Kevin Standlee: Fandom Is My Way of Life

Oregon Trip Day 2: A Study of Contrasts

Wed, 22 May 2013 06:20:49 GMT

Yesterday's drive from Fernley to Klamath Falls via Gerlach, Cedarville, and Alturas was mostly through clear, cool, sunny weather. This morning in K-Falls, the wind was blowing in from the Cascades. As we were packing the minivan, the lid blew off a Bankers Box containing some of our stuff, and I had to quickly chase it down or it would have blown halfway to Tulelake in no time. Not having many time constraints today, Lisa suggested that we take an alternative route via Bend and Madras, the Deschutes River canyon, and skirting the southern edge of Mount Hood. This route is only about 30 miles longer than the shorter route via OR-58 and I-5, and I said I saw no reason not to go that way. Had we known what was ahead, we would have tried something different.

It looked very much for most of the drive that we wouldn't have any pictures at all today, because it was mostly grey and gloomy. We did think of stopping at Collier Logging Park and taking pictures of the changes there since our last visit and of more Bloody Conifers for flickgc, but decided to keep pressing on. We started getting rain; initially just brief squalls, but soon more and more rain, although it was still patchy at times. For instance, when we stopped at a surplus store in Bend that Lisa likes, it was gloomy but not raining. After that, we stopped at a Carl's Jr. for lunch, a location we will never patronize again. The fish sandwich upset Lisa's stomach, and I complained to the manager when I saw one of the workers (not the one handling our food, or I wouldn't have eaten anything) use the toilet without washing his hands. The manager told me the worker had just been replacing the toilet paper in there, but it doesn't matter; that worker should have washed his hands before returning to work no matter what.

Anyway, we pressed on to Madras, where US-26 turns west and heads into the Deschutes Canyon. Some of this area is quite spectacular (such as the US-26 crossing of the Crooked River), but there was no place safe to stop and take a picture, or else when there was a place, there so much gloom that there was nothing to see. So we continued on west toward Mount Hood. As we climbed back into the Cascades, the rain started getting heavier.

Then I realized that it wasn't rain anymore: it was snow!

At a place where it was safe to do so, I pulled off the road to take a picture of the van in an unexpected snowstorm. Note that travelswithkuma, visible looking out the front window of the van in this picture, does not normally ride here, but in his car seat belted in. He just was ready for his close up.

At the rest area at Government Camp, just past the turnoff for Mt. Hood's Timberline Lodge, the snow had started accumulating and was blowing harder and harder.

Although getting stuck at Mt. Hood in a blizzard was not our idea of how to spend Memorial Day Weekend, I took the opportunity during our restroom break to take a short video.

Once I was finished shooting video in the snow, we got moving down the mountain. We were both a bit nervous, and I took the drive rather slowly. Chains weren't required (a good thing, as I'd packed mine away in the garage for the summer), but "Winter Driving Conditions" were in effect. I was glad we had the new tires, and I drove more slowly than most of the other people out there, moving over for them when I could. I wasn't going to let people pressure me into driving into a ditch just because they wanted to drive 70 MPH on a curving mountain road in a snowstorm. Fortunately, once we dropped down from the summit at Government Camp 1500 feet or so, the snow turned back into rain. It was still IMO treacherous driving conditions, and my reaction to conditions in which I'm uncomfortable is to slow down.

We got to our hotel south of Portland around 8 PM. Alas, my upgrade-fu did not work, as they were completely full up, and we ended up in a double-queen room. We don't like it. Too much of the room is taken up with the second bed, and the layout isn't good. We may ask to be moved to the room type for which I'd originally reserved for the second reservation that starts tomorrow, despite our desire to not have to change rooms in mid-stay. At least tomorrow is the least-crowded day on our schedule, as much of it was planned to decompress from the travel, something which I need more than I planned after that snowy crossing of the mountains. (Besides, it looks like Day Jobbe stuff may be necessary anyway.)

Back Roads to Oregon

Tue, 21 May 2013 06:05:12 GMT

We got away from Fernley at 8 AM, crossed under I-80, and headed north for Gerlach and the Surprise Valley. After leaving Nixon, we saw maybe a dozen vehicles going the other way and none going our way until we stopped briefly in Gerlach. There isn't even a stop sign until the intersection of Surprise Valley Road (Main Street) and CA-299 in Cedarville.

NV-447 runs from Wadsworth to Gerlach. This is the road to Burning Man, and I imagine this two-lane stretch of blacktop is a nightmare during the Burn, but for us it was long, mostly straight, fast, and surprisingly scenic. This is probably the best time of the year to be here, as it was neither too cold nor too hot, and brief desert spring was in bloom.

