Lots of thumb twiddling
Aug. 24th, 2015 11:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
howeirdVery short team meeting this morning, on account of half the team on vacation and Project 1.0 is now out of bounds and 2.0 is still being stapled together. Another day of engineer using my machine, now that she can reproduce the crash at will. Crash is the technical term, what a customer would see is a 3-second interruption of service.
Got another assignment to check if an old feature from the previous model made it into the specs for the next model, and the answer again was no.
Tummy was being somewhat rude, despite last night's lactose pills and my usual Immodium dose this morning.
Noshed on mixed nuts all morning so instead of Togo's for lunch it was Starbucks, grande unsweetened iced tea, which for some insane reason they shake until it has a foamy head. I could understand that for sweetened, but not for un-.
Got out the laptop and had to tell it 3 times not to download & install Windows 10.
Added note: There was much eye candy, including one Chinese woman who could have modeled for those classic ceramic dolls. Gorgeous face.
Ran a Spybot scan, had to tell it not to nuke my cookies. Boy, that sounds wrong.
Home, delivered was the Col. Sanders tie.
Backup was still running, which means it was a total FAIL, which Windows Pro backup often is. Finally forced it to stop, deleted all the files to free up space, and still only have about 2GB free.
Re-installed Acronis, which I had deleted when it was failing to find my NAS drive, but that was fixed months ago. It will run a full backup Sunday, and then I'll delete the Windows backups.
Went to BASFA, about 11 people showed up. I expected more returning from Worldcon, since it was close, but I guess since it was close a lot of people drove. Only two attendees were at the meeting. So it was quick. I reviewed my eye stroke, and got some sympathy.
Dinner was expensive - I had the ribs, and some pie. I could have been fine with half the ribs but they didn't offer that.
Home, Spook was squeaking at me a lot, and finally as I was pouring myself some coconut water in the kitchen her little yellow and black checked ball rolled my way. We played catch for about 5 minutes before she parked herself under the coffee table and meowed. She has two ways of getting the ball to me. She can bat it or she can snag it with her claws and throw it. And it isn't random, she knows to send it back to me, though it may involve rolling a round a bit to get her paw in the right position.
Played a cassette tape which I thought was the last half hour of KFAT, but it was just a bunch of their horrible bluegrass and annoying obscure jazz from sometime that night. Before the DJs started talking about their impending doom. As I recall, at that point the automation station company which had bought them postponed the shutdown indefinitely, and it was maybe a month before the axe fell.
On the other side was some impressive Balkan pan pipe music, or maybe Romanian. And some flute music. Followed by horrid sitar and Bollywood-ish stuff. Nothing worth digitizing.
And them I found a tape I had forgotten existed. Me as King Arthur in Camelot in 1974, recorded from the balcony on a Radio Shack cassette machine, absolutely horrible audio. I'll see if I can clean it up. How To Handle A Woman proves my voice has gone down a few steps, I can't comfortably hit those high notes anymore, but the low notes are no longer the bottom of my range. And sad to say, I went flat here and there. The woman playing Nimue had a gorgeous soprano voice. I was backstage for her bit, we were never onstage together so I must have missed that.
I remember that the woman playing Guenevere was not among my top choices at auditions, we never clicked. There wasn't any active dislike, but no chemistry at all.
Anyhow, I've listened to about 1/4 of it, will listen more tomorrow. And maybe see what Audacity can do with it.
One thing I could hear was the gasp from women in the audience on my monologue in How To Handle A Woman where Arthur says:"No matter, Merlin once said never be too disturbed if you don't understand what a woman is thinking. They don't do it very often."
Also delivered, as I was getting ready to go to BASFA, was a packet with the white suspenders and the hat. The hat was folded in quarters and a complete FAIL but too cheap to bother with a refund. Maybe Saturday I'll go to the Great Mall and find a better one. And now I am regretting Goodwilling it a move or two ago.
Plans for tomorrow:
Work
TDB
Got another assignment to check if an old feature from the previous model made it into the specs for the next model, and the answer again was no.
Tummy was being somewhat rude, despite last night's lactose pills and my usual Immodium dose this morning.
Noshed on mixed nuts all morning so instead of Togo's for lunch it was Starbucks, grande unsweetened iced tea, which for some insane reason they shake until it has a foamy head. I could understand that for sweetened, but not for un-.
Got out the laptop and had to tell it 3 times not to download & install Windows 10.
Added note: There was much eye candy, including one Chinese woman who could have modeled for those classic ceramic dolls. Gorgeous face.
Ran a Spybot scan, had to tell it not to nuke my cookies. Boy, that sounds wrong.
Home, delivered was the Col. Sanders tie.
Backup was still running, which means it was a total FAIL, which Windows Pro backup often is. Finally forced it to stop, deleted all the files to free up space, and still only have about 2GB free.
Re-installed Acronis, which I had deleted when it was failing to find my NAS drive, but that was fixed months ago. It will run a full backup Sunday, and then I'll delete the Windows backups.
