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Closing Windows

technology2 I don’t drink alcohol, but it is going to be hard to resist the urge to raise a glass of something on April 8, 2014. That particular Tuesday is going to be a special day for many of my fellow techies around the world and I have no doubt that many of my I.T. brethren will be celebrating the momentous occasion that takes place on that day. What is it, you ask?

It is the day that Windows XP finally DIES.

Don’t get me wrong, Windows XP has had a hell of a run since August 2001. It was a good OS and was definitely a step up from the awful Windows Me that preceded it. Heck, it was so good Microsoft kept it around when Netbooks came into vogue a few years ago. Those netbooks and the terrible Windows Vista probably helped to keep it alive probably well past its originally intended expiration date, but all good things must come to an end, so here we are…or at least here we will be in just under seven months.

Windows 7 is goodness and I finally decided to eat my Windows 8 peas, so XP is but a fond memory for me except for when I have to deal with customers that still use it at work. I can’t give them too much grief, because I still use WinAmp 2.9 and Microsoft Money 2000! That said, I’ll be happy as a clam when I no longer have to worry about whether users should click on ‘Add/Remove Programs’ or ‘Programs and Features’ in the Control Panel!

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24 Things I Noticed While Helping at San Japan 6

My home for San Japan 6

I have attended every single San Japan. I went to the first out of curiosity and found myself helping out with tables for First Storm Manga and original-gamer.com for the next four. As FSM is no more and I have resigned my post from original-gamer.com, I found myself with nothing to do at San Japan Sinister Six. I suppose I could have gone as an attendee and enjoyed myself, but instead I decided to help out the fine folks of RegIT with processing the 11,000+ attendees.

You either have fun or work at a convention, and I worked at this one…a LOT
That said, the people I worked with were very cool.
It was neat to experience how much work goes on behind the scenes in registration.
Think about it: about 20 people had to process over 11,000. That’s pretty nuts.
There were a few glitches, but the overwhelming majority of people were very understanding. Nerds is good people.
I was right about the customers being cooler at San Japan, there were only had a handful of genuine jerkasses to deal with.
Goof-up #1-Not having good sneakers. I put gel insoles inside my casual shoes, which hepled, but my dogs were barking by the evenings.
Holy cats, some of those cosplayers…Good Lord, I thought blood was going to shoot out of my nose!
I’m old enough to have fathered a teenager, so I guess that makes me a dirty old man now.
A friend guessed my age and was off by a decade, so I guess I’m not doing that bad.
If you are going to give something to someone at a con , be sure you have it on you AT ALL TIMES. Sorry, friend of mine…can I mail you that t-shirt?
Cardboard, if applied correctly, can be pretty awesome, as demonstrated by Tall Cardboard Robot Guy.
I found myself shifting into my ‘announcer voice’ on occasion, that hasn’t happened in awhile.
I don’t think I’ve ever done that at my regular job…which probably says something.
Goof-up #2-Not taking Monday off from work. It would have been nice to do more stuff after the show, but I had to be at work on Monday and do laundry. Stupid responsibilities!
I wore my Wreck-It Ralph cloth pin and got lots of compliments, which makes me feel bad that I don’t remember the name of the artist who MADE it. Sorry!
The artists I know seemed to be happier this year and the layout appeared to be MUCH improved this time
That is, the few times I was able to get away and see stuff…see #1
Goof-up #3-Not by me, but for those who would ask me where things were…I AM SORRY BUT I HAVE BEEN HERE THE WHOLE TIME. AND I DON’T KNOW WHERE ANYTHING IS 😦
I think the highlight of the whole thing was when my furiends showed up on Saturday to say hi. The fuzzies gave me the warm fuzzies.
Which is more than I can say for the jerkass who texted me ‘Are you even here?” despite knowing very well where I was the whole time. YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE.
Goof-up #4-Not getting a picture of the gal dressed up as the Ancient Aliens guy…she even had a sign that said ‘ALIENS,’ too!
I seem to be doing a lot of apologizing in this list. Sorry about that!
Now that I can scratch ‘volunteered at a convention’ off my bucket list, I simply have no choice but to have fun at next year’s San Japan Samurai Seven…maybe!

