Wearing Anything - And Getting Away With It!

Ah, sweet blog. How long it has been since my words echoed through your pages!

You know, it surprises me how little I have to say after all these weeks of not blogging. I mean, obviously I've been playing a lot of Nintendo Wii, and I could probably talk about that for hours. Still, everyone has heard a lot about the Wii from me, so I figure I'd better give that a rest.

Instead, today I would like to talk about ridiculous clothes! See, I've been out all evening, and I'm currently wearing Jeans, a white T-Shirt with a large picture of Jesus on the front, an old grey suit-jacket, and a grey fedora. It's almost as if I'm forging a new path through the wastelands of tasteless fashion; and yet, nobody has said a word about it yet!

It's completely amazing - people have been trained to not even look twice! You could look like the most amazing dork in the universe! You could look extremely cool! You could probably even walk into a store dressed exactly like Link, and nobody would even make fun of your little green skirt! (Although, in this day and age, you can't walk anywhere with a sword. Believe me. I own one, and it's just socially unacceptable to do anything with it.)

On a slightly more serious note, the recent server trouble has given me a lot more work than I usually find myself burdened with. Still, by the grace of God, we've managed to continually improve things even as they get torn down. The site is now running on the fastest server we've ever had access to, and the mirrors are now being monitored for glitches by an automated testing script I wrote. (Another upcoming improvement is that we should soon be able to take credit cards directly for any customer who feels uncomfortable working with paypal for whatever reason. We'll see how that goes...)

This is also one of the reasons last week's Malex Minute episode was as late as it was. It's probably the least on-time Malex Minute episode in the history of Malex Minute episodes, but hopefully we can avoid that in the future.

There are some pretty sweeping changes coming to the Malex Minute, too. Of course, we've already gotten the next episode recorded, so none of these changes really apply to it. (So don't worry, we will find out what happens to Snuffy's family!)

One of the changes is that madamelibrarian (she plays Echofly in the series) has left the show. She had a number of responsibilities to attend to, so Echofly will not be returning in Malex Minute Quarter 4. I'm still quite attached to the character though, so we'll have to see what happens in the long run.

Another pretty sweeping change is that I will not be able to continue being responsible for the post-processing duties that go along with every single Malex Minute episode. I will continue writing every episode and I will continue voicing Malex, but I will no longer be cutting the episodes together or adding sound-effects. Instead, I will be putting together a team to replace me. (At least, that's the idea. I'll post more when I know more.)

In theory, we're going to take a break from the rampant story-arcing, as well as the "adventure" episodes, and go back to our roots as a slightly more talk show-ish show. At least, for a while.

In the mean-time, I've got to get us ready for Faithwalkers 2006. Last year, Faithwalkers completely ground our server to a halt, and I'm determined to avoid that this year. In fact, unless something breaks between now and then, we should be ready to handle that traffic any time.

That doesn't mean my job is done though. I still need to prepare for the marketing aspects of the conference. We'll have a booth there, and I really really need to snag a few new clients while we're there. If we can't get more clients to buy into our various service packages, I'm going to have trouble keeping the company running for any extended period of time! (And if you've read this far, you're probably one of the few people on the planet who actually wants the company to stay in business.)

One encouraging thing though: Structures has been selling really well so far. By my reckoning, we should be nearing the halfway point to "breaking even", which is always an admirable goal for such a project!

Most everyone who has purchased a copy has reported liking it a lot, and nobody has had anything negative to say yet. (We'll see if we can keep that up.) Anyway, if you haven't purchased a copy yet and are considering it, try to get your order in within the next three days, because on Friday the price will go up to $12!

I also want to say a few words of welcome to the various people who have recently registered with the site. It's very, very encouraging to see people hop online with us. This is a very exciting (and a little frightening) time to be hanging out with the Malex Media Network.™ Then again, when is it not exciting and frightening around here?

ttyl!

--Alex

With a gasp of terror, she realized that the Spee had to be hidden in her purse. Her purse! Of all places, it was the most inconvenient.

Resigned to her task, she pulled out a handgun and approached the purse. It was hanging motionless in the corner - as if to say, "Not here! I'm innocent!"

She checked the clip one more time before raising the handgun and bracing herself against the imminent recoil. She may not have been entirely qualified to use the weapon, but the dastardly Spee had left her no choice...