hang of this new-fangled gadget.

I'll be doing some edit and damage control on the most recent posts this morning, thanks to Jane's Absolute Solution, and get the multi-chapter ramble (it's not really a proper rant) up and running by this afternoon.