May 01, 2002
It's vacation time!As of this writing the mini-van is packed, the route is plotted, and the kids are hollering that they want to be at Grandma's house RIGHT NOW. If everything goes according to plan, we'll hit the road around 5am local time, and arrive in the Bay area at around 3pm (after 11 long hours together). We'll be grumpy, cramped, and ready for Grandma to entertain us.
This year's family reunion is NOT being hosted at my house (hence the road-trip), and is coinciding with a wedding. It's gonna be a busy week. Calling it a vacation is probably inaccurate. Still, I won't be working for Novell, nor will I be actively cranking out Schlock Mercenary. Oh, I'm bringing my drawing stuff, and I'll probably generate a few scripts while I'm gone, but the buffer stands at around 27 days right now, so I should be able to comfortably travel and NOT worry about the updates.
You may have noticed the giant banner ads across the top of the site. These are a sign of the times, folks. I know you hate pop-ups and drop-unders and things with flash menus (ironic that attorneys would be advertising on Schlock Mercenary, but there you go), but ad revenue is what pays for my bandwidth, and lately we've had to accept terms that would have been unconscionable a year ago.
Am I selling out? Well, yeah. What do you expect from a site with "mercenary" right in the domain name? Still, if the ads make you sick, and you want to go to Keenspot PREMIUM, before too much longer I'll be throwing additional content out there for subscribers only.
Don't worry. The strip, the archives, the footnotes, the forums, and the entrys will continue to be free. Most of what's going in the Premium area will be concept art and some more personal notes about the creation of the strip. You know, stuff like you'd find on the bonus disc in a DVD box, only without the clunky, poorly-rendered menus.
For now, though, I'm going on vacation. Be good while I'm gone.