In Gerlach, the road changes to Washoe County 447 and heads over some mountains toward California. When it crosses the California border (with little fanfare), it becomes Surprise Valley Road. The next town is Eagleville, which as far as I could tell had no services at all. There was plenty of wildlife, including at one point a beaver that we saw slipping over the shoulder to a small stream or canal running along the road.

We stopped in Cedarville and I finally remembered I had the camera. I wish we'd taken some pictures back along the earlier stretches of road, because we won't be coming back this way on account of towing a trailer; the grades on US-395 are not as steep.

We stopped at the Country Hearth Bakery for a small snack (donuts, coffee for me) but primarily as a place where we could use a bathroom. There are no rest areas along the entire route to here.

We took a walk along Cedarville's Main Street after our snack.

Beyond the irrigated lands close to town lies Middle Alkali Lake.

This is real "flyover country," and when we looked up, we saw contrails. Neither Lisa nor I recall ever seeing rainbows in a contrail before.

There's a bookstore downtown, but a sign said hours would be erratic until volunteers stepped forward to run it. This shelf had a sign encouraging people to pay what they thought the books were worth and to slide the money under the door.

After our stop in Cedarville, we turned left at the first stop sign since Wadsworth and headed over Cedar Pass through the Warner Mountains, joined up with US-395, and rejoined roads we've traveled before in Alturas. Here we bought sandwiches from Quiznos and Lisa took the wheel so I could have my lunch first, which was kind of her. We traded back at Canby, California, just before turning north on CA-139 and heading up a stretch we learned was known as "Howard's Gulch."

We needed to stop briefly here so Lisa could get at something in the back of the van, and I took a few more photos. In this one, you can see the railroad grade of the former Modoc Line climbing up from Alturas and Canby.

We headed on up toward Oregon, playing tag with the railroad (a remnant of the ex-SP "Modoc Line." At one time (long before Lisa and I were born), you could ride a train from Fernley all the way to Portland via this route. At Tulelake, we saw equipment from the Modoc Northern Railroad, which attempted to operate the stub of the Modoc Line for a while, sitting abandoned in the small yard, and we stopped to take pictures.

travelswithkuma hopped aboard Modoc Northern 651 looking for a ride, but the locomotive wasn't going anywhere.

He then tried the front end of MN 650, but it, like all the other Modoc Northern equipment including the caboose and one other older baggage car, didn't appear to have turned a wheel in years.

I took a lot of train photos, including some close-up details, and they're posted in a Flickr set. I don't know what the changes announced today about Flickr will mean. I am currently keeping my paid Pro account, but I don't know if that means you can still see the photos without advertising.

We got to the hotel in Klamath Falls about 5 PM, which means we'd gone about 300 miles in about 9 hours, which isn't that speedy, but we stopped quite a few times, and our budgeted travel time included wanting to stop a lot and try and enjoy the trip as much as we can, given that it's going to lead to a whole lot of stress in a few days.

After dinner, we went for a walk along the adjacent OC&E Trail. This trail is 100 miles long, but we only walked the first 1.5 miles, down past milepost 1 and the end of the paved trail to what implicitly should be milepost 0 but isn't signed; this meant we sort of got tangled up in the outskirts of Union Pacific's Klamath Falls Yard, and as we made our way out, we skirted around the remnants of the roundhouse and turntable; the former is gone except for the foundation, and the latter is disconnected and looks like it's being removed. This made for a good hour's total walk after dinner, which we needed after a day mostly sitting in the car.

I'm really glad we took this drive along the road less traveled. I was out of contact most of the day (there's no cell phone service from Gerlach to Cedarville, and not much most of the way from Wadsworth to Alturas). We got to see places we've never seen before, and we really enjoyed it.

A Rose Grows in Fernley

Sat, 18 May 2013 20:54:22 GMT

It's a sign of how much working from home agrees with me that I slept in only an hour this morning, waking up before Amtrak's #5's normal pass of Fernley at 7:45. (It was two hours late this morning; I was there waving at it as it passed.) There was no reason to wake Lisa. I dealt with morning business over coffee and generally relaxed. After Amtrak's passage, I decided to walk down to the taco stand on Main Street and get one of their breakfast burritos. As I was walking back, I saw Lisa standing on the front porch. She had woke up while I was away, had noticed that one of our local rabbits was nibbling on some greenery right outside our front gate, and went to get the camera to take a picture. The rabbit had moved on by the time she came back, but she took a picture of me coming home instead.

