Ballard Street by Jerry Van Amerongen for January 13, 2017

Neal should really keep the cash box inside the wall.

Neal thought no one would help him build a block tank-stand.

Roger Neal Waters

Shown with Neal is his long-time neighbor and occasional cross-fence antagonist Eldred. Eldred is assuring Neal that their past disagreements are well on their way to being ancient history. “Let’s just bury the past and forget about it”, says El.

I suspect that many of the denizens of Ballard Street could raise money this way!

I would pay $100 for that other guy with a penchant for walls.

this could turn out to be a very lucrative business, but with no outlet to spend the money.

Funny. But maybe not such a good idea.

Neal has not considered that Stan “Stretch” Dumbunski. Harry “Stilts” Hindershot, and the rest of the Ballard Barn Busters basketball team, will be passing by soon, on their way to practice.

Those guys are really tall !

Neal’s a brick or two short of a full house.

LAST ROSE OF SUMMER from yesterday:

The reason I asked if GoComics (GC) did it, is because prior to the transition, you to test this “New and Improved” GC website by logging into beta.gocomics.com, where I found instead of my mabrndt screen name, my actual name showed up next to my tested comments, and I posted the rather obscure comment before the transition Monday here

http://www.gocomics.com/ballardstreet/2017/01/09

and a few other strip, telling PRO account holders to log into beta.gocomics.com and check their MY PROFILE.

I didn’t say why, because some people (like me) wouldn’t particularly care to have their actual name divulged, and I wasn’t sure about the beta.gocomics.com security features (someone else could maybe go there and find out others’ names). If they were fine with it (some actually have their name as their screen name), OK; if they weren’t, they would have a chance to correct their screen name prior to the transition.

Well, we all know what happened. Former PRO, now GC INSIDER, account holders had their actual names as default screen names, and the others had /PROFILE/######## (whatever number of digits), as their screen names. And I filed a complaint with GC about it, actually using your Monday comment, as an example (thanks for providing that!!).

Of course nothing happened with the complaint (was actually invited to cancel my membership if I didn’t like it), not until AFTER I gave it my Bad, I’m unsatisfied rating. In my rating comment, I told GC what I thought of their practice of using the /PROFILE/####### screen names for richardcthompson (the Cul de Sac author who, sadly, passed away from Parkinson’s disease complications last year; he never wrote a comment as “/PROFILE/1058356”) and vldazzle (who I knew had also sadly passed away, 2 or 3 years ago; she never wrote a comment as “/PROFILE/1300119”).

Continuing … After that, if you look at

http://www.gocomics.com/profile/1058356

you will see richardcthompson and that for his screen name in CAPS, and

http://www.gocomics.com/profile/1300119

has vldazzle. Not only that, they now have GC Insider accounts (couldn’t pay their membership dues while dead). I don’t see any /PROFILE/######## screen names; so, I wondered if GC did it for you (because they’re gone, I know they didn’t make those 2 changes – thought maybe GC did it globally, not the GC Insider part though).

My screen name was transformed to the first part of my email address, but it was easy enough to change back.I don’t like that weekly comics show up every day in the top banner, and also comics on hiatus like the history of the Sunday funnies. Formerly they only showed on the day they were refreshed. Now I click on them anyway to be sure I saw them. I dropped the ones on hiatus. Also, I have to shrink my screen size to see ahead on the top banner far enough that I can skip a daily, then zoom out again. Worse, I have two dailies in a row.Formerly I could save an image, now I have to save the whole page. I’m sure that’s using up extra bandwidth on my end. I’ll be finding those comics elsewhere, when possible.

And Annie has not updated since Dec. 31. 2016 on the new site, though it was refreshing every day in January on the old site. Other comics seem to get stuck occasionally, also, for a day or two.

GRAINPAW – You can press down on a comic in the banner and move your mouse left and it will move the banner over a short distance.

I hope Neal has a cask of amontillado in there with him.

“My name is Neal, not Fortunato!”

Time, 15:45.

https://youtu.be/SoUPJId_AWk

Ironically, Neal had planned to use the money to buy a cask of amontillado.

He should also be worried about the next guy in line with a fat roll of one dollar bills.