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The Long and Winding Words

writingbear

My last e-book “Con Fluff 1: 2012 Furry Convention Short Story Collection” was released seven months ago, and as the 2013 edition won’t be ready for a few months at the minimum, I feel the need to get another e-book out into the wild. My (virtual) stack of unpublished short stories has been growing and I’m pretty sure that I have enough of them to assemble another e-book.

Since my stories are very short, I have to round up a few in order to assemble a collection of decent length. One early lesson I learned in my Adventures in Self-Publishing is that five stories was not enough content for 99 cents, as evidenced by the thud that ‘One Sheet Stories’ and ‘FlipSide Stories’ made in their respective marketplaces. Luckily, people are buying the longer collections I’ve produced since so I think I’ve figured out how much stuff is enough.

The stories themselves are another matter, though. The longest anything I’ve ever written was about 12 pages. It also took me a little while to get over my habit of keeping stories about a page long due to printing constraints back in the First Storm Manga days. Even when I have a hard limit to work with, I try not to think about length, but even then I’m pretty sure that the thought of ‘is it long enough’ rattles around somewhere in my subconscious.

I don’t know that I have a Great American Novel in me but I’d like to write one eventually. Time will tell!

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RANDOM REVIEW: Windows 8

EATING MY PEAS

So Purdy…

I first gave Windows 8 a spin when the Developer Preview was released back in 2011. As I have not purchased a new computer since then, I haven’t had the pleasure of seeing the final product, but judging from prevailing opinion as well as feedback from customers, it seemed that I wasn’t missing much. As I work in tech support, I figured that I was going to have to support Windows 8 sooner or later, so I decided to eat my peas and installed Windows 8 on my laptop: a 14″ Toshiba P745-S4102 with 6MB of RAM.

THERE AND BACK AGAIN

The install went fairly well, but I made the mistake of not wiping the drive beforehand, so I had lots of icky bits left over from years of Windows 7 use. I would open up my boot drive to find rouge directories sticking out their tongues at me in glee. Obviously the thing to do was to delete them, so I got delete happy and of course, deleted an important directory.

So just like I did during my adventures with OS X, I had to start all over again. I formatted the drive, reinstalled Windows 8, and was back in business. Windows 8 seemed to be a little more happier after the second install, so lesson learned: always format the hard drive before dropping in a new OS.

THROWN FOR A LEARNING CURVE

Up until Windows 8 you could count on a few things like the Start Menu and Control Panel to be there. No mas. The Start Menu has been replaced by the Start Screen and other options are accessed by pulling up a ‘Charms Bar’ that is accessed by moving the mouse to either the upper or lower-right hand corner of the screen. Moving the mouse to the lower-left hand corner reveals a shortcut to the Start Menu, and the upper-left corner pulls up the last program opened and a list of currently open programs if you move the pointer down from there. The interface is not intuitive and poorly explained, you get zero help and are tossed into the Start Screen with nary a tooltip to help you.

A great example of how obtuse things are is the method for shutting down the computer:

Bring up the Charms bar by moving the mouse to one of the right-hand corners…that is, assuming you know its there.
Click ‘Settings’
Click ‘Power’
Click ‘Shut Down’ from the pop up menu.

Is it any wonder that people are upset about having to re-learn how to use their computer again? Expect to stumble around Windows 8 for a while (I certainly did) until you learn its intricacies or say ‘screw it’ and download a Start Menu replacement.

APPY, APPY, APPY

…or not!

One of the big reasons Windows 8 has received so much grief was because of the removal of the apparently-beloved Start Menu. I admittedly gave them static about this too, but having poked at it again, I now get what it is Microsoft had in mind when they removed it.

Mobile devices like smartphones and tablets have given us the concept of apps, or small programs that only do one thing or access a single service. Like many of you, I’ve gotten accustomed to doing things via apps. When done right, they’re great: you open up the app for whatever it is you want to do and take care of business instead of having to open up a browser, navigate to the website, login and all that.

Microsoft and Windows 8 want you to do everything in apps, and while I like this idea and would like to embrace it, the fact of the matter is that for whatever reason, the Windows 8 apps I have used have either fallen short of my expectations or just plain don’t exist.

The official Twitter app is one example. I have multiple Twitter accounts, randomizer9 is my main one and I have one set up for The Rules of Tech Support. The Twitter apps on my phone and iPad both allow me to switch back and forth between identities with a few taps, but the Windows 8 app only lets me login to one account, which reduces its usefulness.

