Wave Without A Shore

Glug. No nicer than the RadCon Convention Crud. The best prescription tends to be Benedryl plus Sudafed and Advil. I’ve tried everything else, but this at least lets me breathe. I’m grumpy when I can’t breathe. I can tolerate a headache, but breathing is my basic requirement.

Jane’s bravely gone off to the store, doing just a shade better than I am, but I’m worried that she’s coming down with it. We had to bow out of a filksing this Saturday.

On a positive note, we’re going to turn on the pond pump this week, Friday or Saturday: we’re inviting OSG over for the event. We’ll install the pump and the filters and start the process.

We left Spokane WA at about 6:30 am on Wednesday, having delayed a day to let a snowstorm roll over our route. My philosophy is ‘chase the weather, don’t run from it,’ because it will give you spectacular camera fodder.
We drove to the Tricities (Pasco/Richland/Kennewick) and crossed the Columbia, drove to Pendleton, La Grande, and on down to McDermitt—it was dark by then, because we’d stopped for an hour in Pendleton and gotten lost after La Grande and had to backtrack. Cyber Sally needs an update—she’s still running on her original info, and now if turned off she takes about 5 minutes and some clever instructions to let her find the satellites (you have to tell her you’re a) not indoors and b) not where you darned well know you are, then ok ‘a broader search’ for satellites.—Which happens every time you get gas. So we were waiting for Sally to tell us where we were and had to figure out that workaround while moving, and by then were in Idaho. Oops.
That’s why we were late getting to McDermitt. But from McDermitt it’s a hop, skip and a jump to Winnemucca.

Now, Winnemucca is surrounded by mountains (snow-covered on this evening). Beautiful. We stayed at the Motel 6 (35.00 a night for a single, 50.00 for a double) and had supper at The (Flying) Pig…best barbecue this side of Casper WY, and from-scratch. House speciality is the pulled pork sammy (to die for), and the ribs (NOT baby-back: 6 is a meal). It’s a detour-300-miles to reach this restaurant sort of place, because you’re not going to find food this good any closer.

We left Winnemucca at about 6:30 am looking for breakfast and I am here to tell you, do not stop at the McDonald’s in Lovelock NV. We then picked up 95 south (in the morning fog) and drove south toward Las Vegas, but turned off it toward Bishop CA, and drove down the backside of the Sierra. We reached San Bernadino late-ish, and hit rush hour traffic on our way, via 15 and 5 into San Diego. That was a zoo—-and—I had just glanced up at our insurance papers on the visor and discovered our car insurance had expired on the 17th. We were in rush hour traffic: I opted not to tell Jane until we reached the hotel.

We called our insurance company and became legal.

We had a glorious suite: we were so comfy in the hotel. Each of us had a bathroom. That was great! We loved the con.

And on the advice of locals, we got underway at 10 am and headed past LA on I-5, going upward toward San Francisco. We had no incidents, traffic moved, and we did find the Farrell’s Ice Cream (to die for!) in Santa Clarita, past the university and a little drive up the hill, about five miles east of I-5.

Well-stuffed, we nursed our ailing navigator, Cyber Sally, up I-5 to the cutoff to the San Mateo Bridge, visited Jane’s brother for a few days, then launched out over the San Mateo Bridge (4.00 toll going in, none going out) to I-80, which we took over Donner Pass, through Truckee, Reno, and finally Winnemucca.

We repeated the barbecue experience, then headed (we thought) for Pullman WA to have supper at our favorite burget place, but by then we were so tired, we started investigating how Sally was going to send us, and discovered we’d have to backtrack 20 miles from Colfax WA once we got onto state 75. Nay! By now we were opting for home. So we just trucked back the way we’d come, up across the Columbia and on to home…had a supper at the Swinging Door, where they’ve added a new Mexican menu list (this place violates chef Ramsey’s ‘keep it simple’ rule of menus, and whatever you want, they’ve got)—so we tried that—it was good—and we went home and crashed.

By then I knew it was convention crud round two.

But that was the itinerary and the restaurant report. Jane’s got the pix, or will have. She’s really tired, because she drove almost all of it.

