Jeff Skilling, former CEO of Enron, has been sentenced to more than twenty-four years in prison for his role in one of the biggest con-jobs in corporate history. The presiding judge in the case chose to slap Skilling with the maximum sentence as retribution for the staggering number of people whose financial security was destroyed as the result of his crimes.

Of course, Skilling will be allowed to earn time off for good behavior. Can’t do the time? Just behave yourself after you do the crime.

Skilling has also been ordered to undergo treatment for alcoholism, successful completion of which will shave even more time off of his sentence. Haven’t you heard? Victimizers are the new victims.

Some years ago, one co-worker of mine was verbally sparring with another. With mock exasperation, he said to her, “There’s a special Hell for people like you.”

I “consoled” the butt of this light-hearted rebuke by telling her, “Don’t listen to him. There’s no special Hell for you. You’ll go to the same Hell as everyone else.”

If there’s any justice in the afterlife, the same will be true for Jeff Skilling.

I decided to take my own medicine today and subscribe to my blog.

You see, it came to my attention earlier this week that every time I made a change, no matter how minor, to one of my existing blog entries, my blog subscribers would receive an e-mail notification. I discovered this after I had cleaned up the formatting on about 25 entries, resulting in my subscribers receiving an equivalent number of e-mails about material that was not by any objective measure “new” or “noteworthy.” (If anyone got excited because I made the fonts consistent and cleaned up extra paragraph breaks, please don’t tell me as it will cause me to look at you differently and not in a good way.)

I scoured my blog’s administrative control panel and couldn’t find any way to prevent this from happening. In fact, I couldn’t find any way to manage these subscriptions or even find out who my subscribers are. I happen to know one of them is my good friend, Bill Mulligan, and the other is my beautiful girlfriend, Jeannie. The third is a mystery to me.

I realized I had no idea how exactly my subscriptions worked, and this was unacceptable. I refuse to be a party to clogging up people’s in-boxes. So I signed up for my own blog. I was relieved to learn that every e-mail notification comes with an actual, working “unsubscribe” link.

I seriously considered switching to WordPress or something similar but those can be one hell of a lot of work to set up. So GoDaddy is off the hook… for now. If I were them, however, I’d get on the stick about offering a more feature-rich blog. Any more headaches and I’m tryin’ WordPress.

And to subscriber number 3: I would’ve personally apologized to you for all those unnecessary e-mails, but I don’t know who you are. And frankly, you have every right to remain anonymous if you wish. I just wanted you to know that I’m sorry, and that I’m holding myself accountable for making sure that subscribing to my blog doesn’t result in problems for my subscribers.

Last night I was talking on the phone to an old friend, busting his chops about his favorite football team, laughing about old times, and catching up on the present.

During this conversation, I learned that my friend had been diagnosed with Crohn’s Disease about ten years ago.

According to the Crohn’s & Colitis Foundation of America, Crohn’s disease is characterized by “persistent diarrhea, crampy abdominal pain, fever, and, at times, rectal bleeding.” My friend has an additional complication: intestinal “strictures” that will on occasion cause such blockage that nothing can move through his intestines. This is not only painful but in some cases life-threatening if it is not treated promptly.

There are days when his disease prevents him from going to work. When he is out in public he has to think about where the nearest bathrooms are because the symptoms can strike at any time. He ends up in the hospital emergency room about twice a year as a result of this disease.

After we concluded our phone conversation, I began to think about those times I resented my friend for possessing qualities I felt I lacked. For one thing, during our single days he was always the best-looking guy in the bunch. It always seemed as though the girls who caught my eye were always taken with him. He’s also infuriatingly intelligent. He rarely cracked open a book during undergraduate school and yet he came away with respectable grades. He eventually went on to earn advanced degrees and is now very respected and successful in his chosen field. He is certainly more materially successful than I.

Last night was one of those cold-water-in-the-face moments. I was reminded that my friend, for all of his maddeningly good qualities (for which he should be lauded, not resented), is ultimately as human and as vulnerable as I am.

