Kevin Standlee: Fandom Is My Way of Life

A Walk in the Park

2008-05-15T03:12:39Z

Both yesterday evening and today, Lisa and I had enough time to take this walk through John Neal Park in Lyons, which is across the river from Mehama. As you can see from the map, this is a 5.4 km loop, and that's a pretty good walk.

This park has a bunch of ponds and streams through it. There are ducks, geese, what I think might have been a Blue Heron, and several more interesting things. Yesterday evening, we spotted two or three deer across a stream from where we were walking, and I've seen what I think may be a beaver in one of the ponds. No sign of the deer or beaver this afternoon, however.

All of the nature walk is a nice counterpoint to the frustrations of trying to get things to work on Lisa's old Panasonic CF-27 under Win2000.

MARCON Schedule

2008-05-13T17:12:32Z

A few days ago, I received my schedule for my Fan GOH appearance at MARCON. This schedule is, of course, subject to change.

Friday 7:00 – Opening Ceremonies

Saturday 1:00 p.m. – MySpace and the Evolution of the Virtual Community

Saturday 2:30 p.m. – Dr Who Fan Vids

Sunday 12:00 noon – Autograph Session

Sunday 1:00 p.m. – Convention Disasters

It appears that there won't be sufficient program time to show my two Doctor Who movies, which are 60-90 minutes each, but that we'll only have time to show the "Making of 'The Zombie Legions,'" assuming they have a VCR. (I've not yet managed to get any of these videos transferred to DVD or other digital formats.)

Frustrating Weekend

2008-05-12T05:00:17Z

We got most of our errands done, and some of the around-the-property chores complete, but not all of them. But one of my important tasks, which was to get more of Lisa's computers running, ran aground on technical problems that I do not understand.

Lisa has several computers of older vintage, and several broken machines that are part sources for the others -- with the added advantage that those machines all have Windows XP or Win2000 license key numbers. However, there are fewer working hard drives than there are otherwise working computers. And none of the machines ever came with Win2000 or WinXP installation disks.

A solution I've used with my Dell computers, both for backup and upgrade, has been to clone a known good hard drive and use the clone. I've been using DriveClone without any problems. It makes a sector-by-sector clone of the source drive, and the clone can be used in place of the original. This works for a upgrade because it's possible to clone from a smaller to a larger hard drive.

Project 1 was to take the one working Win2000 installation, currently working on a Panasonic CF-27 Toughbook, and to clone it into a blank small hard drive. And I do mean small. The working Win2000 installation is a 4GB hard drive, and the blank drive was 6GB. Both of these appear to have been original equipment with the Toughbooks.

I have a couple of bridge connectors that allow me to plug a notebook drive in to a USB connector. I plugged both of these hard drives into bridges and connected them to one of my two Dell notebooks, and used DriveClone to clone the working, bootable drive into the blank drive. This didn't take terribly long, and the Dell said it could read both drives. Except that when we put the clone into the Toughbook, it wouldn't boot. The original still booted. I've never had this problem with cloned drives before, although it may have something to do with Win2000, as I've only cloned WinXP drives in the past.

As it happens, I have an unopened copy of Win2000, but I left it in California. Maybe on a future trip to Oregon -- and I'll be back up here in a month -- I can try doing a fresh installation.

So, on to the next task. We have one working IBM WinXP hard drive. Yesterday, we bought a new hard drive at Fry's. Drives being what they are this day, we bought a 160GB drive. I cloned the working WinXP OS from its home (a 30GB drive) onto the 160GB drive. Then I put the 160GB drive into one of the T30s. It refuses to boot! Now if I boot from the 30GB drive and attach the 160GB drive on the bridge, the machine can see the 160GB drive, but under no circumstances will the machine boot from it.