In this photo, I'm walking along our sidewalk (Lisa really likes having a sidewalk inside our lot) from the travel trailer toward the front door, having entered through the "back gate" off of First Street. While coming in, I noticed that one of our two rose bushes had started to bloom, so when the light was right, we decided to take a picture of it.

This is one of two rose bushes that came with the property. We haven't done anything in particular to care for them aside from trimming away other types of bushes that have been trying to grow in their space; however, we do water them, in a sense, in that I've been pouring the coffee squeezings (from where I put coffee grounds from my French press) over one bush and Lisa sometimes dumps the water from when she's scrubbed a pot in which she's cooked pasta over the other. This photo is of the "pasta bush." The "coffee bush" is a different kind of rose and hasn't yet bloomed, although it's certainly growing tall; coffee seems to agree with it.

Both Lisa and I are anxious to get moving to Oregon. Today we are running errands for things we need for the trip. Meanwhile, we've been making a list of things we'll purchase while we have an opportunity to stock up from stores that aren't in Nevada or the Bay Area and from the land of no sales tax.

Kickstart Sprint for Girl Genius

Fri, 17 May 2013 21:23:14 GMT

Studio Foglio is running a Kickstarter campaign to raise enough money to print the next paper edition of Girl Genius. I'm in at a relatively low level myself. (I do wish I had the money to drop on the pair of $10K one-of-a-kind support levels; we'd have Phil and Kaja & The Experiments as GoHs of FernleyCon.) Somewhat to I think everyone's surprise, the main goal funded in about one day, and here on Day 3 they're already edging up to stretch goal 3. But if you haven't yet pledged, don't let that stop you: don't we all want to see "Phil in his 'Mr. Hyde' personality, demonstrating the use of [their] astonishing new orange peeler"?

Productive Distraction

Fri, 17 May 2013 00:59:31 GMT

Lisa had been driven to distraction by actions of others yesterday. (I may or may not choose to write about it later, but not in a public entry.) In an attempt to get her mind off of things, I got my coveralls and boots on and asked her to help me clear our yard of more wood debris.

When the workers replaced the broken floor beams under the house (one of the more urgent home repair projects), they left the old beams and junk wood piled in the front yard. Over the past two years, as time and energy permitted, Lisa sorted out those boards for which we think we have some use from those that should be discarded. Many of them are full of nails and/or covered in paint, and therefore were unsuitable for cutting down to kindling. The building contractor, who has lived his whole live in Fernley and played in what is now our house when he was a young boy, told us that much of the wood was salvage from the steam-era water tower from the town's days as a terminus of the Fernley & Lassen Railroad. It's a pity in some ways that we couldn't find more salvageable pieces, because despite the splits and cracks, that wood is still very solid in many ways.

The wood that can't be salvaged needs to be discarded; it's a hazard full of nails and whatnot. Our disposal method has been to put them in our rolling trash dumpster when there has been available room. This also requires cutting the pieces down small enough to fit into the bin. We got the sawhorses, Lisa got the carpenter's saw, and we went after the boards. I held boards while Lisa sawed around nails, and we made a very healthy dent in the pile of scrap wood. It goes substantially faster when there are two people working on it.

As a secondary task, Lisa got the bow saw and we sawed down to kindling size the small bits of branches from the trees on and around the property that Lisa had trimmed. There might not be a lot of it, but wood is expensive, and if this makes enough kindling to light some fires next season, that's a good thing.

An early evening of sawing and hauling wood was good for both of us, for various reasons.

Exclusive to google.co.uk

Wed, 15 May 2013 14:55:17 GMT

If it hadn't been for Cheryl tipping me off to it, I would not have known about today's Google Doodle ~~(link will only show the doodle in question today; otherwise it will be the main page)~~ [Permalink added] on google.co.uk celebrating Frank Hornby's 150th birthday.

No BayCon for Us

Wed, 15 May 2013 01:02:34 GMT

For the record, we aren't going to be going to BayCon this year because we expect to have to go to Oregon in the next few days to attend Lisa's father's funeral and that we'll probably be gone for about a week. Because we don't know the exact dates — we haven't heard from her family yet, and I would be surprised if arrangements have been even made yet — we can't make any firm plans, so the best thing we thought we could do was to cancel our plans for BayCon (and some hotel reservations) in order to maintain flexibility.

Licensed to SMOF

Mon, 13 May 2013 18:22:33 GMT

My Nevada license plates for the minivan were waiting for me when I got home on Saturday, and Lisa installed them before we headed to Reno for shopping yesterday.

I couldn't get SMOF because James Stanley Daugherty's vehicle has it, I didn't want SMOF2 in deference to the memory of Bruce Pelz, and I don't feel sufficiently egotistical to claim SMOF1, so I took the next-best thing.

