The Mandelbear's Musings

Orycon was good. Lots of music. A couple of good conversations. Not so much exercise; I gained a couple of pounds. But good.

Getting there was frustrating -- WiFi still wasn't working worth a damn on my netbook, and the way I had our bags stacked made for an exhausting trip from the airport to the hotel on Max. But we got there, around dinner time on Friday (missing a concert that we would have liked to get to).

Saturday morning I nuked the root partition on Barnard and installed Ubuntu 11.04, the last good one before they jumped the Gnome 3 shark. With working WiFi (reconnecting much faster than earlier versions, too), the rest of the weekend went very well indeed from a computerish point of view.

The con itself was great. I spent most of my time either in the concerts (there was a set of tables in back within reach of a power socket), or nearby talking to filkers. Not having a concert slot myself meant that I didn't have to spend any time rehearsing or fretting about not rehearsing, which helped make for a relaxed weekend.

Also adding to the relaxed experience was the fact that Colleen was more independent than she's been in years, able to get up to the room and back by herself. An independent cat is a happy cat, and makes for a happy bear.

It seems that I really need about 8 hours of sleep. Not too happy about that.

I also had conversations with musicians in the airport on both ends of the trip -- I traded CDs with Edward Dee, who had noticed Plink while waiting for the same flight we were on up to Portland. And had a good talk with Jimmy Free in PDX, admiring his skill with a 7-string violin and a looper.

Musical highlights of the con itself included concerts by The Doubleclicks, Katy Tinney, and Betsy Tinney (solo, with cello and looper). Want a looper. I missed most of Alexander Adams' concert in favor of a good conversation with runnerwolf, which was something I'd been wanting to do for a long time. Looking forward to more. A good dead dog in the almost-empty filk room swapping songs and talking with Andrew Ross and two women named Elizabeth and Jennifer whose last names I never caught.

Good con. Good weekend. And we came home to dinner and a clean house, thanks to our wonderful Younger Daughter, Emmy. We win.

Wow! Lots of links here. That's partly because I spent my lunch hour reading LJ and nomming on hardboiled eggs and spring rolls. The eggs came from home -- I discovered that wrapping them in a microfiber hand-towel keeps them satisfactorily cold until lunchtime. The spring rolls came from the Big Beige Building, one driveway down from our complex. They only have them on Monday and Wednesday. They have shrimp and chicken, and come with a very spicy sauce. Nom.

Also during lunchtime my Amazon order arrived: two Otterboxes of different sizes, and an AmazonBasics Electronics Travel Case. As it turns out, the latter is a little too wide to fit at the bottom of my Antler rolling backpack (Chami, for short) because of the handle tube. And it's only able to hold my USB optical drive by stretching a little. But it fits nicely beside the handle tube, with a music stand and some extra space on the other side. It also holds an external USB hard drive; the Zoom H2 recorder and its gorillapod fit in the vacated CaseLogic HD case.

It's not clear whether Chami will get her pet otter; a lot depends on which one and what goes into it. The 3250 can hold my collection of chargers as well as being the perfect height for a footrest when playing guitar, so it's going to go someplace when I travel.

And it turns out that a recently-hired coworker is the brother of someone I worked with at Zilog a quarter-century ago. Small world.

So it was a pretty decent day, in spite of not having a walk in it. On to the links!

Many of the links are from Greenhaven: A Pagan Tradition, courtesy of ysabetwordsmith. One of her articles there, Cyberspace as an Out of Body Experience, refers to The World Inside the Crystal! How cool is that?

More in the notes.

The concert was divided into two sections: a journey through time and space; and myths, legends, and current events. I think it came off reasonably well modulo a couple of major flubs where I lost my concentration. Have to work on that.

on the web: Steve Savitzky at Westercon 2011

So it was... ok, I don't know what it was. Managed to get to the con without overloading this time, so the day was relatively relaxed. On the other hand, I missed my panel because it was scheduled for after the business meeting, and for some reason I failed to see the sign on the door saying that the panel had been rescheduled.

The business meeting took three hours. This was because the hoax bid, for Granzella's, had won the site-selection vote. Whereupon Kevin and Andy decided that, if selected by the business meeting, they would actually deliver, and hastily recruited a committee of convention veterans. They won.

Be careful what you wish for.

My concert went off well. The final set list was: "Keep the Dream Alive", "Millennium's Dawn", "Where the Heart Is", "Ship of Stone", "Cicero in the 21st Century", "Daddy's World", and "Quiet Victories".

I was followed by Allison Lonsdale, who is a brilliant songwriter and a polished performer whose sets are always high-energy fun.

We had dinner at Johnny Rockets again, which probably explains my weight gain over the last two days. After that I mostly hung out in the parties and with Colleen outside the filk room, though I did go in around 10:30, getting in one song ("The Owl and the Pussycat") before we left around 11:30.

Some excitement was added by my having forgotten to plug in the scooter the night before, so Colleen started the day fairly low on charge. And whoever plugged her in in the afternoon didn't check to make sure that the battery was actually charging. Which it wasn't -- it's all too easy to plug it in wrong. So it was touch-and-go at the end, or rather touch-and-go-very-slowly.

