Somebody asked about my font-creation process – here’s Phase 1: Actually drawing it…

Phase 2: Ink it…

Then scan it, clean it up, export it to vector format, then copy each character into the font creation program. Voila!

We got an advertisement for a local church’s Christmas event in Ripley’s school folder this weekend (not the first time it’s happened):

This is how I’m sending it back:

Today I'm releasing a new font called October Crow. I drew it on Devil's Night (October 30th) while watching The Crow, but didn't have time to do the font conversion part until this holiday weekend. Head over to SinisterFonts.com and grab it!

I've got two more fonts coming down the pipe, as well - Exquisite Corpse and Gruesome. I'll be releasing one per week.

I've also added a photo gallery to the Sinister Visions Facebook Page showcasing Sinister Fonts sightings - if you have any pix to add, feel free!

Today I'm releasing a new font called October Crow. I drew it on Devil's Night (October 30th) while watching The Crow, but didn't have time to do the font conversion part until this holiday weekend. Head over to SinisterFonts.com and grab it!

I've got two more fonts coming down the pipe, as well - Exquisite Corpse and Gruesome. I'll be releasing one per week.

I've also added a photo gallery to the Sinister Visions Facebook Page showcasing Sinister Fonts sightings - if you have any pix to add, feel free!

Today I'm releasing a new font called October Crow. I drew it on Devil's Night (October 30th) while watching The Crow, but didn't have time to do the font conversion part until this holiday weekend. Head over to SinisterFonts.com and grab it!

I've got two more fonts coming down the pipe, as well - Exquisite Corpse and Gruesome. I'll be releasing one per week.

I've also added a photo gallery to the Sinister Visions Facebook Page showcasing Sinister Fonts sightings - if you have any pix to add, feel free!

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PREFACE: I’ve been dealing with web hosting and hosting providers for over 10 years, both for myself and for companies for whom I’ve worked. I’m not a newbie. I’m not an idiot. I don’t have unreasonable expectations with regard to web hosting. So, that said…

I’ve had a hosting account with GoDaddy.com (2, actually) for a couple of years now, one of which is for my personal websites. For the past year, I’ve noticed consistent/persistent problems with any site on that particular account that has a database involved – WordPress, Drupal, stuff like that. Sometimes the sites just run slower, but far too often, they either don’t load at all, or don’t load correctly. Numerous calls (10+) to GoDaddy tech support have yielded mixed results; sometimes the support person would make some effort to ferret out the problem, but typically, the response has been effectively “Well, we can’t reproduce the problem you’re describing right at this moment, so it must be something you’re doing wrong.” Regardless, the issue has persisted, and nobody on GoDaddy’s end has ever followed through to identify the problem and actually fix it.

Yesterday my art site ChadSavage.com wasn’t loading. After an hour of waiting to see if it would self-correct, I called GoDaddy support. The response was basically “I’ve run a bunch of tests, and everything checks out. I can’t find any problems. Maybe another site on your shared server is hogging the resources. Have a nice day.” Bear in mind that while the guy was telling me this, I was sitting here watching the site either not load, or produce errors. So I asked him, point blank, what my options were, and I got the response that I’ve been getting from GoDaddy when they don’t want to actually identify and fix the issue: It’s something specific to my site(s), and I need to clear caches, run diagnostics, blah blah blah. In other words, I’m the problem, not GoDaddy’s hosting.

The guy just stopped giving a shit, and I could actually hear the moment it happened, and there we were: My website wasn’t working, and GoDaddy’s response was “Too bad for you”.

So I signed up for an account with Dreamhost.com and moved ChadSavage.com there, where it’s been humming along without a hitch since about midnight last night. If it was something specific to the website, it wouldn’t work on *any* server, so sell me another one, GoDaddy.

Here’s where it gets entertaining, thanks to Twitter. After the phone call, I posted my displeasure at http://twitter.com/sinistervisions. Following is the “conversation” that has ensued since last night:

(ME) GoDaddy.com – when I call to report serious hosting issues, telling me you can’t recreate the issue and dismissing me? Not cool.

(GoDaddy) @SinisterVisions Sorry to hear your experience w/Support didn’t meet your expectations. Please DM us some info would like to learn more.

(ME) @godaddy My experience w/support “didn’t meet my expectations”? I was summarily dismissed by support, problem unresolved. Way to understate.

(GoDaddy) @SinisterVisions If you’d like us to research your hosting concern, please DM some details to help us understand.

(ME) @godaddy The time to “research my hosting concern” was when I called support for the umpteenth time, not after the fact on freakin’ Twitter.

While I appreciate the need to try to do damage control to defend one’s brand on social networks like Twitter, inviting me to send info via Twitter DM (Direct Message) is not only lazy, it’s vaguely insulting. Direct Messages on Twitter are limited to 140 characters per missive – not exactly conducive to sharing details of any kind. Further, if GoDaddy really cared (as opposed to making a half-assed attempt to look like they care), whoever runs that account would’ve made an attempt to actually contact me as a human being and customer. More to the point, somebody on any one of the multiple phone calls from the last year would have shown an ounce of initiative and resolved the actual problem the second or third time I reported it (or ninth, or tenth…).

The lesson? Yes, absolutely use Twitter to monitor what people are saying about your brand or company, but no response at all is better than an insincere one.

ADDENDUM: After I posted the above -

(GoDaddy) @SinisterVisions Sorry for the confusion. Since you wrote to us on Twitter, I thought you’d wanted our help. Let me know if that changes.

(ME) @GoDaddy I didn’t “write to you on Twitter.” I used Twitter to criticize the lack of service I got when I called GoDaddy support.

Again – SO missing the point. I did want help, which is why I called repeatedly over the course of a year. By the time I posted about it on Twitter, I was done seeking assistance from GoDaddy, a point which their Twitter Account Person seems unable to grasp, still.

Amazing what you find while cleaning out your office. I found a copy of the February 1996 Upstate New Yorker magazine, which featured a sort of slice-of-life photo gallery that included yours truly.

The Borders Horror Section loves Sinister Fonts today…

I thought I’d give the boys in the Pumpkin Graveyard one last hurrah:

FULL SET HERE