I feel badly for him, but he made it clear he does not want pity from others and does not pity himself. He has learned to live with this disease and pointed out that there are worse conditions from which to suffer. He has many blessings in his life: a beautiful wife, two lovely children, a nice home, and a wonderful career. He is a strong man in all respects: physically, mentally, and emotionally. I will not feel sorry for my friend because he does not feel sorry for himself.

I will also endeavor to remember that even the most gifted, successful people among us are ultimately as human as I am.

Bill Myers Creations is undergoing yet another transformation. What will make this one different from the others is I will not set myself up for failure by making unrealistic claims about what will happen, and when.

Basically, I’ve decided to put my Web/graphic design ambitions on hold for the time being. There’s a very good and very logical reason for that, but I can’t discuss it at the moment. Let’s just say it’s not a bad thing. In fact, it could turn out to be a very, very good thing. I’ll let y’all know as soon as I am able.

Anyway, the timing is serendipitous. After my last re-design of www.billmyerscreations.com, I realized something was missing. Oh, there are some purty graphics and such, but I still don’t have a grasp of the fundamentals. There is too much I do not know. So I have embarked upon a period of self-study. I want to understand the principles of Web design, to learn about what are considered best practices and why they are considered to be so, in order to build a solid foundation upon which to structure my creativity. I want to stop stumbling around.   

This has given me the excuse I needed to finally de-couple The Victory Streak from my would-be Web/graphic design venture. The two don’t exactly produce any natural synergies. People looking for a professional Web designer might get annoyed at the prospect of having to wade through stuff about The Victory Streak, and vice versa.

Given that I am putting thoughts of a Web/graphic design business on hold for the moment, it makes sense to re-position Bill Myers Creations so that it focuses solely on the creation, marketing, and distribution of The Victory Streak. I’ll be revamping the company logo and Web site to reflect that. If and when I decide to resume my attempt to dive into the Web design industry, I’ll set up a separate business name for that purpose.

As far as my self-publishing schedule goes… well, I’m not making any more announcements or anything until the first issue is penciled, inked, lettered and ready for the printer. I hope that will be soon. In the meantime, I’ll probably post some preview art and pages from my sketchbook here in the blog for those few die-hards who have been patiently sticking with me through this painfully slow process. When the book is done, I’ll not forget you folks. Your support has meant a lot and it will be repaid. How? Oh, that would ruin the surprise.

Thanks, all!

It’s hard for me to tell how many people are actually reading my blog. The stats are difficult to interpret for a host of reasons. Just because the stat counter shows a number of hits for a particular article on a particular day doesn’t mean those hits came from actual readers. Some of the hits are undoubtedly coming from “bots” — programs that scour the Web to catalog sites for search engines like Google. Some of the hits are undoubtedly coming from more nefarious sources. About a week ago someone attempted to flood my site with about 150 bogus trackbacks, most of which led to pornographic sites. That same day, my stat counter showed my highest ever hit count for all of my blog entries combined. I don’t think that was coincidence.

So… I’m going to try a little experiment. I’d like to find out how many — or how few — people are actually reading my blog. I’d like to ask (please don’t make me beg!) that if you have been reading my blog with any degree of frequency, please post a comment in this thread. Let me know you’re out there! Tell me what you like and what you don’t like, and what sorts of things might encourage you to post more comments (if you are a reader who comments infrequently — right now I think Bill Mulligan is my only regular poster!).

You don’t have to use your real name. And I will not post your e-mail address, I will not use it to spam you, nor will I share, “rent,” or otherwise let anyone have access to your e-mail address for any reason. I’d just like to find out how many actual readers I have. The only reason I ask for an e-mail address is to help control spam comments. If someone is spamming me from a certain e-mail address, I can block further comments from that address.

If the answer to the question ”how many readers do I have?” is “very few,” that will let me know I need to work a bit harder at driving traffic here.

Thanks, all!