RonO's Ramblings

Last night, I caught myself once again thinking about a weird dream. My conclusion was that I was in an SF story. After a while I came up with the first line:

"If I could understand how, exactly, I came to run a restaurant in my parent's house, with a former - probably discredited - astronomy professor as a head cook and a scatterbrained waitress, I might be able to explain what happened that night."

( Some other things I recall )

Now, if I could remember a bit more, and could write more than a 1 page story, I might have something.

Edit 7:46PDT -- Spelling fix of mobile posting

Last night I saw a picture in my dreams, and by the time I was out of the shower, I'd turned the idea from it into a Super Hero, or at least the background for a super hero. Since 90% of my knowledge of super heroes comes from playing the Marvel Super Hero Role Playing Game twenty or so years ago, I'm pretty sure that that influence how I conceived of the character. For reasons not entirely related to the era in which I played, the character's background is set up for the mid to late 80's, but I'm sure someone more familiar with the ways of comics could figure out how to jump it 20 years.

( Background )

Now to apologize for, or at least explain, the title of this post. As I said 90% of my knowledge of Super Heroes comes from the MSHRP game, sometimes known as the FASERIP system, which used adjectives ("feeble," "poor," "monstrous" etc.) for the stats of the attributes, skills and powers. At least with a bunch of 20-something college kids, this led to regularly pun-filled gaming sessions. So, given my background, a pun seemed appropriate.

While I won't like having to move hotels mid trip -- especially with having to take a cab or on the metro -- but we decide to save a fair amount by staying somewhere other than the Delta Centre-ville for the first few nights we are in Montreal. We should be at the Delta the day before the convention begins (having the con on exactly the same days of the year as the last one makes this easy -- having our move in date also our wedding anniversary also helps). But prior to that (from the previous Saturday, August 1) we'll be at a Comfort Inn. I just hope that its OK.

I'll admit I feel a bit guilty about being outside of the room block, but I'm also pretty sure that the economics of a Worldcon are a bit different, and that the room block in the hotels doesn't pay for as much of the function space as at a smaller event. (I felt guilty about not being at the Tempe Mission Palms last weekend for the same reason)

I've been invited to be on two programming items at Anticipation, and after some deliberation, I've accepted both, but have asked for some additional information on the second.

Session ID: 168
Title: Overpaid, Oversexed and In Our Time Zone
Description: What?s going on with Dr. Who? Has becoming a sexual being made him a more or less interesting character? Just how far can they go with this?

Moderator: David D. Levine
Location: P-511BE
When: Thu 8:00 PM
Duration: 1:00 hrs:min
All Participants: Curtis Potterveld, Cynthia Huckle, David D. Levine, Perrianne Lurie, Ronald Oakes

Session ID: 274
Title: Stump the Scientists!
Description: Ask our panelists from various disciplines your science questions, and see if they can come up with the answers--which may even be true.
Moderator: Yourself I'm assuming that this means I'm it
Location: P-510C
When: Fri 11:00 AM
All Participants: Richard Crownover, M.D., Ph.D., Ronald Oakes, Jordin Kare

On this one I'm presuming that, since I'm an Engineer by profession (although my undergraduate degree does say "Science" -- i.e. "Computer Science") that my main role will be as a true moderator. I'll field any computer questions that come up. This is for kids programming.

For better or for worse, this does leave me free at the time I've tentatively offered to hold down programming ops, and possibly for the main business meeting (there are a couple of issue I may want to vote on)

This afternoon while walking to the train (something I do when I have the time after work), I hit upon an analogy that I could almost get to work. I realized that there is some analogous mapping of role playing game systems to programming languages.

( Analogy Detail )

After deciding that renting our house in Bartlett last winter, we ended up renting it to a company that was staging men installing cell phone towers. When they left, they abandoned the house in a condition worse than I'd ever seen it (and I saw it AFTER it had been significantly cleaned).

