Further Assimilations

I've been sick for the last two days - sinus congestion, stabbing stomach pain, sore throat, fever... same old same old midwinter bug. Reluctantly, I took Tuesday off, which I think cut a couple days' duration off this bug; it's fading away as I sit here, leaving me with a scratchy throat and headache. I should be fine for the weekend; good thing too, as I had to do a bit of finagling to make MarsCon.

On the other hand, it means I'm woefully behind on my prep. I managed to get some studying in for the panels in which I'm involved, but my costuming took the hit, and I don't know if I'll have anything ready for the weekend. Since I'll be leaving directly from work tomorrow, I have to get packed and otherwise ready tonight. Good thing I managed some laundry.

Sometime Friday afternoon, I will have to find time to take a nap if I want to do late night stuff. This is unaviodalbe, as my internal clock these days is currently set to a 5:30am - 10:30pm waking shift, and cons don't run on that time. Considering that my Saturday panels hover around 10pm and midnight, I'll probably need to do the same that day as well.

I need to do some restructuring of my life schedule anyway. One reason for my dryness of prose output in 2008 was that I had not made much time to sit, off by myself, and actually write something - the most I've gotten done in that regard is hiding in people's offices scribbling on the Newton while monitoring their OS X Leopard installs. (Up to three hours of glorious undisturbed concentration!) It's easy to journal in 5-minute increments at work, but I have not yet mastered the art of focusing on plot and character in those tiny chunks.

On the other hand, I'm slightly pleased with my attitude towards the problem. I'm doing better these days with creating plans of attack for my roadblocks instead of just whining about them and using them for excuses. I'm decades overdue on developing this skill.

I feel guilty when I let Twitter do most of my LiveJournal updating for several days. It doesn't help that my DSL, which was working fine for a while, died again over the weekend. They'll come by on Friday to look at it. Cox Cable, folks, I'm telling you now.

So, what exactly was I up to with all that driving? It's an epic tale...

We left Chesapeake early on Friday morning, heading to NoVa to see Owen. On the way one of my tires sprang a leak; we pulled into a White Tire to have it fixed. It turned out that the tire was fine; something I'd hit on Xmas eve had bent the rim a bit, and that was letting air out. They hammered the rim back into shape, re-balanced the tire, and refused to charge me. Happy Holidays indeed!

To say that Owen was charged up to see us might have been an understatement. He wore us out just talking to us! He received a glow-in-the-dark NASA Langley shirt from us, which he wore all night; his parents gave us an elegant hanging candelabra and an Elfin Tree Door (which is already installed on a suitable tree in our yard).

When we left for the hotel, Owen's folks sent us to a French cafe for dinner. I've never eaten French food before, and was surprised at how tasty a charred, bloody cut of meat could be. (Look at dish, and mentally sigh. Put forkful of dish in mouth, and mentally jump at the flavor!)

The HoJo's we stayed at that night was clean and cheap, and the bed mattress might as well have been a solid slab of wood. I kid you not, Starr found the floor more comfortable.

We went back to Owen's place for breakfast, and he and I bonded over some Lego. Eventually, we had to leave; Starr's mom took her by a neighborhood yarn store, though, and we ended up losing another hour to their 25%-40% Off Sale. No problem for me, I had Solitaire and MahJongg on the cell phone. The drive from there to Christiansburg turned out to be the least fun of the trip, though; crossing the Appalachians on Lee Highway was tense and a bit nauseating, and our reward for reaching the other side was I-81. Yippee-doo.

Finally, though, we reached C-burg and we saw Mom waiting for us outside the facility where she's staying. Mom ordered me to stop a yard and a half away, and walked that distance from he wheelchair to my arms as Starr steadied her. Wonderful! She gave me the best Xmas present she possibly could right there; the Red Lobster dinner that followed only added to the celebration!

We spent Saturday night in the Microtel, which did its intended job of being cheap, comfortable, and a provider of wireless Net access. I know that lots of folks in the New River Valley would have put us up, and I would have loved the chance to socialize, but we'd have been rude guests: coming in late, going straight to bed, and waking up early the next morning for a quick e-mail check and a return to Mom's place.

After a Cracker Barrel breakfast, Mom took Starr to Mosaic, her favorite yarn store, where we met Benny, Cathy, and Jamie Williams; I passed the time proving to Jamie that I am totally old and lame when it comes to anime and Final Fantasy games, and Starr ended up with a couple more bags of crochet yarn. (I had given Starr yarn money for Xmas. Starr asked and received permission to buy herself other gifts with that money, as she's now stocked up on yarn for a few weeks.) We said a sad goodbye to my mom, and began the six-hour drive home. I have to say, that used me up. We finally arrived around 8:30 Sunday night, and I was done. Kaput. Over.

Still, it was a lovely weekend, and time and gas well spent. I only wish that I could fly to Technicon Last instead of driving. Or perhaps portal there, if all that 'cake' stuff's been worked out by now.