Some apps just don’t exist. The most glaring omissions for me are Facebook and Gmail, though I can set up the Mail client for use with GMail. I’m also surprised that there isn’t a version of Office that uses the Metro interface. Granted, I don’t use very many apps to begin with, so its not that big of a deal to me, but other folks who love apps might be disappointed in the selection, though it should get better with time.

THE DOCKING DESKTOP

Luckily, the desktop is still around and is accessed by clicking the Desktop tile. While the Start Menu is persona non grata, much to the consternation of lots of folks (including myself) programs can be docked to the Taskbar just like in Windows 7. I found myself docking each one after installing them. This works pretty well for me and I haven’t really missed the Start Menu all that much, especially since discovering this handy list of Windows key shortcuts.

Unfortunately, installing legacy programs barfs icons all over the Start Screen just like it did before. It is a little jarring to see the a nice purdy Metro Start Screen morph into icky tile-o-rama with a tap of the Page Down key. The big problem with the Start Screen is that there is currently no good way to organize tiles that were installed by legacy programs. Sure, you can move them around, but one of the nice things about Ye Olde Start Menu was that it kept things you didn’t need out of the way. Hopefully the upcoming Windows 8.1 will resolve some of those issues, otherwise I’m not sure what I’m going to do once my Taskbar fills up with docked programs.

I have experienced no compatibility issues with older programs and hardware as of yet which is pretty darn lucky considering I still use Microsoft Money 2000 and WinAmp 2.9.

WHERE’S MY MEDIA CENTER?

I feel bad for Microsoft at times because even when they do things right they often don’t get credit for it or the Thing Done Right is completely ignored. Windows Media Center is one of those things. Media Center turns a TV-tuner equipped PC into a pretty decent PVR and can even stream TV from a PC to an Xbox 360, which is awesome. It was created during the Windows XP days (remember Media Center PCs? Yeah, me neither) and came included with certain versions of Windows Vista and Windows 7. It does not come with Windows 8. If you want Media Center you now have to pay an extra $9.99 even if you have the Super Mega Deluxe Happy Version of Windows.. So much for doing it right.

CONCLUSION

Despite all the wailing and gnashing of teeth you’ve probably heard, Windows 8 is not that bad. Yes, it does have some annoying habits, such as the made-for-touch interface and missing Start Menu, but I have learned to live with those inconveniences. That said, I understand why some people are upset: Windows users (such as myself) have grown accustomed to the Start button/menu being there for nearly twenty years. For Microsoft to just yank that football away like Lucy does to Charlie Brown is just not right. I know workarounds, but lots of folks either don’t or don’t want to go through the trouble/hassle. Microsoft reached just a little too far ahead in that regard.

I understand what Microsoft is trying to do with Windows 8. I even like the idea of doing everything quickly in apps instead of having to constantly go to the web browser. Unfortunately, the apps either don’t measure up in terms of functionality or they just aren’t there, which means I end up constantly having to go back to the desktop, which defeats the whole point of the new interface.

The much-touted quick startup and shutdown is nice and my laptop appears to be performing as well as it did before, though, as with any new system, one should be leery of potential conflicts with old hardware and software. I haven’t hit any snags yet in that department, but time will tell on that.

To wrap up: Windows 8 isn’t quite The Future just yet. It takes steps in the right direction with its app-centric design but is hamstrung by sub-par apps that will have you going back to the desktop over and over again. If you are one of these folks that just can’t live without the Start Menu, there are third party add-ons, but I can’t vouch for their usefulness or reliability. Once you get over the steep learning curve, 8 isn’t all that bad, but it isn’t as great as it could have been, either. The upcoming Windows 8.1 should make things better so we’ll have to wait and see what happens. While I’ll be sticking with Windows 8 for the short-term, I won’t be tossing away my Windows 7 install disc anytime soon.

3 out of 5 tiles.

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GAME OVER?

videogames I think I might be done with video games, or at least done with buying new consoles. I have been playing video games since the days of the Atari 2600 but my enthusiasm for new games and consoles has grown smaller and smaller with each sequel/lookalike/dark-haried protagonist/space marine game announcement for the last year or two.