Not only does this plate show off my two major hobbies (a portion of the registration fee goes to the Virginia & Truckee Railroad), but that my car was proudly purchased in the city of Emphysema.

I doubt anyone will get it except when I'm parked at a convention or an SFSFC board meeting, of course.

Mother's Day

Mon, 13 May 2013 01:07:53 GMT

Lisa said today that for Mother's Day she wanted to go out to lunch. So I took her to a gas station and bought her a burger.

This was because she asked me to take her to Ernie's All American Burger in Sparks, multiple time winner of the Reno Gazette-Journal Best Burger award. We'd already had the second-best burger (the Awful-Awful at Rosie's Diner at the Nugget), and Lisa wanted to try the best. Ernie's is located in the other half of a building that houses the mini-market associated with a corner gas station. With everyone else taking mothers to fancy places, we had the restaurant nearly to ourselves this Sunday afternoon.

Was it worth it worth the trip? Yes! They serve an excellent hamburger. Lisa had their ordinary burger with mushrooms added, and I had the mushroom-swiss burger. It was good value for money and tasty burgers. And we were not at all hungry when we went for our weekly grocery shopping, which holds down shopping expenses.

I was not able to call my mother on Mother's Day because she does not have a telephone; however, she called me as we were leaving Fernley to head to Reno this afternoon. Since I had my headset on, I was able to talk with her until my phone dropped the signal in a part of the Truckee River canyon near Lockwood. Mom called me again a couple of hours later as we were doing the last bit of shopping before heading home. I currently plan to go visit her on our way back from Westercon.

Baseball, BASFA, and Daleks in the Cove

Sun, 12 May 2013 01:35:19 GMT

I got away from work early enough yesterday to head back over to Newark, drop my things at my hotel, and collect Eric Larson from his place to drive us over to BART, where we caught a train for San Francisco and walked to AT&T Park for the Giants-Braves game. There we joined BASFA members and co-workers of Dave Gallaher, who organized the outing and bought the tickets.

Here's the view from our section overlooking home plate as the Giants came to bat in the bottom of the first inning. What a view! And thankfully, while the wind was whipping the flags above our heads, it wasn't swirling around us, although it did get a bit chilly in the later innings and I had to go buy a $6 cup of hot chocolate to keep my fingers from falling off, despite wearing a pair of Giants texting gloves from a previous outing.

It was a romp for the Giants, who had a spectacular fourth inning, sending eleven men to the plate and scoring six runs. It was nice to run off a big inning against an opponent rather than being the victim of one, as so often has been the case. It turned into an easy 8-2 victory against the league-leading Braves, particularly satisfying given how the Braves had shut down the Giants the previous evening.

As the game went into the ninth, many people started leaving, as the result appeared to be a forgone conclusion, but those who left early missed the entrance in McCovey Cove of a peculiar object, even by the standards of the Cove.

A Dalek-like UFO puttered into the cove and wandered around during the ninth inning as the Giants finished mopping up the Braves. (Alas, my camera-phone is not ideal at all for taking these kinds of pictures.) Eric and I made our way down the Lefty O'Doul stairs and I stopped on a landing to shoot this video of The Thing in the Cove.

I said, "It's a floating Dalek!" and was particularly amused to hear the people around me (none of whom except Eric were from the BASFA outing group) agree with me, meaning that they all understood the reference. We have won the culture war, I thought.

After shooting the video, I tried to get down to the Portwalk so I could take a closer shot on account of the camera-phone's zoom is terrible.

Alas, by then, The Thing in the Cove was already skittering away into the night.

Eric and I walked back up the Embarcadero, stopping to admire the LED light sculpture on the Bay Bridge (this being our first time in The City since it was installed) before heading off to BART. We were train-lucky, as a train going our way was approaching the station as we reached the bottom of the stairs.

Aside from a short delay due to a "police incident" at West Oakland (where the BART Police apparently removed a person or persons from the train), we had an uneventful ride back to Fremont. I dropped Eric off at his place and headed back to my hotel. Given that I'd been up since 5 AM, I was very grateful to get to bed.

Today, I "slept in" all of 90 minutes but took my time packing and getting on the road before driving home to Fernley. Typically, today's Giants game came on the air as I was leaving signal range of any of the team's radio network stations. This keeps happening to me, so I gave up and stumped up the $20 for the MLB At Bat app that allows my smartphone to bring in the game as long as I can get a cell phone signal, and I-80 is well-supplied with towers.

I got home to Fernley about 5 PM, and Lisa was of course glad to see me. I'm tired from all that driving. Today was National Train Day, and I would have preferred to have been riding a train home than driving, but I need the van at home. Perhaps on another trip to the Bay Area for work I'll arrange to do it by train and leave the van at home with Lisa.

