Roadside Picnic

I got back to Louisville late Monday afternoon. I do love being at the farm, but the isolation was starting to get to me. I'm not some kind of super-outgoing social butterfly, but I do like being able to get together with friends for a game or a movie or drinks or whatever on a few minutes' notice, and I was many miles from that opportunity.

I've spent far too much time these past few days reading about the cascade of fuckups around a local convention, FandomFest. I got roped into this hot mess back in 2012 and 2013, and tales of the 2013 debacle still circulate, waiting for a Google search. This year, the con advertised its location as the Fair and Expo Center - up until about two and a half weeks before the con. That's when the actual location was announced - the hastily-named Jefferson Mall Event Center! In other words, the old Macy's space. Then, announced guests started dropping out. About 25 of them, mostly for "personal reasons." Booking agents started popping up to deflect this, making sure that people knew that their clients weren't just blowing things off - in most cases, the con hadn't gotten contracts signed or had failed to arrange flights and hotels and guarantees. In two cases, the con announced the appearance of someone who lives here in Louisville, and those locals opted to not attend after hearing about the goings-on. One of them lives about ten minutes from the event site - I've been to his house - and he still noped outta there. The site itself had problems, including a dead raccoon spotted on the floor a couple of nights before vendor setup began (Ralph the Raccoon quickly became a mascot). The con owners didn't bother to get fire marshal approval until the day before the show. According to the local FD, the con first asked for approval for 30,000 attendees, then 10K. Then they checked with the mall and its formula for occupancy of that space - 4225. The fire marshal eventually approved the space for 1700 people. From what I've heard, they've been in no danger of hitting that number. Vendors have lost big. The con organizers have run off representatives of other shows that were handing out flyers - something that happens at every con. It's just an utter shitshow.

Apple discontinued the iPod Nano and Shuffle last week. The only iPod left now is the Touch, an iPhone 5 without the cellular radio. I do love my Nano, so much so that I think I'm going to buy another one for when this one eventually shuffles off its mortal coil. Yes, I could use my iPhone, and it certainly has more storage space than the Nano, but I am no fan of Apple Music.

SYR's tonight. Four D&D games, two Call of Cthulhu, one Ten Candles. I'm getting a real hankering to play something, in addition to running my Star Wars game ... just not so much at the SYR environment.

Calendar summer is upon us. Short nights, hot days, and at the moment, a heavy rain here in Bowman.

I saw Wonder Woman this afternoon. Loved it from start to finish. It's a gorgeous movie, long on action and myth. Gal Gadot is fantastic as Diana, and I'm sure I missed plenty of details in the movie, because there are times when I couldn't look away from her. She's attractive enough in the collection of period costumes, but when she's on screen in the WW costume, I'm just enthralled. She moves and looks and acts like a goddess. It's uncanny and so lovely.

On the smaller screen, I've started Amazon's The Man in the High Castle. It's quite good, expanding logically on the book.

And on - or behind - a different screen ... my trusty ol' iMac remains trusty, but there are some consequences of its age showing up. Not so much in the machine itself, but in some software. OS updates are no longer available for it (10.10.5 is the last version that it'll run), and Blizzard reminds me that 10.10.5 won't be supported much longer. So, I'm looking at a replacement, or successor, maybe. Despite being nearly ten years old (I bought it in '08, a factory refurb probably built in late '07), it still performs more than adequately, and, well, it does what I want and need it to do, and there is this grossly underutilized PS4 over there.

Graduation is now 90 days away. This past week saw a lot of progress, and one small hitch. Got to see a couple of unpleasant egomanics butt heads in class. Had my second meeting at the Nia Center, and this week I'll be out at Shawnee Academy. MRC training went well Thursday night. Going to start winding the practicum down in a few weeks.

Good Star Wars game Friday night. One player's Obligation is nearly discharged, so we can start replacing that with Duty soon. The Jedi is learning to work with the other Force-sensitive on the team (but mostly wants to find the Inquisitor who stole his lightsaber). It's a good game, and I'm so glad that the players are enjoying it. In a couple of weeks, I'm on the hook for Shadowrun Anarchy at SYR, and I think I've got a sufficient handle on that one.

The PeppermintOS laptop is doing what I wanted it to, and that's work. The hardware is old, and limited - about the same HD space that I have in these USB jump drives floating around - but Peppermint's pretty light and fast, and OpenOffice's descendant runs very well there. Now, I want a cheap Chromebook, just for comparison.

Gods, Apple Music is an awful product.

Decent enough time at the model train show. Bought a couple of things I shouldn't have, but whatever. I needed the break from studying for biostats. I had nightmares over this exam, and by Monday afternoon, I felt like my mind was full of spiders made of broken glass.