One of the other things we bought at Fry's was a copy of WinXP, because the program is going to go OP pretty soon and we have no copies of it on CD-ROM except for a Dell-specific one that won't install to the IBM machines. I put the 160GB drive into one of the T30s and tried to do a from-scratch installation of XP. It still refused to recognize the drive when the drive was installed as the primary hard drive. I can find no reason on Lenovo's web site as to why it might not be seeing the 160GB drive. This is endlessly frustrating.

It is so annoying to do installations from scratch that I really want to get one working OS and be able to clone it. This works fine on the Dells, but for reasons unclear, neither the Panasonics nor the T30s are willing to work with the clones.

While moving computers around last night, I accidentally knocked one of the Toughbooks off the sofa. I wasn't worried about the computer, though -- I was much more concerned about where the thing fell. The CF-27 is so heavy and sturdy that I might have broken my foot!

This afternoon, while Lisa dealt with messy things like changing the oil in her pickup truck and getting it ready to drive to Columbus -- she plans to drive out there to meet me at MARCON -- I fussed away with computers. Later in the afternoon, Lisa enlisted my help as she did a bit of mowing. The rain has kept her from being able to mow, but it went away and the sun came out, so she got back to work on it. Now, we're not talking about some postage-stamp-sized lawn here. Lisa's father's property has around five acres of mowable areas. They have an industrial-sized John Deere lawnmower (The link takes you to the current model; theirs is a few years old) to handle most of it, but around her father's house, she uses an ordinary push-mower. Lisa pointed out to me that the other reason for using the small mower is that it has a clippings bag, and she wants to be neat around the buildings. A bagger for the big mower would have cost $1700! For the vast open spaces out in the field, it's less of a problem to just leave the clippings. We certainly don't go raking them up!

The grass has been growing very fast, and she had to stop ever five minutes or so to empty the bag on the thing. She dumped the bags into a small push-cart, and every fifteen or twenty minutes, I took a break from fighting with computers and hauled away another load of lawn clippings.

Now that spring is sprung, it's important to keep all of this grass mowed, because it grows very fast. Unfortunately, mowing when the grass is wet is messy and hard on the equipment. Still, Lisa made some progress on fighting off the would-be jungle out there while I fought off computer gremlins.

I can't say that this was a terribly successful day's work on the computers. We did, however, set up one of the T30s to do a clean install on a drive we think is clean. The installer appears to be doing a low-level format on the drive, however, and it looks like it make take all night. We'll leave it running at her father's house and see what it looks like tomorrow when I come back over here to get to work.

Still, even if none of the computer work I did this weekend was any use, I still have a new 160GB hard drive that I can probably install into one of my two Dell laptops -- assuming I can get a DriveClone run to work on it!

Be Afraid

2008-05-10T18:14:29Z

I have no work-related tasks hanging over my head. I will be here all weekend instead of having to fly back to the Bay Area on Sunday. It's not raining. Lisa has an eager look in her eye and a list of chores that need doing. Don't expect to hear much from me this weekend.

Bit of a Scare

2008-05-10T03:22:43Z

We went into Salem and did all of the errands we'd planned for today, including filling up one of the propane bottles and picking up some miscellaneous electronic parts for a project on which Lisa is working. Driving back to Mehama, we saw that there was some sort of social event -- a barbecue by the looks of it -- going on at the church across the street. Unfortunately, that meant that, as usual, people parked in the middle of the street (it's a dead-end gravel road), blocking access to our driveway. As I was easing my way in to try and find a place to park, Lisa gave out a shout.

"We left the front door wide open!" was her horrified cry.

Sure enough, the door to our trailer was standing open. I stopped the van and we rushed over, fearing the worst. Amazingly, our home had not been ransacked, and indeed there was no sign that anyone had come in at all. Upon examination, we believe that when Lisa was locking the door, she actually threw the bolt but that the door was just barely ajar when she did so, so the bolt didn't actually go home, but kept the door slightly open. Also, there's a fair chance that the door sat there mostly closed for quite a while, with a gust of wind finally pushing it open.

Looks like we got really lucky.