One reason is I just don’t consume as much media as I used to. I see movies very occasionally, watch little to no television and don’t buy very many CDs and Blu-Rays anymore. A bigger reason is a feeling of ‘been there, done that.’ The Big 3’s E3 announcements impacted me with a great big ‘meh’ as I saw the sequel numbers get higher and higher.

So let’s run down the list:

SONY

I like to describe my PlayStation 3 as my “Blu-Ray player that also plays Ratchet and Clank.” I can count the number of PS3 disc games I own on my hands, and most of the downloadable ones I have are games that I reviewed for original-gamer.com It should say something that I still haven’t finished Ratchet and Clank: Full Frontal Assault and have yet to even purchase Sly Cooper 4. As I have nearly zero interest in JPRGs or any of the Sony exclusive titles, I don’t see any reason to get a PS4 anytime soon.

MICROSOFT

The Xbox 360 was easily my favorite machine of this generation, though it bears mentioning that about a third of the disc games I own have either ‘Rock Band’ or ‘Guitar Hero’ in the title. I’ve also purchased about a dozen downloaded titles and the Kinect is always fun when friends are over. The Halo and Gears of War series have both been entertaining, but I have little interest in seeing them drug into the ground a la Capcom. The TV functions of the 360 were also nice: I used it to stream and record HDTV from my PC via Windows Media Center to the living room TV. I was actually intrigued by the Xbox 360’s TV functionality but the high price and anti-consumer policies Microsoft may or may not be imposing mean I won’t be getting an Xbox One in the near future.

NINTENDO

“Nostalgia isn’t what it used to be,” the old joke goes. Nintendo has finally gone to the well once too often because Mario has become the new Madden as far as I am concerned. I think the breaking point was when they started making sequels. I may yet acquire Super Mario Galaxy 2 but my initial reaction was “Oh boy, they added Yoshi…whee.” When New Super Mario Bros. 2 was announced, I saw the ads about the whole ‘collect a bajillion coins’ thing and thought, “That’s IT?” I am intrigued by the Wii U, but its initial lineup landed with a great big thud and the current game drought makes me feel like I didn’t have it so bad after buying a launch 3DS. The sad thing is that the one franchise I would like for Nintendo to drag into the ground is one they’ve completely forgotten about: StarFox.

I haven’t done any PC gaming for quite a few years now. Seriously, the last PC game I bought was Portal…on disc…at Circuit City. Oddly enough, I may end up playing games solely on my PC from here on out. Since most of the big multi-platform releases end up on PC, I shouldn’t miss very many of the few AAA titles I’m interested in and there are loads of smaller devs doing interesting things these days on the indie scene. Maybe I’ll get an Ouya after its had a little more time in the oven.

So there you have it. I have been a gamer for well over 30 years now, and while it has been loads of fun, it may be time to hang up the controller for good. Will it happen? Who knows, but my current consoles and 3DS are doing just fine for now.

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In Soviet Russia, house occupies you!

home You know, I can never resist a good ‘in Soviet Russia’ joke. Actually, I can’t resist a bad one, either.

Buying a house has all but consumed my life for these last two months. Nearly everything that I have been thinking about or doing (or blogging) since early March has been house-related. Finding a house, negotiating for it, digging up all the documents for the bank, shopping for insurance, finding a storage unit, moving all of my stuff out of my apartment into the storage unit, moving in with my cousins, closing, moving out of my cousin’s, then getting all my stuff from storage into the house and now I’m taking things out of boxes and putting things in their place and buying appliances.

Along the way, I missed out on quite a few things due to either poor planning, bad luck, or fatigue: Wild Nights, the St. Phillips Anime Club Bubblehead Tea event, Free Comic Book Day, the Central Texas Toy and Comic Expo and the Anthrocon conbook deadline. My stress level got pretty high and I even got sent to the “principal’s office” at work for getting a little too rowdy with a customer. My aggravation got to the point that I went from “this will be totally worth it” to “this had better be worth it.”

It has been just over a week after I got the keys, and the number of moving boxes cluttering up the living room is gradually decreasing. I am hoping to be at some semblance of ‘normal’ (or at least as normal as it gets for me) by week’s end, especially after the new refrigerator is delivered later this week. I ask myself, was this worth all the bother and stress and money and time and missed fun?