Went to BASFA, about 11 people showed up. I expected more returning from Worldcon, since it was close, but I guess since it was close a lot of people drove. Only two attendees were at the meeting. So it was quick. I reviewed my eye stroke, and got some sympathy.
Dinner was expensive - I had the ribs, and some pie. I could have been fine with half the ribs but they didn't offer that.
Home, Spook was squeaking at me a lot, and finally as I was pouring myself some coconut water in the kitchen her little yellow and black checked ball rolled my way. We played catch for about 5 minutes before she parked herself under the coffee table and meowed. She has two ways of getting the ball to me. She can bat it or she can snag it with her claws and throw it. And it isn't random, she knows to send it back to me, though it may involve rolling a round a bit to get her paw in the right position.
Played a cassette tape which I thought was the last half hour of KFAT, but it was just a bunch of their horrible bluegrass and annoying obscure jazz from sometime that night. Before the DJs started talking about their impending doom. As I recall, at that point the automation station company which had bought them postponed the shutdown indefinitely, and it was maybe a month before the axe fell.
On the other side was some impressive Balkan pan pipe music, or maybe Romanian. And some flute music. Followed by horrid sitar and Bollywood-ish stuff. Nothing worth digitizing.
And them I found a tape I had forgotten existed. Me as King Arthur in Camelot in 1974, recorded from the balcony on a Radio Shack cassette machine, absolutely horrible audio. I'll see if I can clean it up. How To Handle A Woman proves my voice has gone down a few steps, I can't comfortably hit those high notes anymore, but the low notes are no longer the bottom of my range. And sad to say, I went flat here and there. The woman playing Nimue had a gorgeous soprano voice. I was backstage for her bit, we were never onstage together so I must have missed that.
I remember that the woman playing Guenevere was not among my top choices at auditions, we never clicked. There wasn't any active dislike, but no chemistry at all.
Anyhow, I've listened to about 1/4 of it, will listen more tomorrow. And maybe see what Audacity can do with it.
One thing I could hear was the gasp from women in the audience on my monologue in How To Handle A Woman where Arthur says:"No matter, Merlin once said never be too disturbed if you don't understand what a woman is thinking. They don't do it very often."
Also delivered, as I was getting ready to go to BASFA, was a packet with the white suspenders and the hat. The hat was folded in quarters and a complete FAIL but too cheap to bother with a refund. Maybe Saturday I'll go to the Great Mall and find a better one. And now I am regretting Goodwilling it a move or two ago.
Plans for tomorrow:
Work
TDB
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no subject
Date: 2015-08-25 06:29 am (UTC)Too much walking. Too much smoke from MUCH OF STATE OF WASHINGTON ON FIRE!
David Gerrold is great and funny and a perfect guest.
Tom Smith is entertaining. He got to entertain at masquerade halftime. I wish that his audience may expand as he, himself, continues to contract. He's lost a lot of weight and is really doing well.
I pretty much think I had fun.
The revival of the Hogu Ranquet after a many-year hiatus was small but entertaining. If you're ever in Spokane, The Onion Bar & Grill downtown has about the best burgers ever.
The con suite, largely due to the puppies buying so many supporting memberships and the anti-puppies buying even more to vote against them, had the best food I've ever seen in a Worldcon con suite. Very well done. The people who ran that deserve a special Hugo or something. I plan to nominate them, perhaps for best live dramatic performance.
There were about 6000 supporting memberships sold at $40 each. Even if the costs are half of that (they're less) that's still some decent income for the con.
The puppies won exactly one Hugo, for Guardians of the Galaxy, which everyone said probably would have won anyway. "No award" squeezed out the puppies, who in turn squeezed out authors who legitimately deserved to be honored.
The business meeting passed a resolution to try to defeat the puppies. It must also pass next year in Kansas City.
Helsinki won for '17.
And I'm betting you already knew most of this.
no subject
Date: 2015-08-25 07:00 am (UTC)I have several friends there, people I met when I was news editor of the Omak Chronicle. They are the family of the late drama teacher at Okanogan High School (Omak and Okanogan are kind of twin cities, a few miles apart). By the time he passed away, his widow and some of his children and their spices settled in Spokane. Ernest was very proud he was descended from Confederate generals (plural) and every one of his five children enlisted in the military. And thump the Jesus bible harder than any 40 people I know. Other than that they are very nice people.
As for Mr. Gerrold, I had the honor at Westercon 66 of moderating a panel he was on, and being on another panel with him. And he is indeed the perfect guest for a regional con. I'm not sure his claim to fame is quite enough to merit Worldcon GoH, but for a con in deepest, smokiest Spokane, sure.
I am glad to hear Tom Smith is doing better with his weight than I am. Been at Conflikt and one other con he performed at, and am in total awe of his filk genius. His name on the program almost changed my mind about Spokane.
You're the first one who has mentioned the con suite, and I am thrilled they put some of that puppy money to good use.