Fire Donations

A bunch of people have asked if they can provide any assistance in the wake of our Christmas Eve house fire. Taking care of the deductible and any non-covered expenses will be a bit rough on us, so even though I really hate doing this… here it is.

EDIT: The Paypal button is apparently not working, so just do it the old-fashioned way. You can send to jon at jonfmorse dot com.

I appreciate everyone’s concern Monday night. It meant a lot to me and my family. Thank you so much.

On the Value of Free.

Years ago, when I was just a snot-nosed wastrel learning how the real world worked, I was managing the second storefront of a small chain (i.e., “two”) of comic shops.  My boss, who was the manager of the flagship store, had some very sage advice for me one day.

One day, I asked him why it was that we priced every single back issue, no matter the actual demand, at no less than a quarter over cover price when you could find a lot of the runs we had in stock in someone’s quarter bin.  He looked at me with that look you give someone when you’re being extremely patient with them and said to me, “If you price something at a quarter when the cover has a great big ’60¢’ staring them in the face, they’ll figure it’s not worth anything.  If it’s got a sticker on the bag with ‘$1.00’ on it, people who actually read the books are more likely to buy them.  Trust me, been doing this awhile, and it sounds crazy but it’s true.”

It immediately made sense to me.  Sure, we all want deals, and we all think getting something for free is better than paying for it.  The catch is, psychologically this only works for things we already know we want and for which we can shop around.  If it’s the only place you can get it, and it’s an impulse purchase, the perceived value of the item affects your buying pattern.

The reason I bring all this up is that I have been wondering, half-jokingly, if my blogs would get more traffic if they had ads.  I wonder if the fact that I keep them ad-free gives off the impression that I don’t care if people read — or worse, that I don’t think my crap is worth reading.  After all, why wouldn’t I try to make some money that costs the reader nothing at all?

I just don’t know if the same background mental processes work for something which is inherently free anyway.  Just an odd Sunday morning musing.

Mini-Bitch.

So, I have reached the conclusion, based on certain interactions, that I am failing my duty.  As a recognized expert in a niche field, expertise in which is absolutely fucking useless unless that knowledge is shared with the public, one might think that answering any question asked of me regarding that niche field is the appropriate thing to do.

But apparently, I am doing it wrong.  Apparently, what I should be doing is ignoring questions entirely, because that seems to be the way to gain followers and expand knowledge.

I’m glad I’ve been taught this valuable lesson, and I’m going to get to work on being that guy who’s an expert on something completely nerdy yet can’t be bothered to engage other people.  Wish me luck!

OH MY GOD HE KEEPS GOING AND GOING

Lately, I have been, shall we say, vexed.  There have been topics I’ve wanted to touch on that just cannot be handled in the Twitterverse.

I don’t mean serious topics (although you can probably assume with a great deal of confidence that will happen here eventually).  I mean just normal ranty bullshit which takes more than a few short sentences to get off my chest.

I used to have a LiveJournal for this; well, I actually still DO have a LiveJournal, permanent account even.  But there’s just something… not right about posting there any longer.  The triple-digit friend count there still exists, yet I’m certain that there aren’t even a dozen people who even notice if I post there anymore; all MAH FRENZ are on Twitter now, pretty much.  Mind you, most of the time it’s just the act of venting into a public space that I need, as opposed to lots of reaction and comment.  So posting here and getting no reaction or comment is a completely different thing from posting there and getting none.

Of course, it’s entirely possible that I will get reaction and comment here.  Thanks to the Jetpack addon, y’all can just comment with your Twitter handles, which is convenient.  (I won’t make that conversion on Those Other Guys until/unless someone who can hack themes can fix me up)

Some things I will NOT post about here:  college sports.  Oh, okay, that’s the one thing I won’t post about here.  Except that I’ll probably cross-link all my work from here, as this is now the official personal blog, see.  Groovy.