Beautiful drive. Jane will have pix…
Snow on all the mountains. We collected rocks from Oregon, Nevada, Eastern California, Donner Pass (CA) and had an absolutely spectacular convention (ConDor in San Diego, CA), in which we were royally treated. I have returned with version 2 of the convention crud, but suspect it’s actually from Jane’s sister-in-law, who hosted us for 3 days on our visit to San Francisco. She gave us a beautiful bonsai, and Jane had already bought one from a roadside stand, so our faithful Forester was laden with cats, rocks, and small shrubberies, not to mention the beautiful mossy rocks we got in Oregon. A few of our rocks took both of us to carry. And oh, we were glad to have our own beds last night. I didn’t get much sleep—was too congested, and got up in the firm conviction it most be near dawn—took some Dayquil. Wrong. A glance at the clock said 1230 am. But I’m vertical…a little bruised. I hooked a foot on some boxes in the mudroom and fell 3 steps onto the tiled floor—but here’s where figure skating makes you canny: I surfed the collapsing boxes until I fetched up against the outside doorway and Jane’s figure skates. You’re ‘used’ to falling—so instead of panicking, I calculatedly kept my hands out front, rolled onto the solid part of my hip going forward, and think I may have gathered just a small bruise from it all. It hurt. Jane came running from the drive to pick me up, because I was kind of wedged in, and a little shaken, but I think I’m quite fine. The convention crud is another matter, but hey, we had a great time getting it!
Thanks for hanging in, all! We’d estimated when we set up CC that the chances we’d all be out of town at once for any prolonged time were nil…but guess when Lynn scheduled a cruise and we scheduled a 4000 mile trip with a convention and a family visit!

I’ve been doing a simple sword and sorcery story that’s kind of sprawling beyond its original intent. Which I don’t have time to finish soon-ish.
I am thinking about selling it in pieces—installments, before it’s finished. That way…once it is finished, it goes up as a New Book. But until then, I might sell it sort of 10,000 words at a go. With a special area on my blog where people can speculate about where it’s going, what they want to see happen—I thought it might be fun. Nothing too heavy, not great literature, but a bit of collective fun. Whatcha think?

We’re taking a little refresher break…everybody have a good time and nobody discuss anything controversial until we’re back in full force. We’ll check in to be sure no unbearable amount of fun is being had without us. Posting of lolcats and loldogs is entirely encouraged.

I couldn’t resist.

It’s still a little stiff, but I’m the one who can loosen a keyboard right up. Bigtime. And reversing buttons on the mouse made things behave sanely. I hate trying to drag anything by curling my thumb under my hand to push and hold a stupid button. Whoever thought of that must have been left-handed. Now that drag and drop is leftward, I can push and hold with it completely out from under my palm. That helps.

insert, home, pg up, down, end, and delete are all in a little cluster above backspace. Actually more convenient. And I’ve got the blue FN (function) buttons as alternates, but I can’t read those even with contacts AND glasses. Getting old-er is a pita. I’m sure there’s something useful in that lot.

Meanwhile we’re cleaning up the place. We have a beautiful waterlily table that’s been completely obscured with ’stuff’ and Jane’s gotten it to where we hope there will be less ’stuff’ on it. I’m sure we’ll see the prints of little kitteh paws as soon as the ‘children’ discover it’s a highway between their separate territories.

Haven’t heard from OSG since the con. She’s off doing something interesting, I hope.

And I’m mostly over the crud, except a little stuffiness and night-time cough. That’s a relief.

Commentary on the figure skating furor: I understand Plushie’s complaint but I wish he had put it in a more diplomatic manner. I was glad that Lysacek didn’t escalate it. Plushy was arguing for the old judging system, which would have counted his quad higher, but since he made errors and Lysacek actually made fewer, he still might not have won: a great deal would have rested with the taste of the judges. I prefer the ‘new’ system, which I’ve explained at some length, in which the judges have some discretion on G.of E., (grade of execution) of an element, but in which the judges must also judge whether an element has actually been performed. When skaters train, they are required, (and always have been) to fully complete, say, 3 turns about for a spin to count at all in their passing their requisite tests. I can do two rotations. I can’t do 3. I can’t pass a test on the spin until I can do 3. That’s the law all US skaters train by—but that rule has been apparently thrown out during the ‘old system’ judging, in which nobody was counting once you were a high test skater on a program. Well, in my way of thinking, a spin is a spin, but not when it’s scanted.

