Tunic +1 to Confusion Charms
Swung by the grocery store today to pick up dinner. I was wearing my Technicon 17 (2001) t-shirt, and the cashier kept staring at it. I think kittenchan‘s catgirl in Grecian robes confused the heck out of him.
I just don’t wear the number of t-shirts I used to. At Staples, I had to wear corporate red, but at B&D, Thrifty Nickel, Decipher, and BCT, I could wear what I wanted as long as it was neat, clean, inoffensive, and gender-appropriate. I owned a LOT of t-shirts. But at NASA, polo shirts are the order of the day, so my t-shirt wear has been cut by five-sevenths, and much of my collection has felt the bite of the ongoing ‘stuff’ purge.
Kinda sucks, because I kept seeing t-shirts I like at cons – such as an excellent Jennie Breeden shirt at MarsCon – and having to tell myself, “When will you be wearing this, and how much room do you really have in the dresser?” Sigh. I have a rule that I can buy something new for every two objects of similar kind or size I purge. Maybe I need to do another t-shirt purge soon to make room. Wish I could justify doing another run of TeeFive shirts (and find the art for the back).
EDIT: It has been pointed out to me that I was wearing the TCon 18 shirt. Either I fail at reading Roman numerals upside down, or the +1 to Confusion is working better than I thought.
But can she run Linux?
After starting the series 6 years ago, I finally picked up the last two volumes and have finished reading the Chobits comic. I liked it a lot, and I’m glad I gritted my teeth to read eight graphic novels backwards. (I usually take in an entire comic page in a glance or two, and reading unflipped manga for me is a bit like taking your car up to 55 mph in second gear. You can do it, but it’s not comfortable.)
Y’know, only the Japanese could combine 1) a serious examination of computer emotion and sentience, and 2) innocent, adorable robot girls running around unself-consciously in mildly fetishy outfits. It kept confusing me, because between the clothing choices and the male lead’s humorous over-reactions to every situation, I wasn’t sure I was meant to be taking this seriously, but then the authors would drop back into the real distress experienced by several characters because of the difficult emotional situations they faced.
The ending doesn’t contain any real surprises, but the purpose of this tale is the journey, not the destination, and the last book makes sense of several points that I’d expected to be conveniently forgotten. I no longer trust 21st century creators to do this, so it’s a welcome change to be able to believe “we were planning this all along” for once.
In completely unrelated news, Midori has found the basket of laundry that I’ve just pulled from the dryer, and is at this moment the happiest sleeping cat in Portsmouth.
TCon Saturday – The Crud Strikes Back
Saturday I woke at 8:30, thought to myself “no way, not on a night where I have to stay up ’till 2” and went back to sleep. I woke again at 10:30, went to sit up and was assaulted by nausea and headache. Not, “Oh, I feel like crap, oh well,” but “oh God I think I may need to run for the bathroom RIGHT NOW.” In the hopes that more rest would help, I rolled over until noon. Couldn’t put it off any longer at that point, and made it to McBryde in time for kittykatya and impink‘s Fragile Gravity (http://unseenllc.com/) panel. That was fun, especially when Barb had to change a DVD and Chris was forced to improvise for several minutes. I look forward to Book 3!
Well, you know you’re at a real con when two good events are going on at the same time, and much as I wanted to see the General Webcomics Panel, the Spin Doctor had a date at Filking 1025. (Tech uses 4-digit course numbers.) I contributed a couple lines to the weekend’s official filk, which we actually finished nice and early! What a concept! An impromptu rendition of “The Dragon and The Lady” followed (NSFW), with joking comments about the fact that the local fandom children are being raised on this stuff. To quote a song that Keith often covers, we’ll have a generation of well-rounded outcats.
I dropped by rattrap and drich‘s “First Ones” panel – they are the only attendees who’ve attended every Technicon. I’d prepared a button that read “Technicon Fourth One” (the best I could do). Lots of old memories flew around that panel; hard to believe the con’s 25 years old. I’m fairly sure that’s a Virginia fandom record, unless you count RoVaCon / Rising Star as one entity. Still, though, the pain, nausea, and light-headedness continued to build. Barb and others started telling me to Go Lie Down. I talked to Starr a bit – she was having appliance issues at the house right before she had to attend a wedding – and finally gave in and went back to the hotel.
