alanfleming

I got away from home at 5:30, but immediately had to stop for fuel because I forgot to refuel last night. I also stopped in Reno to grab a breakfast sandwich, Donner Summit for the rest area, Colfax for coffee and a restroom, Lodi Junction to refuel, Livermore for coffee, and Fremont to buy Kayla some nail polish remover because she forgot to pack some, before getting to the Marriott about 1:30 PM. That's really good time for me. I managed to miss Reno and Sacramento's rush hours, and when I reached the Bay Area, I was going against the holiday get-away traffic.

( Moving In )

I am not sure if I'll post much about the convention while it's going on. Friday in particular is super-busy, with the Preliminary WSFS Business Meeting online at 9 AM, and the Opening Ceremony of BayCon/Westercon at 1 PM, followed by Site Selection opening at 2:30 PM. Furthermore, I personally am not going to be around the convention. I've delegated everything to Kayla. And I'm clearly not going to get enough sleep, which is bad.

Current Mood: tired
Current Location: Santa Clara, California

kevin_standlee

Because I'm driving to Westercon instead of flying, I can be more expansive in my packing and don't have to fit everything into one (or at most two) bags. That's both good and bad. The good part is not having to work so hard packing. The bad part is carrying way too much stuff. But I guess it's sort of good practice for Worldcon. I sprung for first class for the flight to Seattle, so I get two checked bags, and based on what I've been packing for Westercon, I think I'll need it. Mind you, I won't be taking an extra Banker's Box of Westercon gear with me to Seattle, which will help.

Tomorrow's plan is for me to get away from Fernley as early as possible. I typically am up around 3 or 3:30 AM on Thursdays anyway, so if I can make an early start, I should be able to get to the hotel and get moved in fairly early. I'm I'm lucky, I won't get tangled up in any of the commute-time traffic, save possibly the morning Sacramento commute. Wish me luck!

Current Mood: optimistic
Current Location: Fernley, Nevada

tamaranth

2025/101: The Silence of the Girls — Pat Barker

I was no longer the outward and visible sign of Agamemnon’s power and Achilles’ humiliation. No, I’d become something altogether more sinister: I was the girl who’d caused the quarrel. Oh, yes, I’d caused it – in much the same way, I suppose, as a bone is responsible for a dogfight. [loc. 1596]

This is the story of Briseis, a princess of Lyrnessus who was captured when the Achaeans sacked the city. Her husband and brothers were slaughtered, and she was given to Achilles as a prize. Later, Agamemnon's prize Chryseis was returned to her father, a priest of Apollo: plague had broken out and Apollo, the god of plague, needed to be appeased. Agamemnon complained about the loss of his property: Briseis was taken from Achilles and given to Agamemnon to replace Chryseis, and Achilles then sulked in his tent and refused to fight.

Of course the story is quite different from Briseis' point of view.( Read more... )

Current Mood: thoughtful

tamaranth

2025/100: Monsters — Emerald Fennell

The best thing about there being a murder in Fowey is that it means there is a murderer in Fowey. It could be anyone. [loc. 464]

The nameless narrator of Monsters is a twelve-year-old girl, orphaned in a boating accident ('Don’t worry – I’m not that sad about it') and living with her grandmother. Every summer she's packed off to an aunt and uncle who run a guest house in the quaint Cornish town of Fowey. There, she meets Miles, also twelve, and they bond over a murder ( Read more... )

Current Mood: uncomfortable

kevin_standlee

Kuma Bear has announced his travel plans for this summer. He and his Girl are going to Europe again, once again with a two-month first-class Eurail pass. (Fortunately, Bear doesn't need a separate pass.) Last year's trip was badly disrupted at the start due to my utter misunderstanding of how to read AirBnB listings. This year, we started planning far enough in advance that we could get Lisa and Bear into the same extended-stay hotel (essentially a studio apartment) for the full two months. (While it did not actually come to it, what we did last year was multiple reservations end-to-end, with the possibility that she would have to move from one room to another, or move out for one day into a hotel and then come back the next day, or similar disruptions, and that made planning almost impossible.)

Lisa now knows the area better, and she will be able to base herself out of Munich, made a lot of day trips from there to visit a bunch of places she has lined up, and also make some multi-day excursions where she can travel more lightly while leaving much of her stuff in the "home base" in Munich. We have some of those trips lined up already, and hope to get the rest of them booked by the time she leaves for Europe. Some of those plans may have to wait until she's already there, though. Fortunately, having that Eurail pass gives her a fair bit of travel flexibility, as she's not generally tied to any specific train.

