Archive for December, 2008
Off to Denver
I’ll be off to Denver Colorado until Friday. Flobots.org conference this week as well as other Flobotty goodness going down at the dot in the middle of the map. You can follow my trip on my twitter… http://twitter.com/djcoffman
My wife’s first plane rides! Wee! Adventure calls…
Comments are off for this postGreatest Gifts Ever!
My wife got me a complete set of the Jack Kirby Collector so far for Christmas. It has many of the 11×17 issues, and collected trade paperbacks of the original out of print series too. It’s been fun to relax and comb through these and read the interviews and insight from Jack himself and from those who knew him best. It’s simply one of the greatest Jack Kirby gifts you can give a Jack Kirby fan, they are now the prize of my studio.
I warned my wife though that she probably re-cursed me with these. I’m pumped up like I haven’t been for a very long time. Any sludge in my creative gears has been peeled away and my mind won’t shut off now.
I’ve never wanted to draw like Jack Kirby before, or even attempt to get work at Marvel and DC with characters he created– you won’t find me drawing much of that. I do enjoy looking at his work though and soaking in that energy that he has on the page. But most of all, I really wish that I can be a man of his character and integrity. I think I’m learning much more about how to “be” than anything pertaining to the business of comics. And I think that might be an essential step to all things I’m aspiring to.
7 comments2008: A look back at a rollercoaster year
Looking back on 2008….
The scariest thing that happened to me in 2008 was that I nearly lost everything I had built since 2006. My job, my work, my house…. there was a big season of “not fun times.” But I found out who my true friends were during the tough times, and I’m lucky to have a great wife and family here that really helped to push me through some tough times. The full 4000 word blog is beyond the MORE tag…
6 commentsA long winter’s nap
I think I may be shutting down for a few days and just actually ENJOY my holiday. It’s been a rough week with the heating problems, etc.. BUT…. it’s all fixed now (knock on wood)
The furnace problem ended up being something between the tank and the furnace, we figured at first it was leaking in air after doing some tests bypassing the tanks… so they replaced the whole copper line properly, and BAM… it was even quieter than when we first moved in. No more sucking sound. He showed me the old line outside and WOW, it had some crazy buildup on it. Thank god our tanks are in the basement, because if they were outside with that buildup on the line, it would have been some SERIOUS money. — Better part is, no bill today, and not until after the holidays. They want to be sure this is the problem for sure before billing me anything. And then we go to talking a bit about what I do… “what is it you do exactly?”
This is funny, because I don’t really talk about what I do locally. People assume all I do is “comics” or drawing, and that’s fine. But I brought up that I’ve been doing a lot of web consulting lately, and webmastering and webhosting for a few folks. I had even thought about getting ahold of the heating company because I like them, and I thought their website really sucked ass. With very little work they could be the #1 thing that pops up on a search engine in this area when someone needs 24 hour assistance. The tech is going to bring it up to the owner, and maybe we can swap services. That would be sweet. It’s almost like we’ll go back to the old bartering system, and that’s fine by me!
Like I said, I’m looking forward to shutting down and just relaxing and enjoying the holidays. I’ll finish up the Flobots pages probably through January 5 and maybe a few Will Draws but I’ll be taking easy the remaining days of this year.
On December 30th we leave for Denver, headed out to the Flobots.org conference. My wife is really nervous about flying. I try to assure her that she’s much safer flying than she is driving home from work, but it’s not working. It’s my thought that once she goes flying, she’ll realize how it’s nothing and she’ll then want to go more places in the future. I know it’s not a little thing though to her. Overcoming a fear like that can be a HUGE thing. Even facing it head on can be a HUGE accomplishment. You can leave your words of encouragement for her in the blog comments if you like.
