ifics

The current droid assigned to the swine flue outbreak is H1N1....

This painting by Rob Gonsalves is a good representation of reading science fiction, or just reading in general.

On Slashdot I found this YouTube video.

I have posted the photos I took at ConChord 22 on Flickr. Hope everyone enjoys them.

Started Saturday with a ice run for the con suite. Also assisted in removing water from the ice chests and adding ice back in. Went to the dealer room to spend money with the only dealer, Random Factors. Checked out the Interfilk items and then went to the Ventura room to fire up the sound system.

We started off with the Totally Tasteless and Tacky Revue, the best act being Lynn Gold doing Micheal Jackson!! Following that was Keith Kelly, then Lynn Gold doing Lynn Gold. One shots and then our Interfilk Guest Gary McGath's Concert.

Then evening started with our Toastmaster, Barry Gold's concert, followed by Joe Giacoio and then Carla Ulbrich. Joe guitaring was impressive, managed to get a photo or two of his handiwork. (Will be posted to Flickr later this week.) Carla also did a great performance.

We did the Interfilk auction between the sets, the highlights was Joe jumping into Nick Smith's arms, and Rod stating to Rebecca, "I would pay $200 to see you wench yourself." (She proceeded to do just that!!)

Friday lapislaz and I headed north for ConChord 22. It was a bit less attended this year, but still an enjoyable con. Lapis set up the con suite and I set up the sound, then we went to the Friday night pool reception. Nice evening except when Lady Colleen went over sideways in her electric scooter. She was fine, but it gave the rest of us a bit of a scare.

Later that evening we had a memorial circle for the Southern California filkers who are no longer with us. The Lee and Barry had a lot of materiel from filkers from the 60s and 70s. This was followed with the Paleo-Filk Cricle, songs before Westerfilk.

Kenvin and Kell for Sunday August 16, 2009.

Our newspaper had an article about the Bridge that spans the San Diego Harbor reaching its 40th birthday. Before the bridge there were only two ways to get to the city of Coronado, take a ferry or drive around the bay and up a sliver of sand that connected the "island" to the mainland.

What was cool about the ferry boats was you could as a passenger with no car, buy a ticket for 10 cents. Once aboard you could stay aboard as long as you wanted. Our family would ride the ferry back and forth for several hours and watch them load and unload cars, and see how well they docked the ferry at the dock. The old ferrys were sold off to and I don't know if any exist today.

Today marks 3 anniversaries. In 1969 was Neal and Buzz's excursion on the moon, 1976 was our first soft Martian landing with Viking 1, and in 1991 lapislaz and I got married.

We chose the date because Lee Gold had written a filk about remembering that Viking 1 had landed on the 20th of July to the tune of "Wearing of the Green". When we told her we had chosen the date because of the song, she wrote two verses for us. We had Barry Gold sing the complete song at our wedding reception.

The December 1969 issue of National Geographic came with a plastic record called "Sounds of the Space Age". It was a short history of man's journey into space up to the first moon landing. I still have that issue and the record, but not in the same place. I must have played it 500 times.

Here is a link the the National Geographic Archive of that record. (Complete with a working turn table.)

Here are some pictures I took at Westercon 62. On Flickr

Flew into Phoenix last night on Southwest. Saw some cool lighting displays during ascent. Took the hotel shuttle over to the hotel and met up with my wonderful wife. Looking forward to a nice conventional weekend.

I thought this was cool.



( Being a Filker (Spoiler )

Well it was really a diesel-electric engine, and no cars were attached.

For my birthday last year, lapislaz gave me the Engineer for a 1/2 hour at the Pacific Southwest Railroad Museum in Campo. (South east San Diego county.) They run historic trains every weekend along the San Diego and Arizona Railway.

We left home and headed out east on I-8 to the town of Boulevard to visit the Wisteria Candy Cottage for some sugar free chocolates. They have been making chocolates since 1921. The cottage did close recently due to financial reasons, but reopened again a few months ago.

We then headed down the 94 west to the Pacific Southwest Railway Museum's train station in Campo. We did not get there in time to ride the train to the Mexican Border, so we walked over the the carbarn and hung out there till the train returned.

Then we got to climb in and after the crew decoupled the two passenger cars, I was trained how to operate the locomotive by Don Getz. First was to learn the singles from the brakemen. Two cars, one cars, 1/2 car, stop and going too fast. (The two cars and one cars are distance measurements.)

Then I was shown how to operate the engine and did so for 30 minutes. The crew said I did a great job and asked if I wanted to be a volunteer engineer and crew for the museum. After my time was up, Don let us stay in the cab we got to watched as they pulled this locomotive out of the barn and park it on one of the side tracks. Then we got off and headed back to our car.

I have to say this was one of the best birthday gifts I have ever had.

I wondered away from watching TV a while ago. Mostly low quality superficial stuff. I watch stuff on the internet or DVDs. (often on my computer.) My computer monitor is a 19" LCD, which is larger than the TVs we had when I was growing up. My parents had B&W portable at about 12" screen. In 1966 we got a 17" color set!! (And a tall antenna on the roof so we could get the LA stations. San Diego only had three stations in 1966.) They had that color set for at least 15 years.

The house TV is a 32" LCD that we use mostly for DVD watching. The last broadcast program we watched, as far as I can remember, was the rose parade in HD. lapislaz and I often will watch on movie on Sunday night.

Yesterday the 27th was the anniversary of the Apollo One capsule fire, today is the anniversary of the Challenger failure , and Sunday the 1st of Feb is the anniversary of the break up of Columbia.

First Verse from "The Phoenix" by Julia Ecklar

In a tower of flame on Test Pad Two, I was there.
I know not where they laid my bones: it could be anywhere.
But when fire and smoke had faded, the darkness left my sight...
And I found my soul in a spaceship's soul, riding home on a trail of light.

It seems that Yahoo is reporting that Forrest J Ackerman has passed on. It was heart failure at 11:58pm on December 4th. I checked with several LA area fans to make sure it was true, as the last time I posted about this it turned out to be incorrect. It is also on the LASFS site.

My Loscon Report is behind the ( Cut )

visited 21 states (42%)
Create your own visited map of The United States or try another Douwe Osinga project

The states I have set foot in. I do not count flying over the state as being in the state.

Our local public radio station has a locally produced show called These Days. They did a segment on the original Star Trek.

It is hosted by Tom Fudge who kept saying Star Wars. (Klingon!!)