snortum.net, The Place For All Things Snortum


A special note from your host: This site is very much out of date. If you want personal information, you can try my facebook page or for more professional info, try my linkedin page.



Q: Is that really your name?

A: Yes, why do you ask?

Q: Did your parents hate you?

A: Not at all. My mom loved my dad enough to lose her beautiful last name and become a Snortum. The same can be said of my wife. I have now passed it on to my children, one of whom is male, so the name lives on!

Q: Are there other Snortums?

A: I assume so, though they're hard to find. Google always turns up a few. We've got to be related. I've started tracing some of my history. See my feeble attempts here.

Q: This site is really boring.

A: Yeah, I know. It's mostly just a place for me to experiment with stuff. And that wasn't a question.

Q: But you answered it anyway, huh?

A: Yeah, I guess I did.

Q: I bet you even have another web page, don't you?

A: Well, as a matter of fact...


Online Comics

If I'm being honest I would have to say that online comics is an obsession of mine.

These are updated at least three times a week. Links without "movie" ratings are PG.

Site Frequency Comments
Bruno In Reruns One of the longest running online strips in the universe. Well, the world. The story of an independent, single, urban, bisexual, liberal, neurotic, woman named Bruno. It's funny that a conservative, married, suburban, Christian man likes this strip. Oh, that's right. We're both neurotic. Rated R.
Sinfest Everyday Not a pr0n strip, I swear. PG-13 at worst. Politically incorrect. Very well drawn. Sometimes even funny.
Wapsi Square M-F When you have a buxom female lead character in a comic strip written by a man, you make certain assumptions. Most of the time you're right. Fortunately, Wapsi Square doesn't fit the pattern. Well done, strong, multi-faceted women characters make this strip interesting without pandering. PG-13.
Gene CatlowGene Catlow M,W,F A world where people and "furries" (or "anthros", that is, anthropomorphic animals) try to get along, with varying degrees of success. PG, sometimes a tad more.
PVP Everyday It's a gaming comic, kinda. RPGers will get more of the jokes, but I'm not an RPGer and I like it. Relationships, office humor, trolls, rabid pandas -- you know, the usual.
The Devil's Panties Everyday. Life Art on Sunday Not about the devil. Except sometimes. But usually not. A semi-autobiographical strip about a young cartoonist. Sometimes she talks to Jesus. And the devil. I mean literally. I'm hoping that's the "semi" part but who knows. R.
Chickweed Lane Everyday Three generations of women living together in... well, living together at least. This is one of the few syndicated strips that really deserves your attention.
Pibgorn M-Sat, Color Fairies, demons, and a church organist. What more could you ask for? By the same author as "9 Chickweed Lane".
ROCR Hiatus Fantasy (elves, fairies, that sort of thing). This author is very interested in old cultures and languages. Sort of a light-hearted Tolkien. PG-13 for non-sexual nudity. And no, I don't know how to pronounce it either.
Digger Finished An anthropomorphic wombat, a talking statue of the god Ganesh, a shadow-child demon thingie... If you aren't loving it by now you never will.
Penny & Aggie MWF Two high school girls, total opposites, clash in this "good enough for syndication" strip.

Most of these are updated once a week. Many are subscription for the archives.

Site Comments
Zebra GirlZebra Girl Everyday girl-next-door gets turned into a zebra-demon. Now that's what I call humor.
Ice Futuristic, not quite SciFi, not quite distopian. Rated R.
Dicebox This one is... impossible to categorize. SciFi? Futuristic? Grrls on Road Trip?.
The Circle Weave A good fantasy in the Tolkieneque sense.
Lowbright (Small Stories) One of the most brilliant artists on the web. He has the rare combination of gifted artist and storyteller in one. Be careful, some of his cartoons are very "R".
Cigarro and Cerveja A drinking goose. A smoking rabbit. A talking puppet. A jealous turtle. A funny comic.
Ascent "Make magic, not war"? A farcical look at the future where technology has been replaced by magic, for better or worse (mostly worse).
Wahoo Morris I'd say this strip is about a dysfunctional band but then, what band isn't?

Here is a list of online comics portals. Some are free and some are subscription only.

Site Comments
Keenspot This is a free comics portal that's supported by ads. If you don't like the ads or just want to support them, you can subscribe, but the comics and the archives are always free.
Modern Tales This is a subscription site. You can usually see the latest strip free but the archives are available to subscribers only. This site was so successful it launched several sister sites.
GirlAMatic (GAM) Women just write better comics. I admit it. A ModernTales sister site.
Graphic Smash Sci-Fi and Action oriented comics. A Modern Tales sister site.
serializer Not your father's comic strip portal. Some weird stuff; some brilliant stuff.
Drunk Duck A mixed bag. Lots of junk; a few diamonds in the rough.
www.gocomics.com Lots of syndicated comics.
www.ComicsPage.com More syndicated comics.
www.WebComics.com Many "well known" web comics (meaning you've never heard of them). Like always, lots of junk, but one feature I really like: the ability to see all comics on a page or series of pages. It's easy to see if a strip is something you're interested in.
WCN New kid on the block. Another ModernTales joint.

These are online comics that have ended. Some come to satisfying conclusions; others just stop. Some have started up again. Some I'm just tired of.

