A recipe for fun on the cheap: Take 1 cat. Add 1 Target bag. Let sit, poking bag occasionally. If cat has not been mutila– er, declawed, be sure to wear protective gloves.

“Phew,” he exclaimed with great relish. The annual house-cleaning-before-new-years-eve is done. We’re all set for our family of friends, close and extended, to descend upon the house and make with the merry. But before the party, Jen and I are heading up to Cleveland to see the 24-3 Pistons take on the Cavs! She buys the best gifts. I will be a Piston fan in Cleveland, and I will cheer responsibly.

Speaking of gifts, I couldn’t believe one particular birthday present that came in a magenta envelope. I opened up the card inside and found a “gift certificate” for an exhibitor booth at S.P.A.C.E, the local small press comic con, (it was a check for the amount of the table, plus a cool looking homemade gift certificate.) My heart swelled in an encouraged sort of way. M and N, you guys are thoughtful beyond words, and none are coming that will help me communicate how grateful I am. Thanks.

That’s a good kick in the pants, too, and I’m ready to start thumbnailing from the rough story of my humble comic missive. Now I’ve GOT to get it done or the gift certificate will go to waste.

After several days of messing with DNS, CNAMES, domain mapping and jimmy caw-caws, www.ericmsmith.com finally maps to my typepad blog. What that means is you’ll see my domain name instead of the slightly more complicated “glimbit.typepad.com”. No big deal really, more of a practice for me since I’m going to be doing this for other folks soon.

My domain registrar made it interesting. I had to resort to sending an email to support because it just wasn’t working, and after a lot of research on the web, forums, etc, I knew I had my stuff right.

Me: I’m hoping you can give me some peace of mind about my domain. Could you please check to see that the www CNAME is setup correctly to point to “glimbit.typepad.com“? I have been checking for the past day with nslookup and I get (the wrong url.) The browser goes to the (domain host’s) parked page. I appreciate your help!

First Support Rep: I am sorry, customer support is not able to troubleshoot custom DNS configurations. You have access to modify the A records and CNAMES for your domain through Total DNS, however as this is an advanced function
we are not able to assist with setting it up. I apologize for any inconvenience.

Now, this is crazy. Total DNS was one of the products I could choose to write for help about, for Pete’s sake. I was a bit p’eed off.

Me: Your response that Total DNS Control is not supported is disappointing. You should remove Total DNS Control from your list of sub-products if you don’t answer questions about it. My guess is that something on your end is not functioning properly. In lieu of your support, I’m going to try deleting the CNAME entry I added through Total DNS Control. Wait 48 hours. Re-add the CNAME. Wait another 48 hours. Is there anything more you can recommend that I do on my side?

I rewrote that last sentence several times, threatening to drop their service, etc. Not a real threat, since I signed up for a 2 year license on the domain. But in the end, as always, I went the less-nasty route. Then … a light shone in the darkness!

2nd Support Rep (Different than 1st): What we meant is that we do not provide assistance with you creating custom DNS records. If it is not working properly on our end, we will fix the issue … The DNS server is updated every few hours. Once you add the record to Total DNS Control, please allow around 5 hours for the server to return
the result.

This person was actually trying to help and this encouraged me. Now, the “5 hours” thing was new. Everywhere else it said 24-48 hours, which is why I was going to wait between attempting to reconfigure the CNAME. But this one was straight with me, and I appreciated it.

I set up the CNAME properly. I started checking my domain using an nslookup service on a website. No dice, my domain still pointed to the ‘parked’ page at the domain host’s site. FRUSTRATION. After 24 hours, I wrote back.

Me: I’ve been checking in on it, and just now (24 hours later) I saw that the canonical name is still “ericmsmith.com“. It should be “glimbit.typepad.com” right? This raises a red flag with me because it seems like it’s had enough time to switch over. Can you help me out? Thanks again for your helpful response before.

See, I’m trying to be nice here, but this is getting old.

