webdisaster.net

Greetings, my two loyal readers! It's been a while since we last spoke. How are you? Great. Your family doing okay? Yeah, that's super. What do you think about this crazy weather? Yeah, I know, these tornados are really starting to scare the crap out of me! How's the job? Hm... yeah, that sucks.

So anyway, you're probably wondering where I've been and what happened to webdisaster.

Well, I'm kind of in what you call a transition period.

My lovely fiancée Kimberly and I are getting married on July 22, which is pretty awesome. So we've been keeping busy doing everything that everyone tells us we need to be doing; hiring a DJ, getting a photographer, securing a place for the ceremony and reception; shopping for flowers, getting dresses and tuxes, and on and on. And if you ask my future mother-in-law, we're not doing it nearly fast enough. I'm really pumped about getting married. I know it's not all going to be roses and sunshine, but Kim and I have been through a lot together and I know she's a really good girl and really good for me. That being said, I really wish we didn't have to plan a wedding. We're pretty disorganized people and it's hard to keep track of what needs to be done when.

In addition, three sets of close friends are getting married in the next three months. Apparently there's some kind of marriage bug going around. So we've got a few bachelor/bachelorette parties, showers, receptions and ceremonies to attend, which should make for a busy but happily intoxicated summer.

On top of that, we're going to go to Tokyo for a week on our honeymoon. I can't tell you how excited I am at the prospect of finally going to the country that gave birth to samurai, ninjas, giant robots, and Nintendo. I've been listening to Japanese books on CD in my car every day for the last couple of weeks. So for 10 minutes four times a day on my drive to work and back, I've been practicing my watashiwas and anatawas. We've also been trying to research as much as possible on the country and culture, because I'm sure it will be difficult to navigate. Plus we have to apply for passports and try to take care of everything for the trip at the same time we're trying to plan the wedding.

Not only that, but somewhere along the line my job got really stressful. I'm not sure what happened exactly, but somebody must have thrown the switch from 'smooth sailing' to 'hit the fan' a couple of weeks back. So now I'm bringing home books on color theory and flexo press reproduction because apparently 'Tech Services Project Coordinator' means 'He Who Makes Sure All of the Photos in the Newspaper Look Good,' which I apparently can't do very well. It's hard to tell whether my job got really hard or I just suck at it.

So anyway, you get the idea. I've been busy.

And up until about 3 weeks ago, I was also addicted to World of Warcraft. I didn't play as often as a lot of people do, but I spent a lot of time thinking about it. And anytime I got on the computer, even if I fully intended to post an article on the site, I found myself killing trolls instead. So webdisaster fell into disrepair. Months went by without a single posting. Every now and then a loyal reader or two would post an article out of pity or respond to a month-old post on the messageboard. God bless them for trying, but everyone could see that the beast needed put out of its misery. Phil G suggested to me that I write an article entitled "The Rise and Fall of Wedisaster.net", which he then decided should be more aptly named "The Slow Fall and Subsequent Faster Fall of Webdisaster.net." I laughed. On the outside.

So anyway, at some point I decided that I should just take webdisaster down. It wasn't doing anyone any good anyway, and I had some ideas that I thought might make it a little more interesting. I thought that if it was totally down, I would feel more obligated to work on it. I also thought more than one person would notice its absence, so there are two things I had wrong. But on March 18, webdisaster.net came down and was replaced with nothing but the logo. Then a couple of weeks after that I quit playing Warcraft. Todd told me he was trying to explain to someone why I quit WoW, and he said something like 'Scott does this every year or so. He quits doing whatever he's doing and tries to concentrate on drawing. But then he doesn't draw, and then he finds something else to do.' I think he got it about right. Welcome to the latest in a string of creative enterprises I will inevitably abandon.

So for the last few weeks I've been trying to think about what I'm going to do with this thing. I like comics and cartoons, but it's becoming painfully clear that I don't have the patience and discipline it takes to do them. I also like web design, programming, and flash animation, so I think a good mix of all of them should keep me productive, right?

My idea is that I'll try to do one update each week, although since I'm busy and a notorious quitter, expect those weekly updates considerably less than weekly. Each update will contain whatever I want it to that week. It could be comics, an article with illustrations, flash animation, pictures from the wedding or from Tokyo, it could be purely a page design, and it could be desktop wallpaper. I'm going to play with the site and see what I can make it do. I hope it's interesting, but let's face it; you probably stopped reading long ago. If not, I highly suggest you seek professional help.