After assessing the damage and repairing most of it, we figured that we had a case for not refunding any of their deposit. When we take into account the damage to the 4 month old carpet (badly burned in several places), and the fact that we may well have to replace the sliding glass door -- that had worked perfectly the entire time we were in the house -- due to having a completely broken off handle, our real and estimated expenses exceed the deposit by over $1,000.00!

However, they are choosing to dispute nearly everything and are asking us to only accept $700.00 or $800.00; and are threatening to take us to court. I have already increased the amount we are on the hook for since I've left a voice mail for our lawyer. I am not going to approach court on this without legal representation, and am sorely tempted to ask for all of the damage, including replacing the door and carpet, as well as legal fees if they pursue this. Of course, there is also part of me that wants to just pay them what is left of their deposit after our realized expenses and try to make this go away.

After this experience, I don't think I want to even think about renting out any more property and am even more ready to just get the house to go away.

I'll also admit I'm starting to really feel that we are being punished for making a bad decision to get a new job. It is feeling like nothing has gone right since we moved -- which isn't really true.

I'm just not sure where to go from here.

Current Mood: angry

1: Double checking that The Black Bear Cafe in Goodyear would have been part of the same chain as where I at in Redmond last summer, I discovered that that location must have closed -- it doesn't show up on their list anymore.

2: robot_grrl and I were a bit disturbed to see how much water was being wasted in the Palm Springs area. For example, along the entire run of CA-111 through Indian Wells, there is lush grass in the parkway along the side of the road. There were stretches of CA-74 that were similar. Then, in both cases, we saw water running into the road and sprinklers operating in the heat (dry heat!) of the day.

I'm somewhat sure that the Palm Springs area has its own ground water source (thus the springs in Palm Springs and the wells in Indian Wells). But I doubt that there is really enough water there to support the water needs without being supplemented from the same sources as San Diego, LA, etc. Imperial valley didn't bother us as much since we at least know people eat what they use the water for (or at least animals do)

3: I'm beginning to wonder if Tara and I have actually made a noticeable increase in the fraction of San Diego area fen who travel outside of easy driving range for "major" conventions? By my count, there were only 8 people I can clearly identify as San Diego area fen at Westercon. And I know of at least 3 from Chicago, one from Boston and one from (I don't recall which) either Boston or New York, on top of quite a few from the greater LA area and the Bay Area. Of course, if you take into account that someone can be a $region fan while not actually living in $region (or just consider a fan to belong to a different region based on their fanac) then perhaps there were only 6 San Diego fans and 5 from Chicago.

4: Wondering about the number of people within specific travel times of some locations I did a quick search but could not find anything. Of course the major obstacle would be to get the zip codes within a specific travel time of a given point, since once zip codes are available then population is available from the US census (at least until you cross an international boundary). I suspect that Google maps could be hacked to get the list of zip codes -- by brute force at least: iterate over all zip codes, route to the set location, if travel time is less than limit, add zip code to final list. But I don't have the time or energy to work up such a hack.

What, of course, I'm really wondering about is how many people are within about 90 (or perhaps 120) minutes drive of the hotels hosting various cons just to compare that to their actual attendance to see which ones are likely drawing most or all of their area's fen or potential fen (which would, of course, presume that the fen are evenly distributed within the US population -- a false presumption I'm sure)

Over the Fourth of July weekend, robot_grrl and I headed to Tempe for Fiestacon, the 62nd Westercon.

( Wednesday July 1, 2009 )

( Thursday July 2, 2009 )

( Friday July 3, 2009 )

( Saturday July 4, 2009 )

( Sunday July 5, 2009 )

( Monday July 6, 2009 )

( General Impressions and Comments )

robot_grrl and I made it to her cousin's in Phoenix shortly before midnight last night. We would have been earlier, except Tara's mom gave us a compleatly wrong address.

I'll report more when I have a full computer and connection.