We unpacked the things we'd fetched from town, and while we were doing so, the person who had blocked the driveway came out and moved his car, so I was able to put my van away where it normally lives while I'm here.

We're a little shaky at the close call. Ironically, one of the things we went to get today was a new door latch for the trailer, and it's the one thing we did not get, because the only replacement door mechanisms at the RV supply store were cheap Chinese junk. The last time we checked, there was still one US manufacturer of those latches, but actually finding one in stock at a parts store is difficult, because apparently the stores assume that their customers only want the cheapest possible junk. And order by mail is sometimes a problem because the vendors online rarely say where the part was built. She'd much rather hold the part in her hand before buying it.

Errandry

2008-05-09T20:55:52Z

My work has reached the point of letting a very complicated optimization model run for several hours. This means I can go ahead and leave it alone and go into Salem to accomplish the things we weren't able to get done yesterday due to bad timing.

And I need to remember that I promised an short article for Denvention 3's Souvenir Book editor about what the Mark Protection Committee is and who is on it by the end of this week.

So Much For a Post-Lunch Walk

2008-05-09T03:20:59Z

Just after making my last post, I realized that there were some errands that needed to happen today, so we had to run into Salem before the last mail ran (it was already too late in Mehama, where the mail drops at 4 PM).

Fortunately, everything we had to get done today, we did. Unfortunately, not all of the other errands we were trying to efficiently accomplish on the same trip got done. We got the closing times wrong on a couple of places and ended up wasting more than an hour slogging through Salem's rush-hour traffic only to show up at each of them just as they were closing. Had we known their hours better, we would have skipped the 5:30 closing entirely and gone straight to the 6 PM place, where we would have had 30 minutes, which would have been enough.

For future reference, I need to remember that last call at the main Salem post office is 8:30 PM.

It Figures

2008-05-08T18:49:19Z

I travel heavy. Especially when driving instead of flying, where I have far fewer constraints on weight and bulk, I have a tendency to try and have backups for everything, usually due to past experiences where I needed it. That includes carrying a spare computer when I'm going to be working from Oregon, besides a clone of the work machine's drive made just before leaving on the trip. So of course on this trip, what should fail on me but one of the few things for which I didn't carry a spare. Due to a tendency to develop blisters on the bottom of my foot (particularly since I've started walking more often), I wear some relatively inexpensive foam rubber metatarsal pads that loop over the middle toe on each foot. They wear out after a few months, so I buy them in medium bulk. But I forgot to toss a spare set into my growing sack of stuff to carry Just In Case. Naturally, it was the toe loop on one of the pads that failed, so the pad will not stay in place. It's not quite annoying enough to justify a rush order to the supplier, but it's a minor hassle.

The way I keep accumulating things to take along makes me sometimes feel like I'm living in the world described in Take a Spare Truss. (It's a pity that none of the sites I searched for this had pictures of the cover or interior illustrations of this highly entertaining book about Victorian travel.)

Deer oh Deer

2008-05-05T03:35:45Z

This is the first time I've been online since I left Central Point on Saturday morning. The drive to Mehama was mostly without incident, except that just a few minutes from Mehama, a small deer ran out in front of me. I braked hard and the deer and I avoided each other. Fortunately I wasn't driving all that fast anyway. I gingerly made my way the remaining five miles or so to Mehama.

Today we had to run out and buy an external mouse on account of having left all of mine in California and not wanting to spend a week or two solely using the touch pad, especially as some of the things I have to are pointer-intensive.

So Much For That

2008-05-03T17:39:56Z

My plans for a relatively restful morning, with a leisurely breakfast and a walk along the trail next to the hotel were scuppered when I overslept by almost two hours. Being unfamiliar with the setting on my new phone, I set the alarm for 7:30 p.m. instead of a.m. and woke with a start with just barely enough time to toss on clothes and run downstairs before the included breakfast service ended. Now I'm two hours behind on everything I planned, and some things will suffer because of it.