And here’s where I don’t ‘get’ what Galina’s done with Weir. You have tens of thousands of songs to pick from; you KNOW that if you perform certain moves after the halfway point of your program you score higher. Plushenko—same deal. You put all your high-score moves in first, reach the halfway point and have nothing in the tank as the program goes for its conclusion. It’s the job of the highly paid choreographer and coach to come up with a program that gives the skater the music and rhythm he/she needs to complete a spin—ie, there need to be a certain number of beats to let the skater finish each element without being rushed on to the next. So pick the music to fit the program—if you have to have the guy skating to Gilligan’s Island! If you don’t let him finish, his spin will be downgraded, and he will lose points hand over fist. This is where skaters bleed to death from small cuts.

There was a beautiful pair of skaters at the Spokane Nationals—you just wanted to scream in indignation, because on every single element, the music rushed them on. They gave up points on every spin —2.9 spin revolutions, counted as 2. Many, many times. 2.9 seconds on the spiral. Downgraded a full point. That’s what I mean bleeding from small cuts. This is not rocket science. And choreographers who have been pooh-poohing the new system and still composing as if they could make up their own rules—are collecting big money and killing their skaters.

…and it is void of all my programs and settings. This is going to be a slow build. All the conveniences I have set up over the last 6 or so years are not here…not to mention my programs, like word processsing, etc.

Win 7 is pretty doggedly determined you are going to use Bing, which is the stupidest, most intractable search engine in existence—but it can be disabled and tossed. If you Manage Addons, or some such, install some of these alternatives, and insist, you can be rid of these pre-sets that MS so loves. I reset my home page. And am slowly building my Favorites Bar. But it may take a couple of months to get everything the way I like it.

The good news is the screen is good. The keyboard’s a little stiff. I think I can fix that. The touchpoint is a little strangely biased, but I think I can fix that too, when I find the right screen. And over all I think I’m going to be satisfied with this machine.

Jane’s in the other room cursing. Our HP printer just did some weird upgrade we didn’t want and now something’s screwed. I’m now asking myself if I want automatic updates on this machine or not.

…nicer e-books in some formats. Some of the older formats (RTF, TXT and others) have some problems (gappiness and not displaying graphics) that she believes she can resolve. We aren’t yet ready to undertake revision of all our books, since Jane deserves the time to get her own books up there, but it will happen. Basically it calls for creation of 3 basic ‘foundational’ texts and going from one of those for specific file types. Very much a case of try-it and learn. Plus Jane has found out how (thank you, person who sent us a walk-through) to create active TOC’s [table of contents], which is nice for those of you migrating during the day from one reader to another. So that will eventually be another correction, that will enable you, if you were reading chapter 4 on your computer at breakfast, chapter 4-7 on your palm on the subway and during lunch break and backtrip, and back to your computer for chapter 8 that evening, to locate yourself fairly precisely.

We do grow. We are composing a little pamphlet that will tell anybody how to do this, in incredible detail, and we learn as we go.

Meanwhile I am getting over the convention crud fairly rapidly, and look to be 100% by the weekend. I’m not yet well enough to write, but I got the Deceiver galleys in on time and under budget, and that was pretty good for somebody having trouble standing upright on Tuesday.

My wonderful new computer is arriving tomorrow. This one will become my road machine. Happy, happy.

Jane’s absolutely exhausted. Nobody’s commented on her new book, just come to her to tell her everything they don’t like about the site. And every time she runs a fix somebody wanted (most of them nice ideas) she has somebody else writing and asking for yet one more fix. Remember she’s not the webmaster—she’s a working writer trying to get her own books prepped for publication after having helped Lynn and me bigtime; so it’s MY turn on the firing range.

Our last fix: we changed the big window to a button. We changed the “Pages” sidebar to “Site Navigation” in major caps, so maybe that will help out people who can’t figure how to find things. That is a widget, and the order of the display is set by the order of the pages in the site. It’s NOT taking any instruction to change the display order by inserted number, so sometimes, well, we’re using a template, not our own design, and sometimes templates don’t do what you’d like them to do.

Meanwhile will some kind people go over and post something pleasant on Jane’s site so she can read something else besides a request for yet one more site-tweak?