Current Location: Tempe, AZ

I'm looking around for hints on how to make sections of a form that can be hidden or revealed on the web. On one of my searches I turned up http://bosmeeuw.wordpress.com/2009/01/17/easily-repeating-html-form-sections-without-much-javascript/.

In the illustration on the page, the sample book is The Bible, but for some reason they have spelled a couple of the names they mention as "Jezus" and "Mozes." Either they are trying to avoid offending people by using the common spellings, or they don't actually speak English all that well and spelled the names phonetically.

I found it slightly amusing (amusing enough to share at any rate).

Current Mood: amused

Today has turned out much more interesting than we'd originally expected.

( church )

( Lunch )

( Afternoon -- Tara's Car )

Not the greatest Sunday, but not bad either. At least this will be a short week, with what I hope will be a fun weekend following.

Yesterday, robot_grrl was asked to look for something at the San Diego County Fair, so we decided to meet there after work. This should have been simple, but...

The first couple of legs were easy and standard -- get to the Qualcomm shuttle at the other building and take that to the earlier train. From there, I rode The Coaster one stop to Solana Beach. Last week, when I'd checked with 511sd.com and the NCTD transit planer, I was instructed to take the NCTD Breeze 101 bus from across the street from the train station to near the fairgrounds.

But this bus was late -- way late. While I was waiting, I noticed a bus pull past saying that it was route 401 with a destination of "Fairgrounds." After signaling the driver to move on when I thought I was flagging him down, I figured out where he'd come from and walked back over to the station and found the special stop. When he returned, he apologized for the misunderstood signal, and I mentioned that I was more bothered by the website giving me the wrong route. Then, as we went past the stop for the the first bus I was waiting for, the same people were still waiting and it was more than half an hour AFTER it was scheduled to stop.

So I got to the fair not too long after Tara, who'd driven to the remote parking and taken the bus over. However, the NCTD bus drops off at one side of the grounds and the remote parking shuttle on the other side. Since we hadn't planned on going to the fair, I didn't have my ticket. So I had to get to the other side where Tara was waiting.

But as I walked towards her, I remembered that the fair doesn't allow knives, and I was still carrying my Leatherman. Since I didn't want to throw it away, I apologized to Tara and we took the bus back to the parking lot, dropped off the Leatherman, and just about everything else I was carrying (I kept my wallet and pedometer) and we returned to the fair.

So, after over 2 hours of running around, and standing around, I finally made to the fair.

If I (or possibly we) go back one more time -- if Tara's supervisor clarifies what she wants, it is a possibility for next Tuesday -- I'll know to not bring my Leatherman and to catch the correct bus. I already have my ticket in my pocket, so using the enterance where the bus drops won't be a problem. Of course I'll have to make sure I don't miss the last train North (lest I have to pay for an Amtrak ticket and get home really late).

This morning, I realized that through various networking sites (LiveJournal, FaceBook, LinkedIn, etc.), I am now connected to many -- if not most -- of the people I've regularly gamed with.

The problem is that they are scattered across the US -- California, New Mexico, Colorado, Illinois, Michigan and Virgina (I think in the last case). But I'm the only one in California and if I'm right about one being in Virginia, he's the only one there. The two in Colorado are from different gaming groups (High School and College vs. early days at Motorola), and both groups are represented in Illinois. And then there are two different cities in Illinois, and two different parts of the state (UP and LP) in Michigan.

It would be almost tempting to try to set up a gathering on Skype or something and see if we could get a game going.

Of course, finding time to do that could be a bit tricky.

I'll admit, I seem to be having a bit of a different reaction to Michael Jackson's death than a lot of the people I'm seeing on the news and in online communities.

The thing is, I was never that fond of Jackson's music or performances. As a kid, I think I heard some Jackson 5 stuff, but none of it stuck. I've got very little of it in my personal collection (I think a couple of tracks from the Time-Life 1970's collections I acquire a few years ago and have loaded into iTunes/iPod) and have explicitly excluded some more recently (I removed, or at least kept from syncing to the iPod, the Jackson 5 stuff included as a bonus on the Pippin cast recording I got from iTunes a couple of years ago).