(This would have been posted this morning were it not for the LJ downtime)

If I should pass away from exhaustion and allergy-caused asphyxiation, I just want you all to know that I died the way I lived: semi conscious and sniffling. Seriously, this morning I was so wobbly, I thought I might wreck my car on the way into work... and tonight I'll be putting my back into it again and hauling more boxes.

QQ, I know, but I'm honestly having some trouble coping at the moment. I'll manage, of course, but oy. I'm in a closed office for the next hour, doing a software upgrade and tapping away on the Newton, and it's awfully tempting to take a nap. Bad Idea.

On the good side of things, I played some PS2 Fatal Frame on a five-foot plasma flat panel TV last night. That was kinda fun.

First day in two weeks I've felt halfway decent. My sleep was restful, the little headache pulses are gone, and I even had the initiative to get back to walking today. (Only 2/3 of a mile, because it got cold out, and I didn't bring a jacket this morning.)

Tonight I will be catching up on housework and bills, and of course giving my Mom a call to see how she's doing.

Was thinking more about the high-tech Captain Nemo today. If you dropped today's MacBook Pro in his workroom, I suspect that he'd figure out how to turn it on, and even use some of the software if there wasn't a login password. I expect he'd work out what the battery was, and might even be able to recharge it using the technology of his time. I'm sure he could work out the basic concept of the motherboard, and I'll even grant that he could reverse-engineer the simpler peripheral protocols with enough brute force, time, and care.

I'm fairly confident, though, that the LCD screen, integrated circuits, memory, and hard disk would be completely beyond him. At his technology level, any of them would have to be ripped apart and destroyed to achieve even a basic understanding of the principles involved. A magnetic storage medium might be within his imagination, but the ability to build another one just wouldn't exist yet.

(A few of the TNG and DS9 episodes annoyed me in this fashion, showing the heroes taking apart communicators and tricorders with utterly primitive tools. I'm convinced that one couldn't even crack the cases with less than highly specialized tools, and if one did, the contents would be largely integrated into a few non-user-serviceable bits. But that's just me.)

Perhaps Nemo could accomplish much with "black box" parts delivered by a mysterious supplier, much as the scientist-heroes of This Island Earth did. But could our justly-paranoid sea captain trust the source?

It's complicated, but much against my will, I didn't get any sleep on Saturday night. I spent much of Sunday watching myself do things, and even today. my head (while clear) is certainly in a lower gear than usual. With luck I'll be at my usual level of coherence by tomorrow.

This weekend Starr and I watched some television programs on high-technology of the ancient world, most of it lost forever because some dictator or another felt it didn't fit in his grand scheme. We mused that those in power over the centuries have rarely been fond of the intelligentsia, sometimes going so far as active bloody purges.

We wondered, is the animosity due to perceived threat - worry that the next revolution will come from that sector - or an insecure need to prove that the dictator's might is greater than the thinker's knowledge? Or might other factors be involved?

The only nation Starr and I could think of in which an enduring government has been established by (part-time, at least) scholars and philosophers is the United States; even those folks didn't get everything right, and some would debate how well those high-minded ideals have survived the centuries. What other societies of that stripe did we miss?

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*

• 09:17 Finding that eight solid hours of sleep beats emergency caffeination anytime. #

Sent subspace radio by LoudTwitter

I haven't really slept well the last couple of nights. For the last week, Starr's been constantly lightheaded and exhausted, napping through large chunks of the day. Sunday, she was running a pulse of 130. (What am I doing taking a pulse? I'm a Mac geek, not a doctor!)

She's been to the doctor; nobody's yet figured out what the problem is. It doesn't seem to be immediately life-threatening, but at the same time, it's really curtailing her activities. I believe she'd like her life back. Me, I'm just worried that we'll find the problem and it will turn out to be life-threatening.

So, yeah. Not sleeping so well.

Feeling much much better this morning. I have been trying to find an explanation for feeling so lousy last night... less caffeine, lingering crud from the weekend, full moon, etc etc... but I think that there's no special explanation: I just felt bad. This is not satisfying to the logical part of my mind, but all the other possibilities just don't ring true.

I think it helps that I did again wake before the alarm, though I had a bout of chills about 1/2 hour into my morning. I'm hoping that garbage goes away as the weather gets a little warmer.

My WoW backpack has 16 "item slots", each of which holds anything from a rabbit's foot to a 6-foot mage's staff to an armored chestplate. These slots fill up insanely quickly - collecting additional bags ASAP is practically mandatory - so I'm disinclined to believe the "upcoming patch notes" that claim we'll be seeing a "scaling" pack which starts at 10 slots and gets to 24 slots at level 70. 10 slots isn't even enough for a newbie character.

(I love how, in loot-based fantasy gaming, the same pair of armored trousers somehow fit both a 3.5-foot tall gnome male, and an 8.5-foot tall tailed alien female. Imagine how easy clothes shopping would be if all clothing fit the moment you put it on!)

Since I'm WoW-gabbing this morning, here's a great post on the official forums by a player who's compiled a short history of Azeroth, giving players some background for a lot of those quests where something more seems to be going on. WoW lore's pretty darn rich and full, even for a series of 4 video games. It may be no Silmarillion, but that's a plus for some folks.

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.