She stalled out on the ramp going into the house, and cleverly told the YD to put it in freewheel and push. With predictable results. I yelled "stop", but it was too late; the YD freaked out as the scooter started rolling back at her, and I had to finish the job (put it back in gear and push to boost the motor, not replace it) while the YD stalked off in a huff because I had yelled at her.

There is a good reason why I can't teach the kids to drive -- I cannot come up with words in a situation that requires a fast, accurate response. I either freeze altogether, or come up with something unhelpful, or that would have been helpful a moment ago but makes matters worse now.

And I discovered this morning that she hadn't put the garbage out, despite having been reminded twice.

But a good day on the whole.

Not a good day. No. Some hugs from people I only see at Westercons -- that was very good. But...

I hate the Fairmont. Not having a room there helps, but creates problems of its own, especially for Colleen, who needs an accessible toilet and, these days, an assistant.

Let me back up a bit.

The day technically started around 2am, when I finally got to bed after our trip to the ER Thursday night.

Colleen had an appointment in the Fracture Clinic at 11:15, so I called in sick and took her in. More x-rays; the bone pieces seem to be in the right place this time. Sleeping with the sling on apparently helps a lot. She has an appointment for next week.

If you're keeping score, that's 2 ER visits, 3 clinic visits, and 4 x-rays so far since Sunday. And she's on her second bottle of percocet now, but probably won't be needing much more of it at this point.

In retrospect, I should have ended my experiment with a reduced dose of SSRI last Wednesday. The stuff seems to work mainly by increasing my supply of cope, and I could have used a lot of it this past week.

We had lunch at home, and took advantage of my sick day to go to Westercon, in the Fairmont hotel in downtown San Jose, somewhat earlier than I had originally planned. I hate the Fairmont; we stayed there during Worldcon a few years ago. Old, underwhelming, and overpriced.

We got to the con around 2:45; I got Colleen unpacked and drove off in search of a usable handicap parking spot; I eventually found several open ones about a block from the hotel.

After getting registered and spending some time greeting people, I sat in on the "What Is Filk?" panel around 4:30 just to have someplace to sit down. Unlike most convention hotels, the ballroom floor of the Fairmont has essentially no seating outside the function space. Did I mention that I hate the Fairmont?

Around 5pm we went to the bar, which is a sunken area in the middle of the lobby. We eventually found the wheelchair lift -- not a ramp -- in what appeared to be a converted closet. It took two tries to find a chair I could sit in comfortably. I had a glass of Hendrick's, which was predictably overpriced.

So was the in-hotel Chinese restaurant, where we went for dinner with the YD. The food was distinctly underspiced. In between, Colleen attempted to find an accessible lady's room, which eventually required getting someone from the hotel to go in and open the handicap stall in the one first-floor lady's room, which had been locked from the inside. Possibly because it wasn't flushing properly.

Did I mention that I hate the Fairmont?

At this point my back was hurting and I was bored silly; I left, and got home a little after 8pm. Went back for Colleen 9ish, and the YD around 10:30. By which point I was both sleepy and depressed. Oh, and getting Colleen's scooter was complicated by coughing while bent over (which reactivated my back spasm), and scraping the back of my hand on the seatpost of the scooter picking up the battery. I dealt with the latter by tying my handkerchief around it. Useful things, handkerchiefs.

No, not a particularly good day.

On the plus side, the combination of Chami (rolling backpack) and Minnie (sling shoulder bag) worked surprisingly well. Though it's pretty clear that Chami is not sufficient luggage for a weekend trip, she does a good job as a convention rolly. I ought to rig something that works as a top handle when Minnie is on board, though. (Although this, and the slight top-heaviness I noticed, is less of a problem when Minnie is slung over Chami's "shoulder" rather than attached around the handle. I'll try that today.

Only one link in the notes; I was busy with other things.

A pretty good day, with a nice st/roll with Colleen to the Rose Garden. We keep forgetting to bring books, so we can sit and read in the sun. It's a great place for people-watching, too. I like summer. ("Summer" being our code word for "women in skimpy outfits", many of which would have been considered underwear when we were young.)

We had a good, though ultimately unproductive, talk about the YD's state of mind. It's pretty clear that she's depressed, but she rejects our suggestions that she seek professional help. Not much we can do about that.

I was feeling rather unimaginative, and made a pot of black and white beans with Polish sausage for dinner. Very tasty.

Had some trouble with my right shoulder in the morning, which I dealt with by switching shoulders on Minnie and wearing the strap higher up, close to my neck. That seems to do it, at least for now. And my left ankle started hurting in the evening after I took my shoes (hiking boots) off; I put a brace on it. Both joints are mostly ok this morning, but grump.

Things have been breaking. The lumbar support on my aeron chair broke clean in half sometime yesterday. It looks as though it can be splinted; that's good, because a replacement is $60. The one at work has been broken for a while. Grump. My things and I are getting old together.

I verified by experiment that I can pack a weekend's worth of clothes into the Eagle Creek organizer, so I could theoretically go on a weekend trip with nothing but Chami (the Antler rolling backpack, for those who haven't been following closely) and Minnie (the REI shoulder bag), and maybe the CPAP case. In most cases that probably won't be necessary, but it's nice to know that it's possible.