And then when Michael Jackson was in the peak of his career (mid 1980's), I was not being exposed to a lot of "mainstream" pop. For the most part the radio station I listened to was KOB-AM which in that era was a news/adult contemporary station. That was also the same time when, largely thanks to my brother whose tastes and sound system dominated the house, and our shared drives to UNM in 1984-1986, I was getting more into Jazz, Classical, Musicals and a bit of New Age music. Most of my friends that weren't into Jazz and similar were into harder stuff (not really Heavy Metal, though).

Then, even today most of Michael Jackson's songs leave me with kind of a "Meh" or "that was OK, I guess" reaction. I'll admit to thinking that the "Thriller" video was kind of fun -- but the song itself was just OK.

Of course his erratic and very disturbing behavior as it has come out over the last several years turned him into either a scary or perhaps pitiable figure -- someone who could never escape the demons that came from early fame and no escape from the spotlight.

--

Oddly enough, I don't recall Farah Fawcett the same way as I'm sure many men of my age do. I'll admit to watching Charlie's Angels, but it was another fun 1970's cop/detective show. Due to a combination of naivete, and probably some maturity factors, I was largely immune to the sexual nature of the show and could enjoy the story -- even if today it doesn't stand up very well.

If I have any memory of her from that era, it was the fact that she chose to leave a successful show in a very public way, and then mostly disappeared from view into a failed movie career.

I'll have to admit, both Jackson and Fawcett had a great deal of impact on popular culture and deserve a place in the history of the eras that they touched. But personally, they were just a couple more celebrities who personally mattered very little to me.

This morning, I got word that Qualcomm will not be continuing rental assistance (neither the retroactive assistance for the last couple of months, nor the assistance for this and next month). This means that we are going to be very short of money until we get the house sold.

This could keep us from making Westercon, or doing much else between now and when the house sells. Worldcon isn't at too much risk since we have to get Derrick from Illinois and already have the tickets to get there, but we may be very leery of doing anything more than the minimum cost stuff.

We would appreciate any assistance anyone can offer. Obviously if you, or anyone you know, is looking at houses we've got a really good one in a good area (Bartlett). Beyond that, at the very least prayers (for those so inclined) would be useful.

Needless to say, both robot_grrl and I are a bit upset, stressed and at least I'm depressed, over this situation.

Current Mood: depressed

I just saw the following come across the SCA list for the Kingdom of Caid. I'm forwarding it hear in case anyone is interested. I personally can make no claims on the authenticity of the request:
( forwarded e-mail follows )

Over the last 3 days, Rocket has torn apart 3 different dog toys! Since we got him, he's destroyed a toy every few months (plus made a few so icky from slobber that they also went away). But this seems to have greatly accelerated.

On Saturday, he destroyed Bone -- an inexpensive stuffed red bone. He'd had this incarnation of bone for 3 or 4 months (and another one just like it from before we got him). So yesterday after Church, robot_grrl and I stopped by PetCo and picked up Doggie -- a neoprene covered version of the common dog-shaped toy. Before I went to bed, he had torn it opened and the head and removed some stuffing. So less than a day after getting it, Doggie got hidden in our trashcan.

This evening, I stopped by PetCo again and got him Hose -- supposedly a stuffed piece of fire hose. Not long ago, I went upstairs and found Hose sitting with a big hole torn in one corner. I've put it out of his reach and will try to fix it if I can find our duct (or is it duck) tape.

I'm beginning to wonder if he is upset because Derrick is gone, is feeding off of the stress that Tara and I are feeling about the Bartlett House, or a combination of the two.

I'm just hoping that we'll be able to keep him from going through too many toys before he calms down. I'm also worried about what he'll destroy if he doesn't have a toy of his own. With the house, furniture and even the cat there are many things that he could do serious damage to.