While Kayla and I are at Westercon, Lisa and Kuma will be packing for their trip. I'm scheduled to take her to the airport in Reno on the Wednesday after Westercon.

Current Mood: optimistic
Current Location: Fernley, Nevada

tamaranth

2025/099: The Story of a Heart — Rachel Clarke

Depending on your point of view, the transplantation of a human heart is a miracle, a violation, a leap of faith, an act of sacrilege. It’s a dream come true, a death postponed, a biomedical triumph, a day job. [loc. 199]

Keira, aged nine, is fatally injured in a traffic accident: her heart keeps beating but she is brain-dead. Max, also aged nine, has been in hospital for almost a year because his heart is failing. This is the story of how Keira (and, more actively, her family) saved Max( Read more... )

Current Mood: thankful

kevin_standlee

Kayla thought she had a meeting at 10 AM today, so off she went to breakfast and then did some errands. When she got home she discovered that that thanks to misreading a time (we're usually very good at this thanks to so many meetings we attend taking place in lots of different places online) the meeting was actually at 2 PM Pacific Time.

The issue here was that I had a $20 discount coupon from Jiffy Lube for air conditioning service, which the minivan needed, and it was good today only. The original plan was for Kayla to take her meeting and then I'd take the minivan to Sparks. Jiffy Lube is only open until 4 PM on Sunday, and an AC job takes a lot longer than an oil change, so if I was going to take advantage of this offer, it had to happen sooner, not later.

I got to JL and after confirming that the Astro has had its AC upgraded to the modern coolant (that we did years ago up in Oregon), they said they could do it, but that it would take a little while. I wish I'd know just how long it would have taken, because had I known, I might have tried to get some lunch. Instead, as I typically do when going to that JL, I ordered a coffee from Starbucks, which was ready (albeit under Kayla's name, but nobody ever checks) by the time I walked across the shopping center parking lot. For an oil change, they often are done by the time I get back, but an AC recharge involves purging the system (sucking out all the coolant), which turned out to be harder than usual, they said, because the coolant was sort of goopy. That's odd because I had the system completely repaired last year, but okay. Fortunately for me, I had a new issue of Trains to read.

I had assumed that some of the coolant had leaked out of the system, but they said that the biggest problem was that there was too much coolant in it, which was part of why it took so long to purge. They also were concerned that even after recharging, it wasn't putting out as much cool air on Max AC, but I reassured them that this older vehicle and older system doesn't work that well at slow engine speeds. I rarely turn on Max AC except at freeway speeds because it needs more power to run the compressor than works at slower speeds.

After stopping to grab a sandwich and soda, I set out on I-80 east for home, and to my relief (in multiple ways, as it was pretty hot out there), I got the level of of air conditioning I would expect from a properly functioning system.

I wanted to get this done before Westercon because it is a long drive (around 500 km each way) from Fernley to Santa Clara, and much of it will be in hot places including the Central Valley of California. Here's hoping that this recharge holds for a while.

Current Mood: relieved
Current Location: Fernley, Nevada

kevin_standlee

Although I'm nominally the person coordinating Westercon 77's two official functions, I won't be around the convention that much. I'm doing the driving to Santa Clara on Thursday morning, but Kayla is in charge of Site Selection and at the moment, the plan is for her to drive us home on Monday. Martin Pyne is chairing the Westercon Business Meeting. Anyway, today I did my part by doing the printing of the site selection ballots and Westercon Business Meeting papers. It's appropriate that I was using the large printer that we bought for Westercon 74 because we had to be totally self-sufficient for our on-site printing, and that we also used to print the Program Book.

Lisa and I printed all of the program books, including collating and stapling them. It's hard to say whether that was cheaper than having it printed, but it did mean that we didn't have any wasted copies. Had we run out of program books on site, we could have printed more of them, and then post-con we printed what we needed to send publications to our non-attending members. We ran a huge part of that printer's service life off of it in a very short time, and, after consulting with the Westercon 77 treasurer, I personally bought the printer off of the convention at half what the convention paid for it, which seemed pretty reasonable to me.

Our printing needs for Westercon 77 in Santa Clara next weekend are much less than Tonopah's were, and the papers are now packed up with the stuff like the ballot box, cash box, and the Gavel of Westercon to take to BayCon/Westercon.

Current Mood: accomplished
Current Location: Fernley, Nevada

kevin_standlee

I had my hair trimmed today, and decided that they gray dye job I had last time did not look good, but that solid black is not good either, so they tried a darker brown-black this time.