My doctor contacted me about my labs; PSA (which doesn't show up on the web -- grump) is down a little, as are my triglycerides. So, ... good.

My mood continues to hover somewhere between ok and good.

Some links in the notes, as usual; the Solar-Powered 3D Printer that Prints Glass from Sand is pretty awesome. Especially when you remember that it's not your ordinary soda-lime glass but fused silica, which has a significantly higher melting point.

A pretty typical end-of-con day; lots of goodbyes including some to people I never even got to say hello to. And there was never enough time for conversation.

Then I managed to pull a muscle in my left arm near the shoulder, hefting suitcases. OWWW. It took a long time for the pain to localize; it started out in the whole upper body, leading me to worry about possible heart trouble. I spent the evening being totally wiped out. Naomi suggested putting ice on it, which helped but was very awkward.

It would have been a pretty good day if it hadn't been for the injury. Pain appears to be exhausting mentally as well as physically; the effects seem to be similar to the sensory overload caused by the noise. Which makes, um, sense, since pain and hearing are both senses. Bears can be a little slow on the uptake sometimes, though I am learning.

A couple of links.

I seem to have more notes than I usually do at a con. Possibly due to the fact that I'm spending more down time. The lobby (where the bar is) and mezzanine (where the programming is) are connected, and incredibly noisy. That's probably a large part of why I ran out of spoons around 10pm and went upstairs to bed. That, the fact that something in dinner wasn't sitting well, and that I'd just spent two hours in the room waiting for the hotel to clean up the mess made by the overflowed toilet.

The apparent problem with the phone was just pilot error -- it's cordless, and I didn't press the talk button. Not so much as "idiot bear" as totally overloaded and flustered, and perfectly willing to believe that One More Thing was going wrong.

... so I didn't get to any of the concerts.

I did get a couple of nice strokes, though -- one person told me that one of his coworkers has a copy of my book on his desk, and another told me that she'd used my River posts about the care and feeding of geeks to understand and deal with a coworker. Those felt good.

Lots of people seem to know me by name who I don't recognize at all. "He's losing his memory and some of his hair"? That's somewhat disturbing.

It was a good day for most of it, I ended the day feeling seriously down and drained. This was almost certainly a simple matter of being out of spoons rather than depression -- I'm ok now. I think it's hard for me to distinguish physical exhaustion from sensory overload from emotional depression, though. That's something I'm going to have to work on.

A couple of links.

Not a great day, but not bad - I got up late, having foolishly forgotten to turn my alarm back on after getting up early on Wednesday, but had a productive afternoon at work. It balances.

A little bit of practice, mainly running through a couple of songs I might do at the kids' concert on Sunday.

I cut my walk short, having worked through most of my lunch hour.

And no links. Guess I was busy. See you at Baycon, maybe?

(From today's email from Programming)
0527 Fr 
  o 2:30 PM - 4:00 PM in: Alameda 	 Filk 101
      What is Filk? And why you should be interested.
        Panelists: Kitty Crowe, Bob Kanefsky, Steve Savitzky.
  o 4:00 PM - 5:30 PM in: Winchester 	 Computers: What's Next?
      Fifty years ago, computers occupied large rooms, and they required air
      conditioning and water cooling.  One million instructions per second was
      a super computer.  Today's smartphones have more memory and computing
      power, by orders of magnitude, than those early machines.  What does the
      next 50 years look like? 
  o 8:00 PM - 9:00 PM in: Grand Ballroom Meet-the-Guests Reception

0528 Sa
  o 11:30 AM - 1:00 PM in: Lawrence 	 Making A CD 
      How to produce music to make your own CD.
        Panelists: Jeff Bohnhoff, Margaret Davis, Steve Savitzky, Kristoph Klover

0529 Su
  o 1:00 PM - 2:30 PM in: Cypress 	 Music Instrument Demonstration for Kids
      Moira Greyland will show the ins and outs of how a harp works.  Also
      Steve Savitzky will give the kids a demonstration of guitars.  
  o 2:30 PM - 4:00 PM in: Cypress 	 Music for Kids
      Music performances by a harpist and two guitarists for the children's
      enjoyment.  (Adults welcome, too, of course)
  o 7:00 PM - 7:30 PM in: Winchester 	 Concert
      Come listen to Steve sing songs about computers, space, fantasy,
      friendship, and love. 

I had a blast at Conflikt. I went in very apprehensive about my role in Ben Newman's SF musical, Walk In the Day, but when it came down to it the minor screw-ups were, indeed, comparatively minor; the audience liked it, and we all had a heck of a lot of fun performing it. Well outside what used to be my comfort zone; I'm gradually learning that there are fun things out there.

I met several new people, caught up with some old friends, and spent some time talking to people I sort-of knew but wanted to spend more time with. That's what I really go to conventions for.

A good weekend. Not all that much singing, although a request for QV was both a surprise and a delight.

Some good links up there under the cut, along with a lot more detail. It's getting late; I just wanted to post this before I went to bed.