I can not speak of Christmas shopping things for fear it would give anything away. I can say that I’ve wrapped like crazy the past two days though. UGH, what a mindless activity. I can’t wait to see the kid’s faces. It use to be you’d look forward to getting stuff on Christmas, but when you’re a parent, or at least for me, I now look forward to seeing the kids react to their presents. Things they never thought they would get in a 100 years. I remember that feeling of awe when i was kid… somewhere that sinks away when you grow up, but you taste it again when you have kids of your own. In some ways it’s even BETTER. It truly is about GIVING and not receiving. Wow, that can sound kinda odd if you’re in an ornery mood like I am.
I’m trying to get my mindset in a RIGHT place for the coming year. I think I’m already there. I’ve been thinking about a lot of metaphysical things lately (because its fun and dorky to do) and I can honestly say for the first time in a long long time I feel like I don’t have any “enemies” or people that I wish harm to in anyway. There is no person on this planet that I would like to see fail at something. I want to get back to just encouraging people, even people who don’t like me or haven’t in the past. You’ll find too that when you focus on thoughts like that, all the negative people in your life seem to just… disappear.
My eyes are heavy. Not much sleep this week…. time for a winter nap…
3 commentsThings I drew this year… 2009
This has been a WEIRD year. This week I’m going to recap all the things I’ve drawn this year. Since starting the Will Draw Anything project, I now have done 600 quick drawings, and with about 400 more to do in the order line. Here are some of the tags of things I’ve drawn…
Before Coffee: A Hilarious tale of the Deacon.
I’ve been up since 3am, but I spare the complaining about my oil furnace going out on one of the coldest nights of the year. I stayed up to cycle the heat off and on manually to keep the family warm. In a bit, I’m going to give the heating company ONE last try to come and fix the problem, and if they can’t adjust it or figure it out, I’m going to go with another company I guess. I woke up pissed, and pretty well sure I was going to call another place that says it has over 25 years family owned experience in our area…. but I do like our heating guys, and they seem to be pretty thorough in the past. I guess it could very well be that it was just SO cold out overnight that the safety kill switch came on because of the furnace running too long and heating up.
It’s 4 degrees outside, and with the windchill warning in effect, I guess it can drop to about 10-20 below. An actualy frostbite and hypothermia warning! And the kids have a 2 hour delay because of the cold. I can’t complain about this too much, because when I weigh all the things or all my friends who live in warmer climates… I guess I’d rather have COLD than firestorms or hurricanes. I did enjoy living in Southern California, but I often times missed the seasons actually changing. You begin to feel a bit removed from “reality” or sheltered from the way the actual world works. I guess this would explain Hollywood nutjob movie moguls who rant on about the environment, but who all fly private jets to dinner. No kidding.
Now for a hilarious story…. first the somewhat depressing lead in…
Friends and fans or mine are probably aware of MY DAD and his adventures. I wrote about some of them in ORIGIN. – Well my dear Dad called yesterday evening for a chat. Somehow we got onto the conversation about the other side of my family, whom don’t seem to bother with me much– to my Dad, he feels bad about this and wishes things to be different, but I told him that none of that is his fault, they’re just self absorbed dicks for the most part. And they probably got that way because they were raised by my mother much longer than I was (i went with my Dad when I was 5) — These conversations always lead to the sad fact that my biological mother drank herself to death with vodka and chased it down with a bottle of anti-freeze. I also drew that story as well if you’re interested. — Now, I’m not sad about that, but my Dad always apologizes like it’s his fault or he wishes things would have been different. I cheer him up by making light of this fact, but I tell him that I agree that this is ONLY sad if anyone does this sort of thing at all. Suicide in general is just, DUMB to me, and it’s SAD. In general. I assure my Dad, and the rest of the public, that I am not emotionally torn up about this sad fact of my mother’s ending. The fact is, she was only my biological mother and I just was not attached in anyway. My stepmother Mary, even though we didn’t get along so well in my teen years, was for all intents and purposes my “MOM” and I called her that without hesitation and never once would exclaim her to be “step” —— The more I learned about my biological mother from people she knew, the more crazy whacked I believed her to be. And with that lead in…
THIS is the HILARIOUS story….