( Dye Job )

I still keep thinking about what it would take to restore all of the hair up top. Even if the HSA will cover it, I think I need to try and build up the account from all that I spent on the hernia surgery and the laser facial treatment.

Current Mood: satisfied
Current Location: Fernley, Nevada

tamaranth

01MAY25: The Vampyr (Dreyer, 1932) -- Netflix
( Read more... )
02MAY25: Thunderbolts* (Schreier, 2025) -- Greenwich PictureHouse
( Read more... )
04MAY25: Sinners (Coogler, 2025) -- Greenwich PictureHouse
( Read more... )
08MAY25: Aftersun (Wells, 2022) -- Netflix
( Read more... )
14MAY25: Arcade Fire -- Royal Albert Hall
( Read more... )
15MAY25: Dead Talents Society (Hsu, 2024) -- Netflix
( Read more... )
23MAY25: The Phoenician Scheme (Wes Anderson, 2025) -- Greenwich PictureHouse
( Read more... )
29MAY25: Coriolanus (Fiennes, 2011) -- BBC iPlayer
( Read more... )
31MAY25: Rhys Darby, Alexandra Palace
( Read more... )

Current Mood: calm

kevin_standlee

One week from today, I (and/or Kayla) will be in Santa Clara moving in to the hotel for Westercon/BayCon. Mostly Kayla, to be honest, but someone with the credit cards and ID will have to check us into the hotel.

Current Mood: tired
Current Location: Fernley, Nevada

kevin_standlee

Lisa and I went to Reno today for several errands that were of increasing urgency, as time is running short. While Lisa is not going to Westercon, she will be leaving on a trip for two months for which she leaves on the Wednesday after I get back from Westercon/Baycon on Monday the 7th. I hope we don't have to make any more Reno trips and that the next time I see Reno it will be on the morning of July 3 as I'm driving to Santa Clara.

We did get the things for which we were seeking: a new band for Lisa's watch (the old band broke), some additional socks for both of us as many of our socks were worn out, and a bit of material for Lisa to repair something. Fortunately, there is a good independent fabric store (Mill End Fabrics) that is not going the way of Jo-Ann or other fabric store chains.

Current Mood: accomplished

tamaranth

2025/098: Maurice — E M Forster

He had gone outside his class, and it served him right. [loc. 2758]

A classic of LGBT+ literature, read for a 'published posthumously' challenge -- I managed to find an affordable Kindle edition. Splendid prose, intriguingly detached/omniscient narration, and appalling social tension.( Read more... )

Current Mood: miaow

tamaranth

2025/097: Endling — Maria Reva

"Wasn't your novel originally going to be about a marriage agency in Ukraine?"
"Null and void... I was writing about a so-called invasion of bachelors to Ukraine, and then an actual invasion happened. Even in peacetime I felt queasy writing right into not one but two Ukrainian tropes, 'mail-order brides' and topless protesters. To continue now seems unforgiveable." [loc. 1457]

The first half of Endling is the story of Yeva, a malacologist ('despite its inclusion of mollusks without backbones') who's determined to save endangered snail species. It hasn't gone well: she is down to one living specimen, Lefty, whose shell coils the opposite way to others of his species. (Yeva, similarly, coils the other way: she's asexual, though she has a passionate friendship with a conservationist.) Lefty is an endling, the last of his variant. Perhaps Yeva is too.

To finance her mobile lab, Yeva works for Romeo Meets Yulia, an agency that does 'romance tours' for Western men. ( Read more... )

Current Mood: impressed

liam_on_linux

A response to an HN comment...

The PC press had rumours of Quarterdeck's successor to DESQview, Desqview/X, from around 1987-1988.

That is roughly when I entered the computer industry.

Dv/X was remarkable tech, and if it had shipped earlier could have changed the course of the industry. Sadly, it came too late. Dv/X was rumoured then, but the state of the art was OS/2 1.1, released late 1988 and the first version of OS/2 with a GUI.

Dv/X was not released until about 5Y later... 1992. That's the same year as Windows 3.1, but critically, Windows 3.0 was in 1990, 2 years earlier.

Windows 3.0 was a result of the flop of OS/2 1.x.

OS/2 1.x was a new 16-bit multitasking networking kernel -- but that meant new drivers.

