ifics

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!!)

I saw on Locus.com that Forrest J. Ackerman has passed on. He had an heart attack on Nov 3 and was not expected to recover. He was 91.

Our local mountain town of Julian is know for a number of things including apples. When the crop starts to come in the city folk head to the town for apple pie, cider and the like. I have been going to Julian since I was a kid back in the 60s. This year It was Lapis, One of my brothers, his son, another nephew and a niece. We also took our two dogs and my brother took his.

We drove up through the town of Ramona to Santa Ysabel where Dudley's bakery is located. They make a lot of good breads, including two low carb verities. We left there and went into Julian and to the Julian Cider Mill. (In the old days it would have stopped at Manzanita Ranch, but it is no longer around.) There we got some raw apple cider, some other ciders and Lapis and I got us a supply of sugar free dark chocolates. (Like SF DC macadamia nuts.)

Then we headed over to the Laguna Mountains to eat lunch. I made some pimento cheese, a requirement for fall mountain trips. We took the desert view trail, then walked around the Burnt Ranchera camp ground and back over to the picnic area. We stood around and chatted a while with some college age hikers then we all hit the road to home.

I have been working on my State of California sample ballot and its many propositions. We have:

Prop 1A - High Speed Rail
Prop 2 - Farm Animals
Prop 3 - Children's Hospital
Prop 4 - Minor's Abortion
Prop 5 - Drug Offenses Sentencing
Prop 6 - Police Funding
Prop 7 - Renewable Energy
Prop 8 - Gay Marriage
Prop 9 - Victim's Rights
Prop 10 - Alternative Fuel
Prop 11 - Redistricting
Prop 12 - Veterans Bond Act

Prop A - Fire Protection Tax
Prop L - La Mesa Sales Tax
Prop U - High School Bond
Prop W - Lemon Grove School Bond

So it takes a bit of time to decide to support or oppose them. Some of them are really trojens, others are "should we do this in our current economic condition" type. Thank the Lord in Heaven for the Internet!!

Our ballot also has other things like the POTUS, which in my case will be Obama.

This last weekend I went to ConChord 21 in Woodland Hills. (In the Los Angeles Area.) It was a little smaller than other years, but still was a good convention. I was providing sound and lapislaz setup and ran the con suite.

We went up in two vehicles and had to stop and pick up Rod O'Riley. After several traffic jams, we arrived in the late afternoon. I proceeded to unload and set up the sound gear, while Lapis did the same with the con suite.

In the evening was the traditional Pool party/reception which we attended for a while. I went back to the concert room to ready the evening show. My assistant, Greg Gross, arrived with the soundboard and amp along with other miscellaneous stuff. The only Concert was Lynn Maudlin, then we shut down for the night and attended some circles.

Here are the Photos I took at the Con. ConChord 21 Photos

Bill Stains was in town last night for San Diego Folk Heritage. This was the first time I got to see him perform. It was a great show, and I hope to see him perform again someday. I posted some pictures here.

I would love to have one of these. Only $24,500. If I could afford it, I would also have a Robbie, A Gort, Huey, Dewey and Louie, and a number of other robots.

Guess I will have to just make due with my little bittie one I got at a con years ago.

My sister, Charlotte, and my mom spent the last year making us this 12 Days of Christmas Quilt. Each square was hand sown by my sister. It turned out rather nice I think. Now we need to figure out a place to hang in during the holidays.

Today is my day of birth. I am now "L"!! Next year I will be "LI".

We started the day with pancakes and bacon. I had recently gotten some sugar free raspberry syrup, and it was pretty good on our low carb pancakes. We then headed down to the San Diego Natural History Museum to see the exhibit of the Dead Sea Scrolls. It took a little over two hours to see all of the exhibit, but I realized later I never went over to see the copper scroll. I did get to see the oldest known copy of the 10 commandments. I got a copy of the official program book and a DVD about the scrolls.

For dinner lapislaz made one of my favorite meals, papadillas. Made with fauxtatos, tortillas, chicken, barbecue sauce, and cheese. For dessert sugarfree cheesecake with fresh strawberries on top.

Since I had the day off, I also patched the garage and patio cover roofs. I was going to wait for the weekend, but it's going to rain this weekend.

Lapis gave me two SF novels for my birthday. One is "The Accidental Time Machine" by Joe Haldeman and the other is Allen Steele novel, "Luner Descent".

It all started on a warm November morning here in Sunny California. lapizlaz's monitor did not want to come on. It was a 5 year old Viewsonic LCD that has been a bit flaky recently. Since lapizlaz works from home, I figured we should replace it with an nice 19" widescreen. Off to Staples where they have one on sale, out of stock. Off to Costco and we get another Viewsonic LCD. This one has a 2ms refresh rate and is a 19" widescreen. Back at home, lapizlaz's computer's video card could not run the proper resolution of 1440 by 900. We don't want to buy a new video card so I ended up with the new monitor.

It's rather nice, but much brighter than the old one, had to tone it down a bit.

( And Then.... )

We usually only get a group of trick or treaters each year, this year we go two!! The first was our neighbors to the north. They have four daughters, and we got them big huge Pirates of the Caribbean chocolate bars. We always have some sugar free hard candy around the house, so when another set of trick or treaters showed up at 8:40 or so, that's what they got.

We live on a very busy street, and most of the houses do not have families, just husbands and wifes. Go around the block to the streets to the west of us, and you will find a lot more activity.

Hope everyone else had a good Halloween.