Taxation With Representation

Fri, 10 May 2013 18:51:44 GMT

This morning I read a newsletter from an online retailer complaining about the bill that has passed the Senate to require online and mail order retailers to collect and remit the sales taxes for sales outside their states. I can certainly understand the retailer's objection to the proposal (which I expect to see die in the House), but I found myself annoyed once again at invoking the Boston Tea Party as tax protestors, for the same reason that I'm annoyed with the Tea Partiers in US politics today.

There is no doubt that the people we now revere in the USA as patriots who destroyed that cargo of tea as a protest against the taxes levied on it by the British Parliament were engaged in an act of defiance against lawfully constituted authority. But crucially — aren't they still teaching this in school? — "taxation without representation" was key to this protest. The American colonists had no say in setting the taxes being levied upon them. To me, this was valid protest. However, today, Americans have a representative form of government, and (for the most part; yes, I know about the District of Columbia) we are taxed by government entities for which we ourselves are responsible, as we voted for them. Therefore, invoking the "tea party" against taxes you personally dislike seems dishonest to me. If the mail-order/online sales tax law is passed by the government and signed by the president, it means that we have been taxed by a government that we elected, regardless of whether you voted for the individual members of that government or not.

Now, I suppose some of these tea-partiers are convinced that the current government is illegitimate in some way (presumably because Their Man Didn't Win). I have little patience with the conspiracy theorists. In general, with specific exceptions that need addressing, our government is elected by the citizens of the USA. (If you could vote but did not, you abstained, which means you said you'd agree with whatever decision the majority made.) That doesn't mean that every person is going to be completely satisfied with every government decision. (I certainly wish the Nevada government could see fit to subsidize rural transportation in Lyon County, for instance.) Anyone who thinks that "democracy" means "I always get exactly what I want," is being childish. Sometimes, our democratically-elected government does things that individuals don't want. Deal with it!

I guess if you're sufficiently ticked off, and are convinced the system has failed you completely and there's absolutely no redress through lawful means, you can go start a revolution. If you win, you were right; but until then, expect to be treated as traitors and rebels, just as the American revolutionaries were until they won. ("Rebellion is never unlawful in the first person, only the third person," to paraphrase Ben Franklin in 1776.) But I don't really see a real serious armed rebellion happening, gun-happy people and periodic crazies to the contrary. Even the US Civil War was waged by duly-elected-and-constituted state governments, albeit that one theory of Reconstruction stated that from the USA's point of view, those governments had committed suicide when they tried un-ratifying the US Constitution. Had it only been individual hot-heads, and had they not been able to get the local governments to back them, the War Between the States would never have happened.

I guess I'm just annoyed at the profoundly anti-government tone that so many people seem to take when the government does something they don't like. To restate Ronald Regan my way, Government is not necessarily the answer or the problem.

Bet On It: BASFA Ambasadorial Appointment

Thu, 09 May 2013 20:51:52 GMT

At this past Monday's BASFA meeting, when Chris Garcia announced that he'd published the "Handicapping the Hugos" issue of The Drink Tank, I asked, "Will you also make book on the Awards?" Somewhat to my dismay, this led to a motion to, in light of my recent relocation to Nevada, appoint me as BASFA's Official Bookmaker. After some parliamentary fun and games, this morphed into a motion to appoint me "Ambassador to Amazonia," or at least the portion of it within the city limits of Fernley. (The regional Amazon distribution center is in Fernley, which is why some of you may have heard of it before I started writing about it.) This amended motion passed, so I have, for now, escaped potential accusations that I'm taking bets on the Hugo Awards.

Volunteering for Training

Wed, 08 May 2013 19:18:21 GMT

I have applied for this volunteer position with the city of Fernley's Depot Museum Collections Committee, which was posted just after I became eligible for it by registering to vote in Fernley. I don't know if I'll get an appointment, or what exactly it will mean in terms of my commitment to the Fernley Depot Museum, but it does sound interesting, and I really do hope I can do something to help get the Depot Museum open, given how much expense and difficulty was involved in getting it moved and restored at its current site, and what a waste it is that it was this close to actually opening before the Fernley Preservation Society apparently disbanded after it became clear that the negotiations with the city had fallen through.

Worldcon Site Scouting

Tue, 07 May 2013 21:59:34 GMT

Cheryl Morgan is in Finland right now, and is offering to search out answers to any questions you might have about the place in regarding their Worldcon bid. As the ballot for the 2015 Worldcon (including the Helsinki bid) was recently released, now is a good time for sending Cheryl questions before you make up your mind for whom to cast your Worldcon site selection ballot this year.

