Close call

Sometime yesterday evening I mounted the USB drive, fired off my backup script, and went out for dinner. Made the mistake of leaving the drive online when we went back to Consonance (more about that in a later post) for the dead dog Schroedinger's Cat filk. This morning, I found that the drive was busy, and the locate database updater was thoroughly hung in I/O wait. sync hung, too. I ended up powering down.

After rebooting, I fired up the USB drive and attempted an fsck. It hung, with a mysterious message about a USB disconnect. Urk!

Before I started using the USB enclosure for backups, I used removable IDE trays. In fact, there was one still in my workstation, and another in the suspect USB enclosure. Made the swap, powered up, and ran fsck again. This time, it worked. Hmm. I don't think I ought to trust that USB enclosure anymore. The tray is less convenient -- in spite of the fact that it's nominally hot-swappable, Linux doesn't really support it. And the rack has a fan. Blaugh. Need to start cycling through multiple backup drives. And get offsite backups going.

Consonance report

Friday morning cflute recorded a new flute track to Cicero in the Twenty First Century, since it had evolved considerably in the months since we recorded the first version. Sometime in the afternoon we went to a local knitting shop, finally ending up at Consonance in time for dinner, followed by International Guest unclechristo's concert. The man is amazing. Played 12-string guitar, keyboard, and theremin (not all at once, obviously), and two pennywhistles (simultaneously). Mind-boggling. Not to mention "Three-Headed Girl".

The Friday evening filk circles were good, as they usually are at Consonance. If I remember correctly, cflute and I did World Inside the Crystal at that one.

Saturday morning after breakfast I headed home for some last-minute editing and web-hacking, and attempted to put together a portable recording system. Finally got it together, but ended up not using it because setup and teardown would have been too much trouble. (The main technical challenge was making sure that it would boot without a network connection. Not rocket science, but it required a couple of reboots to get right.)

I got back to the con in time for most of Interfilk guest singlemaltsilk's performance workshop, which unfortunately was scheduled opposite Christo's theremin workshop. Grump. Signed up for a two-fer (2 songs or 10 minutes). The afternoon started with the memorial circle for Cynthia McQuillin. I sang Vampire Megabyte (because it was Cindy's favorite of mine) and The Rambling Silver Rose (because it was inspired by many of her songs, and was a perfect follower for one of them). The circle ended on "Crimson and Crystal" and "Black Davy's Ride".

The afternoon continued with concerts by Puzzlebox (the four-person Toastmaster) and singlemaltsilk (who is a fantastic vocalist, doing torch songs and the like, a capella). These were followed by the Interfilk auction. I got well and truely wenched a couple of times, though my somewhat arbitrary $125 limit meant that I lost all the items I bid on.

Between Interfilk and the memorial circle things were running late at that point, so concerts resumed after dinner with catalana (in the program book under the assumed name of "Helga Olegaurde" so as to surprise the Ropers, who were GOH). She finished with her trademark song "Not Everybody Dies". Then came billroper and daisy_knotwise. The "Husband Song" didn't quite have me rolling on the floor, but I was doubled over and having serious trouble breathing in a couple of spots.

I went to the "Ghost Stories" circle after that, and sang The Cap and Bells (not exactly a ghost story but as close as I could get), plus When the Magic Died (at somebody's request; it got points for "spooky"). Sometime later I ended up doing The Toolmakers (for chaoswolf, who's trying to learn it) and, if I remember correctly, "Ship of Stone" with cflute.

Sunday morning I spent almost the whole time in conversations and didn't get to any programming. Caught a few snippets of Puzzlebox's "Parents and Kids" concert, and then came the two-fers. I'd signed up for the second slot, along with cflute. I'd originally wanted to do both Demon Lover and Silk and Steel, but Callie didn't feel up for doing two vocals in a row, so we did "Ship of Stone" as the second song, with Callie's gorgeous bass flute part. My intro to DL wasn't as good as it could have been, but it almost got the context across, and I think the song itself was well received. It's always a little hard for me to tell, especially with a song I'm that close to. (More in a later post, I think.)

After the two-fers was cadhla's concert. To say that it was amazing would be a gross understatement. Mind-boggling, perhaps. It was a reprise of her toastmaster concert at OVFF last fall, and was the stuff of which fanish legends are made. It included between two and five costume changes (depending on whether you count the labcoat and the lace shawl), including one behind a curtain to get into a pink prom dress for "Pretty Little Dead Girl". I'm surprised there aren't already filksongs written about that concert. Legendary. She looked fabulous, too.

Along the way I spent a fair amount of time in the con suite; I find that with a well-stocked con suite and a big breakfast I can usually skip lunch or have a late lunch/early dinner; we ended up spending less on food than usual.

I'd wanted to sing The Stuff That Dreams are Made Of, my usual memorial song, but never got the opportunity. I closed out the con at the dead dog singing Silk and Steel with Callie, since we hadn't done it in the two-fer. Did a couple of other songs somewhere along the way, plus a bit of noodling in the con suite.