Good news of the evening? While I was semi-comatose, colleenk gave birth to a little boy. Gratz to her and yubbie! (Unsurprisingly, this made the con accountant unavailable for the rest of the event.)
I really regret missing the Costume Call and southernsinger‘s performance. Every few years at Technicon, I seem to come down with something on Saturday; perhaps I need to start over-medicating the week before, or something. I wasn’t the only one, either: shrewlet had a rough day, and there were bleary eyes elsewhere at the con. However, with modern technology, it’s likely that the evening entertainment was all taped, and I’m hoping that someone posted pictures somewhere.
Fortunately, I woke up in possession of a far stabler head and stomach before my evening panels, and headed down to the Microtel conference room. Those panels… are a filtered entry.*grin*
Primate Engineering
Slept reasonably well last night, but for some reason I am sluggish and foggy this morning. I remember bits and pieces of the dream I had… something about gorillas loping calmly out of the old General Electric plant back in Salem. In my dream, it was 3am, and rattrap and I had been tasked to do something about the gorilla situation, which I protested because I’d been up all night and had work tomorrow.
These are my dreams, folks. They don’t get any more coherent.
Despite, or because of, my mental fog this morning, my brain was quite creative on the drive to work. I fleshed out some more concepts for the webcomic I’m never going to have time or skill to do. I really miss plotting out Artificial Intelligence with Tom Monaghan. If I ever fix or replace my scanner, those old comics really ought to go on the web while I can still find the old print collection.
Midori-kitty has been a lot more affectionate to us the last few weeks, but she’s been quite hostile to visitors at the same time. We’re thinking it’s a territory issue, but she really needs to quit it. This remains our place, not hers, until she’s willing to pay rent for it. And she doesn’t make much money.
Must. Clear. Head. And. Get Work Done.
Sluggy Doctor
I’m amused that, in my opinion, that caricature doesn’t look much like Tennant, yet I knew immediately who it was supposed to be before reading the dialogue 🙂
Weekend on Mars
Started off the weekend with a fever on Friday, caused probably by having to run around in the cold cold rain on Thursday. But I medicated the heck out of myself, and was well enough to travel with Starr to Williamsburg on Friday for MarsCon.
Most conventions are, for me, opportunities to socialize with friends I don’t often get to see. southernsinger, kittykatya, impink, geckoman, and stori_lundi were all there, as well as folks I get to see a little more often such as ptownhiker, fixitup, and torn757. Got to spend some quality time with Jesse and Dwight too!
Convention loot: a Devil’s Panties graphic novel (Jennie Breeden remembered me from Dragon*Con), character sketches from an artist in the dealer’s room, a Carcassonne expansion and an book of Paranoia XP modules, two White Plectrum CDs and a Coyote Run CD, some erotica from Helen Madden‘s table, and a couple of buttons. After spending the weekend avoiding the purchase of T-shirts, Starr and I were handed free ones by a local game store – now I have to get rid of more old ones to make space!
Next year, the con is supposed to move to a bigger location, and it really needs the space. MarsCon completely overflowed its host hotel, which is a shame, as I think it’s a nice place to hold the weekend. I got to hear some other VA con politics I didn’t want to hear about, but that’s the down side of having friends who are so heavily involved in things.
Speaking of being involved, this was the first time I can recall having my con badge paid for as a “Guest” presenter. I have to say I found it very cool, though somehow I had always imagined it would be for my Great American Science Fiction Novel. Still, the panels (which I talk a bit more about in the Lifestyle filter) were great fun, and I can’t wait to do them again next year.
We’d really intended to stay longer on Sunday, but despite finally getting the MarsCon Charity Chair Massage I’d been wanting to try for years, we had a bad case of burnout. Excitement, dancing, endorphins, and little sleep all hit at once, and Starr and I headed home around 1:30 to veg for the rest of the day. Still haven’t quite come down though. How long ’till T-Con?