Doing the Math

Mon, 06 May 2013 17:21:59 GMT

I've been asked why I'm doing this hotel-stay thing instead of renting a "cheap apartment." Well, to start with, "cheap apartment" and "Bay Area" are pretty much mutually exclusive terms. (Go search Craigslist if you are not familiar with Bay Area housing costs.) Second, I'm now only in the Bay Area about two weeks (between ten and twelve nights) per month, not including special events like BayCon. My previous apartment cost me about $33/day. If I can continue to get the $41 (net after taxes) room rate I'm currently getting, as long as I spend no more than 24 nights per month in the Bay Area, I'm money ahead. Finally, by no longer spending the majority of my time in California, I've established residency in Nevada, and if I'm reading the rules correctly, I now only have to pay income tax for the days I'm actually working in California. For now, I'm continuing to have full resident income taxes withheld because I was legally resident in the state until the end of April of this year and need to have an actual 540NR California non-resident/part-year-resident tax return behind me to figure out the real impact of this, but it seems like it should cut my California income tax in half in the long run.

Now, speaking of taxes: I mentioned to someone in Nevada about how I'll pay less California tax under these circumstances and he said, "Yeah, they tax you to death there."

I said, "Well, yes, but you get more services, too, like better public transportation."

He said, "It would easy to be better than what we have here!" And this is someone living in Reno-Sparks, which actually does have a public bus system. I got the impression he thought there should be better public transport.

"You get what you pay for," I said, "And we don't pay for much. That's why the only way you can get to Reno from Fernley is by private vehicle or a $100 one-way taxi ride. Not even Greyhound stops there, and I assume they won't unless someone pays a subsidy for them to stop their Reno-Salt Lake City buses there."

Just Visiting

Mon, 06 May 2013 02:53:28 GMT

This is my first "visit" to the Bay Area under the new work/life plan and after vacating the old apartment in San José. I'm checked in to the EZ-8 Motel Newark, which has the benefit of being quite inexpensive by Bay Area standards. It's clean. There's a refrigerator, but no microwave oven, and "cooking is prohibited in rooms." The internet access is available but not free; however, I can bridge my smartphone, which has unlimited bandwidth, so that's not really a problem. I wish I'd remembered my swimsuit, as there is a small hot tub, and it's convenient to my room; I could use the relaxation. (Maybe next trip.) The location is not convenient to transit; if I have to stay down here and not be tied to my car, I'll have to stay in some place like the EZ-8 on North First Street (a block from where my apartment was), but that's about $10/night more. Location, location, location.

My only significant complaint is a dearth of power outlets. It's about as bad as the British hotel rooms in which I've stayed. Even with a six-foot extension cord and eight-foot power cord, I can just barely reach my CPAP machine from the outlet nearest the bed. (I'll need to get a longer extension cord for the next stay, I guess.)

And, thanks to it being the ESPN Sunday Night game and my having got away from Fernley a couple of hours earlier than usual, I got to see the Giants-Dodgers game, which, since we don't have cable or satellite at Fernley House, is a treat for me.

I am amused that one of my fellow travelers at this hotel has a "My Other Vehicle is a TARDIS" license plate bracket on his/her car.

Fernley Wildlife Refuge

Sat, 04 May 2013 05:36:41 GMT

With spring we have more of the local and migratory wildlife stirring more often. This morning, when I opened the front door to go take a short walk before going to work, I saw this in the vacant lot to the east of Fernley House:

These three rabbits stayed put just barely long enough for me to take a photo. Seconds later, a passing truck startled them and they scattered. Although because of the zoom here it looks like they're isolated, in fact this lot has houses and paved streets on three sides, plus the UP railroad tracks to the north.

Later in the afternoon, some of the quail that have moved in next door made an appearance.

This is the same lot where the rabbits were this morning. You can see a neighbor's house beyond to the east. This fellow was roosting in a bush acting as lookout while the others foraged.

Both of these photos were taken from my front porch, albeit with a zoom on the camera. I like our little wildlife refuge. I've been considering leaving some carrots for the rabbits.

Step by Step

Fri, 03 May 2013 01:19:31 GMT

The studio apartment built on top of Fernley House can be accessed in two ways: an internal stairwell between it and the family room, and an external set of stairs with an outside deck. (Alas, the deck is not well placed for train-watching, being on the east rather than north side of the building.) We took the IKEA desk upstairs via the outside stairs, and Lisa warned me that a step near the top was cracked and starting to fail. I agreed with Lisa's suggestion that fixing this failing step was a priority, particularly as it was something we could do ourselves.