Please let us know if we can help you in any other way.

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Sincerely,

Amber
GoDaddy.com
Customer Service Representative

We would appreciate it if you would click here and complete our Customer Satisfaction Survey. It only takes a couple of minutes and will help us serve you better in the future!
Customer 12/07/2005 03:03 PM
Amber,

I hope this gets to you because I found your response very helpful. I
re-established the www cname alias and pointed it to “glimbit.typepad.com.”
I did this at about 5:30 or 6 EST (not really sure.) on Tuesday. I\’ve been
checking in on it, and just now (24 hours later) I saw that the canonical
name is still “ericmsmith.com”. It should be “glimbit.typepad.com” right?
Here\’s the response from the nslookup:

DNS server handling your query: PARK13.SECURESERVER.NET
DNS server\’s address:\t64.202.165.117#53

3rd Support Rep (yes, different once again): If you changed this within 24 hours, it will not have finished
propagation. This is why the www. prefix still resolves to our parked
page. You must wait a full 48 hours on this. Please let us know if we can help you in any other way.

Now, if you’re not following all this, basically what’s happened is: NO ONE AT THIS DAMN COMPANY IS SAYING THE SAME THING. 1 hour! 5 hours! 24 hours! 48 hours! And the kicker is … I had it right all along, as you’ll soon see. By this time, I’m really losing my patience. So many nasty things came to my mind when I wrote this, but I played it cool.

Me: My initial thought was to wait 48 hours (see my previous email.) However Amber B. said that I would only need to allow 5 hours for the turn around. Since it has been 24 hours, this tells me that something is wrong. Can you help me resolve this error?

Hilarious:

A Support Rep: The zone file normally
refreshes in that time - I had our leads refresh the file, and it is
now resolving. Our apologies for the confusion.

Well be sure and thank your LEADS for helping me REFRESH the friggin file. Wish they could have just done that in the first place, whatever the heck that means. I actually thought about writing them back to ask what exactly happened, but thought it would be more fun to write this post.

I promise never to rant like this again. *crosses fingers*

Ryan of Solid Wood Productions, the brains behind Geocaching’s “First to Find” card game, posted a brief history of how the card game came to be.

Hopefully you’ll be able to check out First to Find at Geocaching.com soon.

Santa, all I want is some focus and motivation. Please oh please oh please.

Okay, Columbus has S.P.A.C.E. on May 13. It will be at the Aladdin, which is right near Easton.

(Small Press and Alternative Comics Expo.)

I have until February to decide if I would like to purchase an exhibitor table. I think it’s $45. I would be tickled chartreuse if I could complete a Winnwik the Murblin mini-comic, sell it at S.P.A.C.E., get more motivated to do another one, and so on.

Above, please find a rough sketch of a Lockhand, an automaton that patrols the hidden coastal town of Merry Jape, attempting to apprehend Winnwik the Murblin. Winnwik is unique among his kind in that he isn’t despicable. The other Murblins looking on are a bit more typical. (I want to try to give them expressions that indicate how much they despise Winnwik the do-gooder and non-business-minder.)

It would be so excellent to finish a story. I could take these characters and let them live a little. Get mad at each other. Play tricks. Make tough decisions where “right” and “wrong” don’t factor into the equation.

See if you can find the spots that show how hard it is to draw after a month off.

Hey, we made it to December. Now if we can just get through it to the other side.

I sense a great busyness in my future, something I haven’t felt since … last December. Between the weekends of travel, and while trying to be a good friend and boyfriend, I’m working on a few of projects:

• logo for a New Orleans band
• website for a cartoonist
• character design and illustration for a marketing company
• my day-job resume and portfolio
• my comic

I always do this: I’m on to a new idea for my comic. I’ve been sketching a character I’ve returned to off an on for the past several years (see left.) I’m roughing out a story that I want to get your input on (yes you, gentle reader.) Coming soon.