My biological mother was part of the Mormon church! I did not know this. At least according to my father she had joined the church on a “whim” when they were first together. She actually MADE my Dad sign up for the church as well before I was born. I wonder… how do you just “sign up” for a church. Anyways, my Dad said they never really WENT to church regularly. This was one of those “WHACKED” type stories I’d hear… remember my Mom also thought she was a witch, reincarnated and a matter of other bullshit things. Chances are she went to this church working an angle of some sort, not really for belief purposes, and you could hear that in the tone of my Dad’s voice in telling me this story. Anyways, when I was born, they didn’t take me to the church to baptise me as a proper Mormon or whatever…. so my Dad says the Mormons actually showed up at our doorstep on Chestnut street in Scottdale trying to take me as an infant, saying that I belonged to the church??? My Dad says the situation was totally WHACKED. This group of people came to just…. well… kidnap me. My Dad warned the fellow not to come any closer to the porch but the Mormon fellow insisted saying they HAD to take me… and My Dad cold knocked the dude out on the spot.
My father was then ex-communicated from the Mormon religion on the spot. On the phone he’s laughing, and can barely keep it together, and he’s cackling something… “they even sent me a letter!” – he says, informing him that he was no longer a member of the church.
So, My Dad saved me from being stolen by crazy Mormons. Now i’m totally curious to find out if this is something that is done regularly as some ritual or something… maybe they just wanted to baptise me by force? Either way, my Dad laughs now, but he tells me on the phone that at that moment it wasn’t funny, these dudes who showed up were dead serious about taking me away… little did they know they were about to tango with the legendary DEACON.
This also makes me want to go right to the drawing board and illustrate this tale…. but alas, for another day!
8am has arrived. It’s back to heating my home manually. Perhaps I should install hamster wheels or something down there?
9 commentsTGIF? I’m ready for a new week…
What a week. We’ve had on and off problems with the oil furnace, as I’ve been mentioning. Nobody seems to know really what is causing the thing to cut out, and just about ALL avenues have been explored. The heating fellows said they’d be back here today to try changing the nozzles to a smaller nozzle… but instead, this is how my glorious day went….
4am. I woke up in bed with a COLD hand hanging off the side of the bed. I dread this feeling when I wake up because I know it means something is up with the heat. Sho Nuff, the “red light of doom” was back on. Basically that’s a failsafe mechanism that kicks on when… well, when the motor gets too hot, or various other things which nobody knows, but it obviously does it whenever we’ve been having this weird “vaccuum like” thing happening in the flame, where it will sort of make the flame “huff” out for a brief moment, and or eventurally it will just not be a flame at all…… So I decided to stay awake and hit the switch every half hour or so, let it cook a flame and blow some warm air to keep my family warm upstairs– Did this maybe 3 times total from 4am to 8am I’m guessing…… and then…
It seemed like the heater was staying on! Cycling on and off kinda weird, but definitely working and sucking oil fine and burning it up…. JUST as I’m walking to my basment for one more lookover and seal of approval that it’s working….. BAM…. my foot hits the first step to my basement and the power goes out. 8:05am…. I immediately think it has something to do with the furnace, but quickly find out that the whole town is out of power.
This happened just as I shipped the kids off to school, so I figured, hell, I’ll go buy some cement and stuff to reseal the flue pipe that goes into the chimney, and maybe do a little Xmas shopping. That plan was cut pretty short by a call from my wife telling me that school was sending my oldest son back home… so it was mad dash back home to make it in time for his bus. It’s funny watching a kid who loves video games and tvs and Nintendo DS sort of wig out with nothing to do but play with action figures… I know the feeling, suddenly someone who is “ON” most all the time had been unplugged. No Cintq drawing or photoshop magic for me today.