Today robot_grrl and I spent most of the day at the San Diego County Fair (a.k.a The Del Mar Fair).

We had a pretty good time, although we didn't spend a whole lot of time with what I think of as traditional Fair activities -- looking at livestock. There was more livestock there than at the DuPage County Fair, but not as much as the New Mexico State Fair the last time I was there (1980 or so). Also, the San Diego County Fair doesn't have all of the small animals on display at once -- for example today they only had roosters (or perhaps chickens), and tomorrow they bring in the rabbits and cavies (guinea pigs).

We didn't get there quite as early as we'd hoped, not leaving until almost 10:00 when the fair opened. But after parking at a remote lot and taking the shuttle we were still there reasonably early. We headed over to the pig races, but they didn't seem to be running when scheduled. We worked our way through the sheep and goats and back to the main axis of the fair. At which point we decided we wanted lunch.

In several of the promotions for food at the fair we'd seen ads for a "Texas Pork Tenderloin" sandwich. We both instantly noticed that the sandwich wasn't a Texas sandwich but an Iowa sandwich, but we still wanted one. After asking the information booth, we found the place serving them and decided to split one.

After our sandwich, we spent some time looking at the collections and fiber crafts. The collections entered were very varied -- including one of a years worth of collie hair. We decided that there was no reason for Tara not to enter her robots next year at least if she wants to.

After that we headed downstairs and watched a robot competition for a few minutes, while Tara talked to the mother of one of the competitors. We next stopped off to get a couple of small Corn dogs -- OK we were being bad by getting fair food today, but we also walked quite a bit.

We then spent quite a while looking at the gems and jewelry (Tara looked at a lot of the jewelry from the vendors, and I concentrated on the gem and stone displays). We then moved across an air wall to the wood working exhibit. In the woodworking area we found several pieces of furniture we'd both like if we could afford them.

Next we wandered one of the vendor halls, and found mostly the same stuff I'd expect at any fair.

We next found some cheese curds -- recommended by the information guy after we mentioned being from the Mid-West. While Tara sat for a while (her knee popped out on her) I looked around another hall that had some flower exhibits and more vendor displays, many of which were for hot tubs.

We finished off the day with me getting some fry bread -- but with Strawberries and cheesecake topping, Tara getting some deep fried Oreos and then a quick visit with the chicken, cows and dairy goats before leaving and heading home.

On the way home we, or more correctly I, stopped by the Vitamin Shoppe and then both stopped in at Trader Joe's (inspired in part by this posting) before heading home to a dog who'd been locked in for a bit longer than he often is.

Since they were very little -- if any -- more than a single day admission, I'd picked up unlimited use tickets. So we may come back sometime before the fair ends. In fact, if Tara doesn't have to work some day, we may go there after work (I can take The Coaster to Soloana Beach and then take the 101 bus back (or just take the bus I used to to the UTC and then the 101 bus up) to the fair.

Also, during our time in the gem and woodworking areas, I realized that if we'd had Derrick he would have been board stiff and we couldn't have spent as much time looking around. I'd like him to be more willing to look at this kind of thing and more tollerant of things that we like to do (not that I neccessarily was when I was younger).

Last night, I watched the PBS broadcast of Chess: In Concert from the Royal Albert Hall, I believe last year sometime.

( review follows )

I just got an e-mail from one of my coworkers pointing me to a "Loyal employee." This was a URL that resolved to a page in our internal personnel database for someone who was issued a permanent guest badge (complete with employee photo), who just happened to be the service dog for one of the IT employees.

For several years, the policy at DucKon has been that we do not issue badges to pets, but if someone has a licensed service animal we would issue a badge for it. Until last year when the Handicapped Services department was removed, I would have issued it as a staff badge there. Now I'd probably still issue it as a staff badge so that I could include a badge title ("guide dog," "assistance dog" or something similar)