Site Comments
Living in Greytown This strip started out almost as a silly gross-out strip and became quite poignant at times. It ran for exactly two years. This was the first Dave Kelly strip I got into. Rated R.
Lizard! Dave Kelly's "clean" strip. Pushes the PG envelope a bit. It seems to have come to an end for now.
Faans A strip about Science Fiction fans, and of course, they get pulled into all sorts of Sci-Fi plots to save the world and all. But again it's the relationships that are the most interesting. There's also a sympathetic Christian character. (Maybe there's hope for the world after all!)
Sparkneedle One of the oddest and most intriguing comics on the 'net.
Mnemesis An odd look at the afterlife. R for language and violence (but it's black and white. Plus, it's a comic. Still, if you're squeamish...)
Bite Me! Funny vampires? Think "Buffy" with more intelligence and less T&A.
Shutterbug Follies Shutterbug Follies is one of the most interestingly written and well-drawn comics on the web. I hope Jason Little does more stuff soon. Very R (gore, nudity) but quite brilliant. If you aren't squeamish give it a look. You can also buy it in book form (these guys need to make money too!)
Demonology 101 Over 700 pages in five episodes, this epic story follows the life a young orphan who doesn't fit in. She discovers she's a "demon" (a humanoid creature born to do evil) but for some reason she is living a moral life. Is it because she was raised by a human stepfather? Will she fall into evil eventually? Or does she have a moral choice after all? "Nature versus nurture" was never so entertaining.
Rumble Girls I guess it's not very manly to like a comic strip call "Rumble Girls". Good thing I don't care what people think!
Fear Mongers A completed strip in the style of the old Twilight Zone TV show.
Loyola A strange and funny fantasy about a young woman and a man who comes to her in dreams. Subscription only.
WalkyIt's Walky! I admit I'm a bit of a Johnny-come-lately to Walky. A lot of the complex plot and back story I don't get. But what drew me in was the honest depiction of a Christian character, neither making her a buffoon nor a hypocrite but someone who tries to stand by her beliefs and struggles with doubt and faith. That and there's space aliens. And monkeys. [I'm an ape!]
Spooner Newlywed bliss humor. PG at worst. It looks like Spooner is gone from the syndicated and online world except for this small sample. Maybe a book will come out.
Wigu A sweet little kid with a very dysfunctional family. PG, almost G really.
Scary Go Round (Bad Machinery) "Horror", but funny. Mostly funny. The author really delights in using language in an unusual and interesting way. PG-13.

The best of the syndicates

Rose is Rose
Dilbert
Stone Soup
Doonesbury
For Better Or Worse
Safe Havens
Sylvia
Get Fuzzy
Luann
Jump Start
Over the Hedge
Pickles

These are online comics that are truly kid friendly and still well done.

Site Comments
Little Dee By the same man who brought you Bruno, a truly fun an wholesome strip. It's nice to see his silly side after all the angst.
CYSCount Your Sheep A cute story about a girl and her imaginary sheep that she counts to get to sleep.
Moo Kind of a Toy Story plot, but I think Moo came first.
Jeepers A bunny and some other animals frolic. Mostly for girls.

Perl

If I'm being honest, I'd have to say Perl is sort of an obsession too. Oh well, I'm an obsessive guy. Larry Wall is my idol. (Oops, I'm not supposed to have idols! Oh well.) Isn't his web page awesome?!!

The Bereans

The Bereans is an idea of mine that really never caught on. The concept was to have a place to ask and answer tough questions about the Scriptures.

There's a good comparative, free, online, Christian Scripture lookup: The Bible Gateway.

Lookup a word or passage in the Bible



BibleGateway.com
Include this form on your page

Grace Bible Church

This is where I go to church.

Q: Why are there so many idiots out they who call themselves Christians?

A: You got me. It may have something to do with this false idea of "blind faith". People think if you question things around you then you don't have faith. That idea attracts a lot of fanatics. But the Bereans "searched the Scriptures to see if these things be true." (See above). Hopefully more Christian will see intelligence as something coming from God that should be used! Faith doesn't require a lobotomy to work!


Where I've worked

Catalyst IT Services

This is my current digs. They taught me Java and a whole lot more.

BASIS International

I did a stint over at BASIS. They bought AddonSoftware and are getting it to work with their Barista product.

ADP

I worked in National Tech Support on the car dealership side.

AddonSoftware

This is were I used to work developing business software in business basic. Yes, I code in basic (and I lot of other languages too). No, it's not glamorous but it gets the job done.

MASI, Inc.

I first employer in Oregon, to whom I owe a lot. This is where I first encountered AddonSoftware, then known as ADD+ON. The problem is the plus sign doesn't work well in a URL. I wrote their first web page using Notepad in 1996 after buying a book on HTML. As you can see, I've progressed a lot. I now write web pages in Notepad++. Okay, so I'm a coder, not a web designer.

ComedySportz

I play keyboards at the Portland OR ComedySportz show, usually on Fridays. The above link is the national link; this one is the local link.

Google saved my butt!

Here's a shout out to Google for caching my personal web page when I tromped on it. I noticed it before Google changed it's cache so I nabbed it and restored the page. It even had my recent edits. You Rock, Google!
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