I chose to use my time wisely and re-weatherize the windows upstairs that our cat had shredded. I re-cemented the flue pipe downstairs, and figured, heck, maybe I’ll take a NAP! Around 2pm as my head hit the pillow to rest, I heard the answering machine downstairs declare…. “PLEASE HIT MENU TO RECEIVE SETUP INSTRUCTIONS.” — and I knew the power was back on. Hooray.
I went back to fiddling with the heater. It kicked off on me ONCE…. but now has been on since and heated the house back up to a toasty level. I don’t trust it though, I’m almost positive it’ll go out tonight. But at least I know it’s not the end of the world. Never heard from the heating guys, although the one tech guy we know who coaches football did tell us he wasn’t able to make it today because he was on call with an elderly couple who had NO heat. I figured someone else would call or show up to check in, but nothing. Maybe I’ll get lucky and it’ll just stay on.
Seems to have worked so far since I’ve been writing this blog. Fingers crossed! Knock on wood and all that.
3 commentsBefore Coffee: I’m like a Furnace MacGyver
I know nothing about motors or mechanical devices like my oil furnace… but the tech guy did get it to work through last night and burn steady… however there is this mystery as to why the flame keeps puffing, and sometimes puffs out, and they went through EVERYTHING in the book and it left this guy and anothe tech scratching their heads… they’re coming back friday, both of them to assess it and try to fix this totally so we don’t keep having this problem.
Well, today I decided to go down and inspect, make sure there wasn’t any oil leaking or puddling or something crazy, make sure the red light of doom wasn’t coming on… and I hear the puffing occassionally… and I just sat and listened. I heard this little tiny rattling that didn’t sound familiar…. I followed it… to the humidifier unit mounted to the side of the furnace. I popped the flashlight on the vent pipe and noticed a lever I had never noticed before straight up (closed) and the words “winter” on it where you should put it for “winter” — so, ever since we have lived here, that fucking vent from the humidifier into the furnace has been closed off, even when the humidifier was on….. now I don’t know if this was the problem, and I’m about to talk out of my ass here, but it’s possible if that vent was closed and that humidifier was trying to blow air into wherever but could not, that it was creating some sort of suction on something which might have been causing the mysterious “puffs” — We’ll see I guess.
New Flobots comic page up. I’m out to hit the town with my lady and do some shopping. My alarm clock also died last night. I’ve had that same alarm clock since Freshman year in high school and it’s just traveled with me since through my bachelor days and to my married days. RIP, PHILCO red LED digital alarm clock with FM/AM radio. You woke me well through the years.
2 commentsA cold tuesday morning in December…
Woke up at 4am, the good old dog had to use the bathroom, but he might have been alerting me to something else? As I passed the thermostat I noticed that it was set on 71, but the current temp was 69. UGH… I went downstairs to confirm the dreaded “red light” on the motor. Last time this happened we were low oil, and another time it happened we had clogged nozzels or dirty filter. This time though there’s plenty of oil in the tank (at leas there’d better be!!! I put a safety marker on my measuring stick last year when we had this problem, and I’m well above that safety zone… also, to make matters even more fantastically awesome, my phone and internet were down. (luckily that was back up by 8am)
I do have to say that our heating guys are friendly though, and they always come out and do a good job of fixing us up FAST. They really need a better website though, I should talk to the owner about that, he seems like a great guy who cares about his business. Imagine what small companies like that could do to their bottom line if they put a little more into their web presence. He could OWN search results in our area if he had a regular news blog or service update, email mailing list to alert folks to check their oil levels and make sure their filters are clean. Maybe even little videos of the service tech guys coming to a house and the care they take, or video customer testimonials…. I mean, we used this company on a whim when we first had a problem, and it was their service that made us go back to them when we wanted to install central air conditioning… but I remember that they weren’t the first people I called, they were just the first to get back to me in a pinch. Thats how you get my money! Hah! — Anyways, it’s interesting to think about what small companies in a local area could do with a little REAL web consulting. Not just service places, but even small restaurants or pizza joints. Imagine being able to order a pizza through PAYPAL, and then the kitchen’s email address is set to BING when an order comes in with the people’s address and phone number? I know, bad example… but it IS a good example of what a small place could do if they put their mind to it. If someone had advertisements that you could “ORDER BY EMAIL!” — what if you could twitter your lunch order to like @tonyspizza, and when they see who the @ is from, they know that a certain business needs that order. Kinda neat to think about the convenience of that sort of thing.