A couple of days later, we went to Lowe's and bought an 8-foot length of 2x6" pressure-treated lumber. (The steps are four feet wide and consist of a pair of 2x6s secured to the framework by wood screws.) Lowe's wouldn't cut pressure-treated lumber, but it wasn't too difficult for Lisa to cut the board in half this afternoon. Getting the old wood screws out was fairly difficult, however. First, we had to dig dirt and old paint out of the tops enough to get a screwdriver to fit. Second, eight of the twelve screws were awkwardly placed for using the electric drill. Third, even the four in the center wouldn't come out easily, and Lisa had to use an adapted socket wrench and a pair of Vice-grips to work the recalcitrant wood screws out. I stood by, carried away boards as they were removed, and retrieved the drill bit when it rolled off the step once.

Putting in the new boards, by comparison to the removal of the old ones, was a piece of cake. Interestingly, the unpainted pressure-treated new boards look about the same as the painted (but badly faded) old boards surrounding them. It's a good afternoon's work to get rid of of a step that could have failed under us or at least tripped us up.

My Papers Pliz

Thu, 02 May 2013 03:57:52 GMT

In yesterday's mail, ~~the magic piece of plastic that takes the place of human judgement~~ my Nevada driver's license arrived, allowing me to get rid of the temporary paper license and officially invalidating my California license.

Meanwhile, my attempt to "summerize" the fireplace (digging out ashes, vacuuming) came to naught when it turned cold enough today to oblige me to set a fire for a few hours to get the temperature in the living room back up above 20°C.

Keep Those ____s Coming

Wed, 01 May 2013 16:07:50 GMT

Match Game questions have been arriving after my request last night, and I thank you all for submitting them. It's likely I won't be able to use some of them, particularly if we are lucky enough to have the folks from The Game Show Show on the panel (we're asking them), on account of at least one of the questions is almost exactly the same as one that they used in their rotation, but I still appreciate the questions being sent in. Also, some of what I've received will work as bonus round and sudden death questions, which are in a different format, and that's good, too, because those have been a little stale lately.

Bonus Round questions are in the form of "Star ___" and the contestant has to get an exact match with the single panelist's answer to win the bonus round prize. We modified the Super Match rules from the original show to make it more likely that most or all of the panelists will get selected in the Bonus Round, unlike the original show where Richard Dawson was selected nearly any time he was on the panel, on account of his uncanny ability to read contestants' minds.

Get Ready to Fill in the ____

Wed, 01 May 2013 04:13:15 GMT

As many of you know, we're planning on doing Match Game SF at Westercon 66 this Independence Day Weekend in Sacramento. While we haven't done a show in almost two years and could re-use old material, it's always more fun (particularly for returning panelists) to hear new questions. So once again I turn to you, the readers of my LiveJournal, for help. We need more Match Game Questions!

Remember that Match Game questions are not trivia questions. They are fill-in-the-blank questions where there is more than one possible answer, particularly if there are funny alternatives.

Bad question: "Albert Einstein said, 'God does not play ___ with the universe.'" This is bad because there's only one "right" answer.

Good question: "Albert Einstein said, 'God does not play dice with the universe; however, he does play ___ with it.'"

If you have GSN on your cable/satellite system, watch an episode of Match Game to see how it works. We want questions with an SF/F-related theme, but in practice, it's often possible to rework questions from the historical show with an SF/F "skin."

If you don't have my e-mail, you can post possible questions as replies to this post. (I'll moderate replies on this post for that reason.) Alternatively, you can direct message me on LiveJournal, or use my LJ handle @livejournal.com. All of those will get to me. I'll credit your question on the show.

Thanks for your help!

The Best Time of the Year

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 00:14:45 GMT

Spring and Autumn are the best times to be here at Fernley House, particularly because we have no air conditioning and the heat is limited to wood burning and portable electric space heaters. But right now, the weather is perfect, and I had a pleasant day of getting my Day Jobbe done from my temporary office in the living room. Lisa assembled the IKEA desk upstairs and had me come make sure that the resultant U-shaped desk would have enough room for me to work when we someday have the upstairs office (originally a studio apartment) habitable again.

I only had to work an ordinary eight-hour day today, with no crazy deadlines, and combined with a "commute" of only a few meters, I'm feeling pretty chipper this afternoon. Now if only the SF Giants can snap out of this slump into which they've somehow drifted....