Making Time

2008-05-03T07:27:08Z

I used Microsoft MapPoint to plot out this trip to Oregon, not because I don't know the way -- I've driven it many times -- but because I wanted to see how close its predictions were to actual. I told it the start and end points, adjusted it to force it down a couple of routes I would prefer, and set all of the speeds to the low end of the allowed range. The previous version of MapPoint let you actually set the speeds, but now it just shows a slider with low-average-high. I told it where I was stopping for the night, and that I wanted a 15-minute break ever 1h 30m. (This is an unfortunate requirement due to the diuretics I take for high blood pressure. I've visited every rest area between the Bay Area and Portland, and am very grateful to the Niles Canyon Railway for having open toilets even on a non-operating day today.) Then I told it to plot the route.

It decided that it was 387 miles from Fremont to Central Point, and that it should take 8h 20m, for an average speed of about 47 miles per hour.

Now, there was no appointment waiting for me at 8:20 PM, nor would I lose my hotel reservation, but I did not want to arrive too late because I prefer to spend part of the evening relaxing, rather than just having to fall into bed. So I set out intending to try and stay on schedule, although the minor late start and a ten-minute train-watching delay put me behind the gun from the start. And I stayed there, despite a lot of excessive speed on the open freeway.

I didn't stop exactly where the program predicted I would, primarily because I ended up making several stops closer together and then made up for it by skipping the last stop and folding the fuel stop into the final stop by putting off refueling until Exit 33, where the hotel is. In the end, I arrived at 8:40, only twenty minutes later than the plan called for, which means that had I left on time and not stopped to look at trains, I probably would have been exactly on schedule. But in order to do that, I had to spend a lot of time blasting up I-5 at 75 MPH, something that can't be good for my blood pressure. I've learned that I feel a lot more relaxed driving 55 than 75-plus, even out on the open stretches of I-5 where 75 doesn't seem so fast.

I'd really rather stop about halfway, but there are no Holiday Inn Express hotels in the Dunsmuir-to-Yreka stretch of highway, and I find myself slaving to my frequent-stay program and the Gold incentives I'm earning. (Some of these will probably be cashed in this summer to/from Denvention. Heck, I probably will end up earning enough to keep Gold status for another year, thanks to yet another Worldcon stay in an IC-hotels group property.) I'm now 3/5 of the way to Mehama, and there's no pressure tomorrow -- Lisa does not expect me until late afternoon/early evening -- so I can take it relatively easy. The hotel information says that the Bear Creek Trail is adjacent to the hotel, and that suggests a nice walking opportunity Saturday morning.

Train Outbreak

2008-05-03T07:09:05Z

I got away from the apartment about five minutes later than originally planned today, but I'm glad that happened, because otherwise while driving up Niles Canyon I would not have noticed that coming up behind me was a steam train operating on the Niles Canyon Railway. The NCRY normally operates weekends only. I'm not sure what exactly was going on, but the procession was being led by SP 2472 -- or was it 2467?, along with a diesel locomotive I now forget, a nondescript boxcar, a Belt Railway of Chicago caboose, and WP 713 bringing up the rear.

Fortunately for me, this happened just before the NCRY's Brightside Yard, and there was a place I could pull over and park. I walked across the road to the grade crossing, and watched as the short train crossed through the wig-wag-protected crossing and into the yard.

The reason I don't exactly which locomotive was running was because I neglected to bring my camera with me. This is annoying because I remember seeing the camera in its bag and thinking, "I should toss that in the car -- never know when something interesting might pop up." And then I walked off without it. Had I remembered it, I would have been able to include footage of the train in this message. Phooey.

Speaking of walking off without things, I realized this evening that I forgot to pack a mouse for my computer. Normally one lives in the computer bag, but it must have fallen out at home. This is going to be very annoying, because for a lot of the modeling work I do, I have to do a lot of pointer work, and it's much easier with a mouse than with a touchpad. I hope that a mouse is sitting around among the bits of computer stuff hanging around Mehama.