The exam wasn't as bad as I feared. At least, I hope that's what it was, because otherwise I'm dumb as a sack of hammers. This class is my white whale. I'm going like mad in every other class, but, man, fuckin' biostats.

I'm growing more and more fond of iCloud. Better integration across different machines than Google Drive, and additional space is ridiculously cheap. My tax refund is going into savings for an eventual Macbook replacement, almost definitely a Macbook Air of one size or the other. I only take my Macbook in one day a week, and I'm really comfortable with the iPad and its keyboard case, so I'm thinking about trying the smaller MB Air.

Yesterday was the last day of classes for the spring semester. I'm still in limbo about the fall - hoping that I'll get to start the MPH, afraid that I'll have to spend another year in the undergrad program.

I have four finals, beginning with tomorrow's public policy exam. That's the class I'm most concerned about, as far as my final grade. I've enjoyed the class, and feel that I've learned quite a bit, but I've struggled with the exams. Communications looks to be the GPA booster I expected it to be. Epidemiology's been tough, and the most valuable class of the semester - again, as I expected. 430 and 405, though ... there's a lesson somewhere here. I'm borderline A/B in 430 and have a high A in 405, and I've done no honest work in either course. In fact, my work in 405 is arguably fraudulent (as is the entire course, in my opinion). I've abandoned much of the team-based work in 430 - not because it's been difficult, but because I just haven't cared about the course and the lack of learning it's offered. Frustrations abound.

I've used my old iPhone as a slightly heavier iPod for a while, and I've gotten used to having the dedicated device. Doesn't make sense, sure - means carrying around a second device instead throwing music and podcasts on the iPhone in my pocket. But I liked continuing to get some utility out of the old phone, and having nothing else on it meant lots more space for music. A few days ago, the home button stopped working, which made the whole thing just about useless. About $40 to repair it, assuming the screen doesn't have to be replaced as well - it's cracked along the top. Irrational as anything - if the screen has to be replaced, too, I'll just set resources aside for a Nano, I think.

Sometimes it's the littlest things that make me happy. I've been looking at/pricing new monitors for a few weeks. I don't exactly need one, but I just want one. I found plenty in the $100 or so range, which was the price I'd set for such an expenditure. So, last night, after work and some errands, I found myself digging through a closet, looking for an old portable file folder box. Found it - and found an old CRT monitor. Old as in probably last fired up in 2005, and probably purchased in 2001 or 2002. What the heck, I figure, and plug it in. Powers right up. While running some more errands before a movie today, I picked up a Mini DVI-to-VGA adapter, and now I have a small secondary screen! Yes, I know I could just use Spaces and have effectively the same thing, but this is works, and I'm pleased with it.

The movie? Baz Luhrmann's The Great Gatsby. Enjoyed the heck out of it. I love the novel, and Luhrmann's Romeo + Juliet is just a joy to me, so I had pretty high hopes. I was not disappointed at all.

So, as planned, I hosted Christmas dinner today. Right now, holy cow, the leftovers.

The Niece got two phones. A TracFone from her mom and stepdad, and a LG Xenon from Matt. Combine those with the netbook Mom&Dad and I got her (and the upcoming accessories for it), and she was a very happy and technologically-connected kid.

Dinner itself was a good thing. Short on crazy and stupid for the first time in a long while.

The Niece's netbook is pretty nifty. We were able to get one in purple (her favorite color), and it's a Win7 machine. I'm going to get her an external DVD-RW drive for it soon and get the necessary OS upgrade. It is a tiny little machine. Keyboard's way too small for me to use (the Macbook has spoiled me, too), but her hands are much smaller than my octave-and-a-half paws, so she should be just fine.

Hoping to get in a late showing of Avatar tonight, and maybe an early one of Sherlock Holmes tomorrow.

The new iPhone launches today.  I would not want to be at an Apple or AT&T store, and I got a text from AT&T yesterday morning warning of possible service outages today.  I think they're terrific devices, but not yet terrific enough that I want one.

Comics this week:
The Dark Tower: The Long Road Home #5 (of 5):  Disappointing ending to the story.  It's another case of me not knowing what I expected, but this certainly wasn't it, I think.  Another series is planned for September, and I expect I'll get sucked into that one, too.
Invincible Iron Man #3:  Matt Fraction, for whatever other sins he might have committed, knows how to write IM.
Iron Man: Legacy of Doom #4 (of 4):  The post-Armor Wars red-and-gold suit merged with Excalibur's scabbard!  Doctor Doom!  A giant demon-thing made entirely of eyeballs and optic nerves!  This was great fun.
Justice Society of America #17:  More with Gog.  The JLA shows up.  Mister Terrific faces his disbelief.  I love this series so much.

34 days until GenCon.