Without hesitation, I think: Yeah. Totally worth it.

HOUSE, JUST SAYING, RANDOMIZER9.COM

27 Things I Noticed In My Just-Bought Home

After about 2 months of looking, negotiating, gathering money and signing a metric crapton of papers, I am finally in my new (to me) home. Of course, I noticed a few things:

As mentioned previously, we didn’t discuss which, if any, appliances were going to be left. They left behind the one thing I didn’t want: the electric range.
I took a peek inside the oven and wished I hadn’t. I don’t think it has EVER been cleaned.
On the plus side, there appears to be a gas line present. Time for an upgrade!
Well, after I buy a refrigerator, first.
and get the utility guys to make sure the gas line is good…guess it might be a while.
Seriously, it looks like it was never used, some people just don’t know what they’re missing
No refrigerator, but there’s a water line so I can get an ice maker. Woo!
There is a general air of uncleanliness around the place. The oven, the tub needs scrubbing, the floors need sweeping, and the carpet is shag-nasty!
I even had to sweep some webs and stuff from a few walls…ew.
Speaking of the carpet, there’s this weird red-pink fuzz all over the master bedroom floor??
Checking the keys, I found one that didn’t work in the outside locks…it was for the master bedroom. Oh-kaay.
…and the second bedroom door doesn’t lock. I’m sensing some trust issues here.
The doorbell doesn’t work, and I thought I was antisocial.
It’s only temporary anyway; I want a doorbell that sounds like the one from the Jetsons…seriously!
Finding bug traps everywhere…well, maybe if they cleaned up a little.
First major upgrade (after a gas stove) will be a new shower/tub, but for now some bleach and a good scrubbing will have to do.
People have gotten smarter about their network security, no open hotspots nearby.
Spent the first night vacuuming and filled up the machine’s dust canister after one bedroom…EW.
I don’t think I’ve ever filled up the dust canister when vacuuming my whole apartment.
Yeah, definitely going to need a new shower head, I like to feel the water bouncing off my chest like I’m Superman
I’ve never had a garage before, its nice.
Scratch that, having a garage is AWESOME. Yes, it has rained recently, why do you ask?
I found what appear to be used plastic bags and aluminum foil in a kitchen drawer…I wonder if the previous owner was also Mexican.
I didn’t think I was going to need a lawn mower anytime soon and then heavy rain came down the day I got the keys. Nuts.
Once again, I get to pick between the duopoly of suck for internet: Time Warner and AT&T 😦
Actually, I think I’ll go with Clear
Damn, it feels good to be able to walk around in my boxers again!!

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Minor Details

I don’t know when the light finally came on, but when it did, I’m pretty sure I did a facepalm. After weeks of negotiating prices, repairs, dates and all that yadda yadda yadda on the house I want to buy, I realized that I had overlooked one important little thing:

Appliances.

You know, those little things that make life more convenient: a refrigerator to store food in, a stove to cook that food on, and a washer and dryer to wash clothes that have gotten dirty after cooking and eating said food. Since the disposition of the appliances is not in the home purchase contract, I could open up the door on Thursday to find the aforementioned modern conveniences waiting for me….or I’ll be making an emergency trip to Ye Olde Electronics or Department Store for a new refrigerator and stove.

It’s not as bad as it seems: If there is no washer and dryer, then its back to hanging out with the freakos at the laundromat. As far as the stove goes, I plan on replacing the it anyway because the home has an electric stove, something which I have learned to loathe during my many years of apartment living. Things might get a little dicey without a refrigerator, though, because I really like cold sodas and dairy.

Oh well, just as long as they leave the hot water heater. Then again, I’ve gone without hot water, too! 😉

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How Home Sweet Home It Is!

After years of dealing with annoying neighbors one wall (or floor) over, lousy parking, poor management, constantly increasing rents and not being able to own a cat without a big deposit and paying ‘pet rent.’ I am finally going to take the plunge and buy a house. I’m almost there, too: if all goes well I’ll be a homeowner within a few weeks.