Sharks Still Swimming

2008-05-03T04:54:19Z

I got to my hotel in Central Point (just north of Medford) about 8:45, and after getting moved in, walked over to the nearby KFC and brought some take-out back to the room. After fussing with the computer for ten or fifteen minutes, I finally managed to bring up the audio on the San Jose Sharks game just before the overtime started, so I was listening when the Sharks, having come back from a score of 2-0 to tie the game and send it to overtime, scored the winning goal in overtime. The Dallas Stars still lead the best-of-seven series 3-2, but it's pandemonium at the Shark Tank as the Sharks still have life after having dropped the first three games of the series.

On The Road Again

2008-05-02T19:02:00Z

Heading off to Oregon now. Tonight's goal: Central Point, Oregon. Almost walked off without my overnight kit, which would have been annoying.

Time Compression

2008-05-02T04:23:26Z

As the van was in the shop Tuesday and Wednesday, I had to accomplish a bunch of things today that I would otherwise have spread out over three days, as I plan to leave for Oregon as soon after Noon Friday as I can, so I can get clear of the Bay Area -- by which I mean Vacaville and the I-505 interchange -- before traffic gets heavy.

I had things all planned out so as to make the most efficient route. Unfortunately, halfway through, I realized that I'd left the package and receipt for the mobile phone sitting on the sofa and I had to go back home and get it. Anyway, here goes:

Stop by WaMu and deposit a check.

America's Tire Company: Rotate Tires. It's been about 10,000 miles since the last rotation, so they were overdue. Go have lunch while they work on tires.

Jiffy Lube: Oil change, also overdue, but by only 1,000 miles.

(Back home to pick up the mobile phone packaging.)

Verizon Wireless store: I have not liked the ergonomics of this mobile phone from the start. The holster they gave me won't go back on my belt without me using two hands, which is irritating considering that I had a holster for the previous phone that was easily operable one-handed. At the same time, there were mildly irritating things about the new phone's user interface. Examine other phones. Discover that (a) They've all adopted the same irritating changes in the user interface and (b) There aren't many of the kind of quick-draw/quick-return holsters for phones I would be willing to buy. I'm not going to pay $300 for a handset just so it has a proper holster.

Eventually decide that I can live with the user interface changes -- I have little choice in the matter -- and they find me a generic holster that I can use roughly the same way as the old phone. Trade them the leather case that they originally sold me. They even manage to get the address book from my previous phone -- the one they couldn't connect when I bought the new one last week -- to transfer. Amazingly, I got out of there without having to spend any additional money.

Minor grocery shopping.

Fill gas tank. Have to run credit card twice because one run only authorizes $75, and it ended up taking $77 to fill the tank. They'll need to reprogram the pumps to authorize $100 soon.

Stop by Walgreen's to pick up minor toiletries that I accidentally left behind at the Doubletree. (Yeah, I might have been able to go back to the hotel and get them, but between gas and parking, it's cheaper to buy new than to drive down there and collect them.)

Go home and discover another small check in the mail; go to WaMu again to deposit it because I don't want anything slowing me down tomorrow.

And that's just the stuff I had to do around town. I still have to do laundry and pack. Oh, and there's real work on my paying job that wants doing tonight, too.

One Set Down, Two to Go

2008-05-01T19:38:30Z

gil_liant helpfully bought one of the three sets of two Giants tickets I have that I cannot use. Time is growing short on the others, and I would like to try and get some of our money back for them, so I've posted them on StubHub. But I'd prefer to sell them without having to pay StubHub's 15% commission, so if you're interested in buying these tickets ($33 each, which is what I paid for them), let me know and I can do a direct sale to you. But you don't have much time.

Once again, the seats are Lower Box 135, Row 13, Seats 9 and 10. Price is $33 each, or $66 for the pair, and they do not include parking. (I'm open to other offers if you're interested in the games but find the price to be too high.)