MS discarded the radical new OS, it discarded networking completely (until later), and moved the multitasking into the GUI layer, allowing Win3 to run on top of the single-tasking MS-DOS kernel. That meant excellent compatibility: it ran on almost anything, can it could run almost all DOS apps, and multitask them. And thanks to a brilliant skunkworks project, mostly by one man, David Weise, assisted by Murray Sargent, it combined 3 separate products (Windows 2, Windows/286 and Windows/386) into a single product that ran on all 3 types of PC and took good advantage of all of them. I wrote about its development here: https://www.theregister.com/2025/01/18/how_windows_got_to_v3...

It also did bring in some of the GUI design from OS/2 1.1, mainly from 1.2, and 1.3 -- the Program Manager and File Manager UI, the proportional fonts, the fake-3D controls, some of the Control Panel, and so on. It kept the best user-facing parts and threw away the fancy invisible stuff underneath which was problematic.

Result: smash hit, redefined the PC market, and when Dv/X arrived it was doomed: too late, same as OS/2 2.0, which came out the same year as Dv/X.

If Dv/X had come out in the late 1980s, before Windows 3, it could have changed the way the PC industry went.

Dv/X combined the good bits of DOS, 386 memory management and multitasking, Unix networking and Unix GUIs into an interesting value proposition: network your DOS PCs with Unix boxes over Unix standards, get remote access to powerful Unix apps, and if vendors wanted, it enabled ports of Unix apps to this new multitasking networked DOS.

In the '80s that could have been a contender. Soon afterwards it was followed by Linux and the BSDs, which made that Unix stuff free and ran on the same kit. That would have been a great combination -- Dv/X PCs talking to BSD or Linux servers, when those Unix boxes didn't really have useful GUIs yet.

Windows 3 offered a different deal: it combined the good bits of DOS, OS/2 1.x's GUI, and Windows 2.x into a whole that ran on anything and could run old DOS apps and new GUI apps, side by side.

Networking didn't follow until Windows for Workgroups which followed Windows 3.1. Only businesses wanted that, so MS postponed it. Good move.

tamaranth

2025/096: Stateless — Elizabeth Wein

...turning your back on your family, I knew, wasn’t nearly as terrifying as turning your back on an entire nation. [loc. 3643]

Stella North is the only female contestant in Europe's first ever youth air race. It's 1937, and the European powers are desperately trying to avert war: 'No one who fought here twenty years ago and survived wanted to see their sons come of age and go straight out to fight another war'. Meanwhile, the young men who are Stella's (male) competitors seem to be obsessed with the war records of their instructors and chaperones. She's especially vexed by the French pilot, Tony Roberts, who strongly resembles the German pilot, Sebastian Rainer. Tony flew in Spain, during the Civil War: Sebastian has never heard of Guernica.

( Read more... )

Current Mood: hopeful

kevin_standlee

If you had told me that I would need to wear a jacket on the first full day of summer here in northern Nevada, I would have told you that you had gone crazy. But while most of the USA is suffering under an extreme heat wave, the big low-pressure system pushing that heat dome is coming through my part of the country and it's quite cool. After peaking at 35°C a couple of days ago, today's forecast high is a mere 18°, and it was about 9° at sunrise this morning when I walked to the Wigwam and huddled over my coffee, using it to put feeling back into my fingers.

Not that I'm complaining! Not at all. Lisa and I have errands in Reno today, and I will be happy to not swelter in the typical summer heat as we go about our business planning for our respective summer travel plans coming up in the next few weeks.

Current Mood: cold
Current Location: Fernley, Nevada

kevin_standlee

From our years of living here, we know what the northern and southern points at which the sun rises over Fernley as seen from out front porch.

( Sunrise over the Asphalt Plant )

Not exactly scenic, but I'm happy to see the longest day of the year and the start of the sun's retreat to the south.

Current Mood: cheerful
Current Location: Fernley, Nevada

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alanfleming

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Page generated Jul. 4th, 2025 02:00 pm

Reading

On to Westercon

Packing for Westercon

2025/101: The Silence of the Girls — Pat Barker

2025/100: Monsters — Emerald Fennell

Traveling Bear

2025/099: The Story of a Heart — Rachel Clarke

Timezoned... And Recharging the Astro's AC

Westercon Printing

Cut and Dyed

Monthly culture, May 2025

One Week to Go

Errands

2025/098: Maurice — E M Forster

2025/097: Endling — Maria Reva

If only DESQview/X had been launched when Quarterdeck starting talking about it

2025/096: Stateless — Elizabeth Wein

Not Complaining

Solstice Sunrise

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July 2025

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