Its a big step for me and more than a little bit scary. For better or for worse, I am setting down roots here in San Antonio. There’s also the whole ‘what happens if I lose my job’ bit, but these days, that cloud is constantly hovering over everyone’s head, so that’s nothing new. Instead, I choose to focus on the Good Things associated with having my own home:

It’s my house, and if you don’t like it… – On a philosophical level, an apartment is never ‘really’ yours, and it will be nice to do whatever I want without having to ask myself whether I’ll be dinged for something when I move out. Also, there is the whole ‘investment’ angle, but I don’t care too much about that. In my opinion, the mentality of the home one lives in being an ‘asset’ instead of a ‘home’ is partially to blame for the nutzoid homeowner’s associations I always hear about in the news.

More room! – I have always lived in one-bedroom apartments and even lived in a efficiency once when things got tight. Unless I get a Unabomber special (i.e. an isolated shack) I’ll be getting a 2-bedroom house at the bare minimum and it will more than likely have a garage, too. That’s going to be a LOT of extra space that I’m not sure I know what to do with. I might rent out the extra room and I hear garages are great places to store things. I’m also looking forward to hosting parties again, it has been way too long since I’ve hosted a Super Bowl or New Year’s Eve gathering.

Do What I Want – One of the crappier parts of living in apartments is you have to be careful with your noise level lest you arouse the ire of your neighbors. While I am not a very noisy person, I do like to turn up the sound when I play video games and movies and have occasionally been ‘that guy’ that has had his stereo or surround sound system up too loud. Conversely, I have also had to bang on a few doors and tell neighbors to tone it down.

WOW a Garage! – My parent’s house does not have a garage and so I have never had the pleasure of having one. Based on what I have seen from friends, I understand it is a storage space. I might go nuts and actually keep my vehicle in mine.

KITTEH! – I have wanted to have a cat for some time, but as I mentioned in the intro, certain things about apartments have kept me from getting one. I can now acquire a cat and hug him and pet him and hold him and call him George. 🙂

Good Old Gas – My parents have a gas stove, and it is awesome. I have not lived in a place that has had a gas stove since I moved out, and cooking food has royally sucked since. One of my requirements for a home is that it have a gas connection so that I can once again experience the joy of heating up tortillas and hot dogs the way God intended.

House Party – When I had a bigger apartment a few years ago, I loved having friends over for games and even Super Bowl and New Year’s parties or two. It won’t be too long before I’ll be hosting get-togethers and this time we can crank up the tunes! 😀

Buying a house is big and scary and fraught with pitfalls, but I’ll take the hits as they come and look forward to the good things that come with owning a home, like freshly-warmed tortillas!

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Doing It Write

A spectacular failure can have the effect of dropping a big heaping scoop of self-doubt on one’s head. After failing to sell even a single paper copy of my first furry book, “Con Fluff 1,” in the Artist Alley of Furry Fiesta a few weekends ago, I found myself questioning everything I did there: my sales pitch, my table layout, pricing, and so on. The bigger question of “Am I Doing It Wrong?” has also been hanging over my head since then.

A friend recently made the observation that I was incorrectly trying to sell clean stories to an audience that was not interested in them. Given how I joke with friends about how some furry art sites don’t update until you turn off their “not safe for work” filter, I’m hardly in a position to disagree. A little part of me is wondering if I should cross that line and start writing erotica/smut/porn/what have you.

I’ve never written anything overtly sexual, and I don’t have much desire to…it’s just not my thing. Despite that, I now have a little nagging voice in my head telling me that if I just cross that line, I will gain a bigger audience. Oddly enough, the internal debate I am having is reminiscent of when I’ve see artist friends struggle with the question of whether to do fan art for conventions.

While doing your own thing as a creative person is very personally satisfying, it also carries some risk, especially where anime and comic book fans are concerned. Those fans have popular characters that they like and don’t often take chances on things that are different or new, especially coming from a little-known or new artist. However awesome an artist’s original creation may be, most folks are going to gravitate to the table with the cool looking Iron Man or Hetalia fanart. In the same way, I find myself wondering if folks are bypassing my works just because it is clean.

Part of the reason I don’t write smut is that I don’t think I’d be good at it, but that isn’t stopping me from considering crossing that line. The little cloud of self-doubt that’s been following me around since Furry Fiesta isn’t helping either.

I don’t know. I guess it wouldn’t hurt if things got just a little more naughty. We’ll see.

Eduardo Soliz

IT Guy, short story author, podcaster, and furry!

Category Archives: JUST SAYING