The games in question are:

Friday, May 9, vs. Phillies, 7:15 PM

Thursday, May 15, vs. Astros, 12:45 PM

The seat location is down the left field line. LB135 is the last section in lower box before the big open area between lower box and bleachers, where vehicles access the field and where baseballs going over the fence bounce away into oblivion. It looks like LB135 might be a good place to have a home run or just-foul long shot come to you, without the risk of having your head taken off implicit in the closer-in lower box seats.

Could Have Been Worse

2008-05-01T00:31:10Z

Shortly after 4 PM I got a call from the dealership telling me that they'd fixed the fan switch on my van. My back had recovered sufficiently that I could make the walk down there. I surely needed the exercise. The total damage was slightly less than estimated -- $439 including tax. So the fan is now working properly. Tomorrow I need to get the oil changed and maybe get the tires rotated. And I still have to do my day job -- I have a conference call with the client at 8 AM Thursday morning, and I have some modeling to run before I send them results tonight.

They Are... the Space Girls

2008-04-30T22:27:55Z

This was my favorite entry in the Costume-Con SF & F Masquerade, and not just after they won Best in Show for Presentation.

They hit their marks perfectly, and had the audience in an uproar. Great job!

Ow and Double Ow

2008-04-30T18:17:50Z

Ow: I got a call late yesterday afternoon from the GM dealership informing me that it's more than a burnt-out switch keeping the fan from running in anything other than off or high, but is several different pieces, including one that GM doesn't stock anymore and will have to be located elsewhere: new estimated cost of repairs between $400 and $500. Fingers crossed that they get it repaired by tomorrow because I'm supposed to drive to Oregon on Friday.

Double Ow: I woke up this morning with a stiff back -- so stiff that I could barely walk. I hobbled around the apartment and used the back-massaging machine we have, and got a little bit better. Still, I feel quite disabled today. If they call me from the dealership telling me the van is ready for pickup, I might have to take the bus instead of walking, even though ordinarily walking 2 km is trivial.

The Body Reminds Me That I'm Not 22 Anymore

2008-04-29T16:15:27Z

Perhaps going to BASFA last night was a mistake. Heading straight home from SFO and going to bed would have been a better idea. As it was, by the time I got home, I "missed my entry window" and ended up awake until after midnight, and woke up this morning in need of several hours' additional sleep.

However, I must now pull myself together and take the van to the dealership, where they are to replace the fan switch so it will work in the intermediate positions. And, for my health, I will walk the couple of miles back from the dealership, although I really don't want to do it.

Probably More at Meeting CC26

2008-04-29T04:16:18Z

I took Cheryl to SFO this afternoon and saw her safely through Terrorization before heading south toward the BASFA meeting. She called me as I was passing through Mountain View to say they were getting ready to button things up and that all was under control. We have a very light turnout for BASFA tonight -- not surprising because so many people are still down at Costume-Con for the Reanimated Canine Party and the Mouse-kerade. I contemplated going down there after the official BASFA meeting, but I absentmindedly surrendered my parking pass when I left this morning. Parking is $3/hour, but was $7/day to hotel guests, and my pass was good through today. Not wanting to spend any more money on parking, I headed home instead. Besides, I'm very tired and really need to get some sleep.

Home from Costume-Con

2008-04-28T19:49:16Z

I did my final duty as Site Selection Administrator (turned in cash box an expense receipts) this morning and packed out of the hotel, then headed home, where I am now justifying my not taking today as a vacation day. I'm pretty tired, but also very happy. This was one of the most fun conventions I've attended. As I was leaving, I ran across a tired-looking chairman kproche, shook his hand, and told him, "Thank you for reminding me why I volunteer to help run events like this."

Historical Masquerade

2008-04-28T08:09:29Z

I've added a bunch more photos, including those from the Historical Masquerade, to my Sunday at Costume-Con 26 page. Note that not all of those tagged "Historical Masquerade" were actually in the event, but were instead photographed in the scrum outside the hall during the half-time.

There are also new Sunday afternoon photos, including some from the Fursuit Parade.