Here’s something kinda crappy and unethical… I found out over the weekend that some work I had done and invoiced for a long time ago, and I was never paid for has been used to help sell other people’s stuff. Isn’t that great!? Basically I was approached with a set budget to work on some educational type comics, and it was a rush job. I delivered, and then some! But the invoice sat… and sat… and I’d inquire and get the run around, and finally way back in January I was told that this was “spec” work, where if the client didn’t pay said person, I couldn’t get paid. I let it go and wrote this off as a BURN on my time, and i wasn’t very happy. But fast forward to NOW and I find out that the visuals of that work have been used as an “example” or a lead in to sell not only educational comics that this person has developed on his own, and to aid in selling mascots to sports teams or something? — Well, I’m hoping the matter gets settled or I hear something back about this. I’m not happy about my work being used to “lead in” anything that I wasn’t paid for. These kind of actions are just sleazy, and happen all too often. A slick talking huckster telling you what you want to here, even telling you to invoice and RUSH… then nothing…. then time passes and he gets paid and you don’t? Homey don’t play that. Hopefully the money is coughed up now though and it won’t have to become some sort of public matter on the blog here dragging anyone’s name through the mud.
I’ve made it my GOAL in coming years to never work for these types of people ever again.
Well, my office is still warm (for now), and there’s a ton of work to get moving on…
Comments are off for this postBefore Coffee: New Comics, New Jobs and Dinosaur Bones
A happy Monday morning…. woop, it’s afternoon!
The new Flobots comic launched today. Let’s call it the non-beta launch, because this one is a new direction and will update full pages Mon-Wed-Fri. First page and a blog is up over at flobots.net
My hot nurse wife… My wife started her new job today, which is only 3 minutes from our house! This equals her not being like a zombie working overnight shifts. She’s an LPN, and she liked working at a “facility” even though it was a lot more work for less pay. She was most happiest when she worked “agency” and was like a commando mercenary sent in to do the job. More money, less work… BUT… she was really heartbroken a couple years ago when “RED”, one of he patients who had Lou Gehrig’s disease passed away, and she’s been reluctant to go back to personal home care since then. – I tell her all the time though, that she’s unique because she cares so much about the people she’s looking after. SURE she gets attached, and it’s sad if anyone passes away… but Wow, if I had something wrong with me, or one of my kids I’d want someone like my wife there to see after them. I’ve seen a lot of really CRAPPY nurses who just come in and lay down the work and move on, and they don’t “care”. — I was a little pissed off a few weeks ago when the “facility” boss scolded my wife for taking a night off because of a REAL family emergency she had to deal with. The lady told my wife “This isn’t a McDonalds job where you can just come and go as you please.” — and that really got under my wife’s skin. Meanwhile, she could never leave that job on time because other nurses took their sweet ol’ time to relieve her. She was the dog gone Validictorian of her class, and she’s like a walking medical encyclopedia. Yeah, she’s hot AND has a brain too. That is a deadly combination, fellas. Anyways, I’m proud of my wife. She texting me from the new job and said things were going “Good, real good! 
)- This makes me happy because she’s been dealing with horseshit from all over in her life (except here!) and she deserves good things, and not having to walk around like a zombie with no sleep…
OIL… thank god the price of oil went down. We’re in need of home heating oil here soon and I just called and couldn’t believe it was only 300 something as oppossed to 800 or 900 something this time. Yee hah!
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