Refilling the Larder

Mon, 29 Apr 2013 04:31:12 GMT

Early versions of our plans had us stopping for grocery shopping in Reno/Sparks on the way home from the Bay Area, but there was simply too much stuff in the back of the van for serious groceries, so we had to go back into Reno/Sparks today after we finished unloading the minivan. The IKEA desk is now upstairs in what will be my office someday (after we get it habitable again, including getting the network connection up there and, most importantly, getting the air conditioning working) and Lisa will reassemble it tomorrow. Some of the things we packed in San Jose got put away today, but it's far less urgent now that they're home; we'll get things done as necessary.

After going to Grocery Outlet, we had an early dinner at the Atlantis' buffet, which, after trying quite a few around the area, we think is probably the best we've had. Waddling away from the buffet, we were in good condition to avoid impulse buys from Winco before heading home to restock the larder at Fernley House.

Lisa says the weather is turning perfect to start painting again, but that she wants me to stay out from underfoot if and when she starts to paint the front porch. Darn! I never get to have any fun....

Welcome Home

Sun, 28 Apr 2013 04:47:27 GMT

We were up at 6 AM today, and the final packing out of the apartment went extremely smoothly. Lisa did a very good job getting boxes packed and finding ways to pack odd-sized-and-shaped items. I'm glad we had a couple of huge Ziploc bags, into which the afghans from my bed — handmade presents to me from my late grandmother that have been with me since I first moved out on my own — could be safely stowed. Including a move-out inspection from one of the staff, we left just after 10 AM. (They seemed pretty satisfied with how we'd returned the apartment to a fairly tidy state, although apparently no matter what we did, we will be charged for cleaning against my deposit. Ah, well, anything I get from the deposit is gravy, I reckon.) We did, however, have a number of errands in the area, including stopping for lunch, and it was closer to 3 PM when we headed out of Fremont. Including the usual rest/fuel stops at Lodi Junction and Colfax, and a small amount of groceries in Fernley proper, we got home just after 8 PM, which is really very good time for the inter-city portion of the trip. We unloaded our luggage and the boxed stuff, but the furniture, including the desk, can wait until tomorrow.

So it's completely official now: I turned in the keys in San José and now, for the first time in my life, I have no home at all in California. I have to wrap my head around "home" being Fernley. This isn't a complaint; it's just something very new for me.

Last Day

Sat, 27 Apr 2013 03:56:03 GMT

After working from the apartment this morning, we "struck the set" as best we could at the apartment in San Jose.

While I carried the plastic carpet protector down to my van, Lisa disassembled the IKEA desk. When I returned, we borrowed a cart from the apartment management and moved it to the van, followed by my office chair and my nightstand. (It should go without saying that these are my pieces of furniture that I moved into the apartment, not things that came with it.) After lunch, we disconnected the cable modem and I slogged down to Comcast to turn it in and cancel my account. They were, for a change, easy to deal with about this, especially after I explained that they don't serve Fernley. (Fernley's cable operator is Charter.)

Lisa packed more bits away. There's not a whole lot left, and what's mostly left is things we have to have tonight, like the sheets on the bed and our personal luggage, which we'll move out tomorrow morning.

Having (deliberately) used up all of the food in the apartment, we still needed dinner, so we walked down to the Smoking Pig BBQ, which isn't far from the apartment, but where I'd never eaten before. The place was so crowded that we took a to-go order. It was good, too, although perhaps if we eat there again we'll get the next-larger size, but only one of them, and then split it between us.

After dinner, we moved a couple more boxes of things down to the van. Because of the necessity of stripping sheets and the like, move-out tomorrow morning will be a bit more complicated than the usual hotel-move out (at which we're experts, what with all of our convention travel), but it should be not too much trouble. I brought my camera and will take video and still pictures of the apartment before we leave. We're not going to try for a white-glove cleaning, although I did get the hand-held vacuum cleaner out and do the carpet this afternoon. The management is planning to clean the place on Monday anyway. I don't think I really am giving them anything about which to complain.

I was able to bet the internet bridging from my mobile phone to work, although I did have to buy the full version of PDANet ($8, not too expensive) in order to also use it to bring up the Giants game. I have unlimited bandwidth on the mobile phone, so that's not a problem. Lisa chuckled over how much technology it took for me to listen to a baseball game being broadcast over the air; unfortunately, there's so much RF in this apartment that an AM radio just doesn't work.

So tonight is my final night in the Atrium Gardens apartment, after just slightly over one year here. I don't have a particular attachment to what is really just a glorified hotel room; however, it has served me decently for the past year and I have little to complain about. If I were expecting to be in the Bay Area more than I am, I'd renew the lease, but as it stands now, it will cost me less to rent cheap hotel rooms when I'm hear. (Or if any of my friends reading this have a spare bedroom they might consider renting, let me know and we can discuss it to our mutual benefit.)