Oh, by the way, for people who didn’t go see Cloverfield, or restrained themselves from visiting YouTube this weekend, here’s the new Trek movie trailer. Total geekgasm.
Brain in the high-tech gutter
Really. The model on the new Microsoft Mactopia page looks like she wants to charge me $2.95 a minute for something, and it ain’t tech support. Are they diversifying now that Bill’s leaving?
Rough night last night. Starr was quite ill with food poisoning all day and night, and I was way overdue on laundry even without the upcoming con to consider. Did get three loads done, including the kilt, and I think she mostly forgave me for my unskilled nursing attempts. We had no trouble conking out when bedtime rolled around. I swear, at this point I’m considering afternoon naps for the weekend.
Speaking of MarsCon, a preliminary schedule‘s up. At least I hope it’s preliminary. Not only is everything I wish to attend scheduled directly against something else I wish to attend, but there is one timeslot where it appears the webcomics guests will need to be in two places at once.
Tonight: more laundry, packing, and cleaning out the car.
Trick or Treat!
I was working on a journal post this morning, but my USB 2 expansion card freaked in the middle of that, ruining an iPod update and crashing the computer. So no post.
That’s kinda the tone for the whole month of October. Good things certainly happened, but it’s been pretty rough. My workload’s been amazing – I netted almost 120 hours in one 2-week period. As well, a carefully-arranged Halloween costume failed to materialize; then sickness killed a carefully-planned Halloween party trip.
On the other hand, I was too lazy to put together an interesting outfit for a later party, and wound up just attending in my Enterprise uniform… winning First Place (Men’s), to my surprise!
I’m really bummed about missing Rising Star this year. It sounds like they’re gonna have some fun! But we’ve dropped $700 on car repairs this month, and holiday gift-giving’s on the way, so we have to watch the budget like a hawk. (Here’s hoping I don’t have to replace that PCI card.)
Questionable Content – one of my favorite webcomics, and worth reading through from the beginning – is selling a t-shirt which proclaims, “She Blinded Me With Library Science!” which keeps bringing to mind a certain Yeager crew member.
I did in fact begin NaNoWriMo this week. I have no expectation of finishing in time – the demands on my time are manifest right now – but I’m starting it anyway. This is the closest my head has been in years to having a complete plot and interesting characters lined up, and I’m not giving up now. I may even get around to reposting my WARS stories to elfie, just for my own inspiration.
Taverncast – a WoW podcast – did a Halloween episode called “War of the Murlocs” this year. Despite the fact that I listened to it during the day at work, am closely familiar with the old Orson Welles broadcast, and caught many of the in-jokes, they still managed to creep me out a tiny bit. Maybe it’s my overactive imagination: judge for yourself at war-of-the-murlocs.mp3 if you like. I’ll be having fish for dinner tonight as my own strike back against the slimy rampagers.
Radio over Wires
I’m very addicted to podcasts now: working through the backlog of the cool ones I’ve found is really helping me get through my work day.
It’s all the fault of the Fragile Gravity podcast at http://unseenllc.com/feed/glidepath.xml – of course I’d want to hear what kittykatya and impink were up to.
Then, as I realized that one show per week or so wasn’t going to feed my addiction properly, I stumbled upon World of Warcast – a fun, casual hour of lvl 40s and 50s talking and goofing off about Blizzard’s little life-sucker.
A link from an astronomy website drew me to Slacker Astronomy, where you don’t have to be a hardcore space geek, but you do have to have a goofy sense of humor.
And now, well, I’m hooked. The iTunes music store offers hundreds of free podcasts, ranging from language lessons in Japanese to video podcasts of French Maids explaining XML coding. You don’t have to have iTunes or even an MP3 player – there’s lots of software which’ll let you subscribe and listen from your desktop machine.
So that’s the morning post; I need to finish loading Steve Jackson Games’ new Fnordcast onto the iPod and leave for work…
This is all I have today
What, you want content? Sorry, I gotta leave for work in a few.
What you get is a webcomic link: Bumblebee and Jazz go to see Pixar’s Cars.