I had to be at the Historical Masquerade, which I'd considered skipping, because I'd been asked to make the formal announcement of Site Selection results during halftime. I'm glad I came. There were 28 entries, and they were all good to excellent. I really enjoyed the presentation and admired the fantastic workmanship.

As the first run-through ended, I made my way over to the edge, and when it was clear to me that my spot in the announcements queue would be up soon, I went backstage, where David W. Clark was waiting to make his announcement from the Dealers Room about the Most Evil Merchandise Award. I was to follow him, and mine was the final announcement before the half-time band entertainment.

When my name was called, I marched out, blinding the audience with the reflection from my all-white WSFS uniform. "I'm Kevin Standlee, and I'm the Stage Anti-Ninja," I said. It got a good laugh, as I hoped it would from a costuming crowd. I then made the official announcement, concluding with, "The winning bid will be selling memberships from the former Site Selection table tomorrow morning. Since only 30 of you actually voted, I'll explain that Site Selection was the two tables across from the entrance to the Dealers' Room." That also got a chuckle, and with that, I left, my next-to-last duty as Site Selection administrator done. (The final duty will be returning the cash box to Treasury Monday morning before I head home.)

I went out in the lobby and milled around with about 600 of the over 800 CC26 members, it seemed, all of them either being photographed, or, like me, taking photographs. Anytime anyone agreed to pose, a gang of camera-toting people descended on them. The photos I posted are what I managed to get. There were many fine costumes I was unable to photograph.

After the results of the Historical Masquerade were announced, I stuck around and took some more photos, and started chatting with ala_mokita. He said, "This has been so much fun!" And I agreed soundly. In fact, I've had a wonderful time this weekend, and have been very happy to be one of the four former Worldcon chairs working on the con. (The others are ala_mokita (L.A.con IV), David W. Clark (ConFrancisco), and Tom Whitmore (ConJose, co-chaired with me).) Indeed, we've been part of an all-star crew of conrunners from all over -- mostly, but not entirely, from the West Coast -- that kproche recruited to help make this convention work. I think we did a good job, and I don't just mean us Old Pharts -- everyone working on this convention has been putting forth their best effort, and I think it shows. Heck, I feel slightly guilty, as I've been doing one of the lowest-impact jobs I could, running a site selection with minimal interest. That's one reason I volunteered to go help tape down glow-cable last night after the SF&F Masquerade -- I felt I was actually accomplishing something useful instead of just sitting behind a table composing LJ entries and occasionally collecting a site selection ballot.

I decided to have a late dinner, although it wasn't as urgent as last night, for I did get a late lunch as well today. What these carb-heavy and mis-timed meals are doing to my blood sugar, I shudder to think. Back on the diet tomorrow, I say.

Finally, I got the photos updated and this journal entry written. I'm going to make a brief pass through the party floor, and then get to bed. Tomorrow is a work day, and while I'm not heading home until after the morning rush hours, I can't sleep in, either.

Site Selection Complete

2008-04-27T23:39:28Z

To nobody's surprise, the only bid to file -- from the New Jersey/New York Costumers' Guild -- received a majority of the votes with a preference. There were 29 votes cast, plus one person who paid to vote and walked off without casting his/her ballot.

Now I must go pack things away and get some food.

Future Fashion Show

2008-04-27T22:10:53Z

Photos from the Future Fashion Show on Sunday morning of Costume-Con are now in my CC 26 Sunday collection on Flickr. This was a "runway show" where the usual rules about "no flash photography" do not apply -- "Make the folks feel like they're on the runway in Paris."

At the conclusion of the show, those members of the CC26 committee and staff who were available and interested were invited to take a walk down the runway as well. I placed myself early in the procession, billing myself as "Kevin Standlee, Site Selection; On leave from the White Star Federated Spacelines" so that I could get out of the room and go get Site Selection open in time for our final 1-3 session. But I did pause for a photo with the Protocol Officer.

Now it's time for jbriggs and me to count the ballots.