Vakkotaur

Someday I'll have a proper post to post again. Until then...

Erudite: characterized by great knowledge; learned or scholarly: an erudite professor; an erudite commentary.

Anthropomorphic: ascribing human form or attributes to a being or thing not human / resembling or made to resemble a human form.

[Poll #1499415]

As some folks know a fellow known by some as "Furp" was killed in an traffic accident. hakeber has the news reports of the accident. The rather well known unclekage has a short post that's gotten many responses. smashwolf seems to to be planning a memorial motorcycle ride and there is now a remember_furp LJ community for folks to post their stories and such. film2edit has a few posts about all this, and she knew Furp far better than I did.

I didn't know him and really only barely met him, I think. I do recall him from my first time at RCFM. He was the guy who drove another guy (who happened to be a Guest of Honor that year) from Wisconsin to Alabama - and back again after the con was over. The Sunday evening after the convention was over there was a bit of an after party planned. I made arrangements to be there but left for some time to repair a fursuit fan setup for jugularjaguar. I screwed up and had to re-do some of my work, taking considerable time, and so I didn't realize until I got back to the after-party that there was a severe weather warning and there had been tornado reports at a rather late hour. I mention this as the morning after was bright and clear - but I saw Furp and his passenger also leaving as early as I was. Furp made a point of suggesting I keep a radio on for reports of severe weather and road conditions that might have resulted from the night before. It wasn't a paranoid warning, just a friendly comment. From what I've been seeing around LJ, that was nothing unusual for him. He was just friendly and tended to be helpful when he could be.

Rather than yet another summary of the year, statement of how wonderful or miserable the year was, or resolutions... have a poll not about any of those things!

[Poll #1323558]

Monday
Monday morning was generally uneventful. Jay had packed up almost all of his stuff the night before and I packed up my stuff in the morning. Most things were loaded, breakfast was had (or was it the other way around?), the last few items were loaded and we checked out. As we came around to do handle the checkout, we saw someone just waiting at the curb with a bunch of stuff on a luggage cart. I wonder how many were waiting to actually use it.

An hour or two out I got a phone call. Or perhaps I should say that ACME Delivery got a call. It was from a number I didn't recognize and it was an Atlanta area number. Someone wanted ACME to deliver something. I didn't quite catch who it was, I do recall they mentioned a room number (I think it was 1331 but I'm not sure) nor was what was to be delivered or the recipient mentioned. I explained that I was already well on my way home and so would be unable to deal with that.

The weather forecast for the trip home was for generally lousy weather all the way. There was rain, and someplace in Tennessee or Kentucky I saw some odd clouds that got my attention. As I watched I saw the lower parts going in circles. Uh oh. It was east of us and heading east and we were heading north. Also, it was still slow rotation and not just too big. A while later either it was too far away or had come to nothing. There were no reports of tornadoes in the area on Monday so probably it just dissipated. Fine with me.

We retraced our route and took the IL-4 and I-155 route again, stopping for the night in Peoria. Supper was at a Cheddar's that we'd been to a few years ago with foolscap001 and irpooh when we visited the Jubilee Renaissance Faire.

Tuesday
We stopped for lunch in Cedar Rapids, someplace on Collins Road. It's still odd to see the guy wires from the local TV channel 2 go over the road. Lunch wasn't bad, but it was jarring to enter a place that allowed smoking and didn't have any real separation of smoking and nonsmoking. It was one big room with the ashtrays restricted to one area. As it has been put, this is about as effective as having a peeing and no-peeing section in a pool. I think that the next time I go into someplace and even smell tobacco smoke, I'll turn right around go back out, and elsewhere.

Outside the restaurant one of the newspapers had huge headline about what was obviously a tornado, listing the number of dead, number of home destroyed, number of businesses destroyed, width and length of the swath of destruction. And not saying where or when it all happened, at least that could be seen by looking at the paper through the window in the newspaper box. That was, of course, about Parkersburg, IA and the tornado that hit it on Sunday. A bit up I-380 we saw some trailers damaged at a dealer, obviously the effect of significant wind. But that was about all we saw of the effects of the earlier severe weather.

The rest of the day was uneventful, arriving home a bit before supper time and getting the car unloaded. We decided we weren't going to go out for anything and unpacked a bit and caught up on things some.

I'm sure I left out a bunch of stuff. Some of it will show up after I've dealt with the photos from RCFM. Unfortunately it seems a bunch didn't turn out. A lot are rather washed out and look overexposed, something that I hadn't had to deal with much in the digital age. I guess I get to see just how much GIMP can compensate for that.

( Things continue... into an odd lull. )

Wednesday
I was up fairly early and jmaynard and I got the car loaded and were underway at a reasonable enough time. We'd decided we didn't need to make Kentucky or Tennessee and some place in southern Illinois would do for a stopping point. We picked a route that included I-155 so it wasn't as far east as one I had taken a few times, but with the use of IL-4 also managed to avoid St. Louis - saving time, distance, and frustration. This route worked out rather well and we stayed in Mt. Vernon.

Thursday
This was a bit more leisurely getting started as we were past the halfway point and not concerned about being late for anything. If anything, we wanted to not be too early so we wouldn't be waiting around to check in. The timing worked out about right, with the only difficulty being waiting for a luggage cart. This didn't take just too long, and those using the carts seemed to be reasonable about it: use it, release it.

I was pondering having Orvan show up some but there weren't that many folks around, and we hadn't had supper yet. Jay was asked if he could haul some of the cans and bottles from Brody's to the con and agreed. We wound up waiting for that to happen, and then there was the first negative experience. Jay stopped by the main entrance to the hotel and things had been half unloaded and then... nothing. Just waiting and waiting and no word about anything. Evidently it had been decided to have everyone (else?) unload at a different entrance and nobody bothered to either finish Jay's unloading or tell him to change locations. I wound up trying to sort through some of the confusion and snag a cart and finish that unloading - meanwhile many were wondering where all the Coke was, since Jay had most of it. When that was finally taken care of, we went to eat and got into Firehouse Subs just as they were closing, so we had our order to go. And by the time that was done, I was not about to get into suit, though I did stay up and wander about for a while.

We (jmaynard and I) got started fairly early. We managed to be on the road around 7:30 AM and reached Mount Vernon, IL a little after 6 PM. It was less than 12 hours on the road, but still a long day. I suspect neither of use stayed properly hydrated, though I think I did manage to drink a bit more water than on the Penguicon trip. I still drank two glasses of water at Cracker Barrel before the food arrived.

Tomorrow's segment of the trip will be a bit shorter in mileage and not have the majority in IL, which is a 65 MPH speed limit state - unlike almost every other state in I've traveled. So getting to Huntsville should go fairly quickly and we can start out a bit later if we like. And maybe I'll manage to drink more water and not feel a bit off upon arrival.

And now the rant: Can we just nuke the snapsh*t idiots already? Please? A small one should do.[1]

I'm using the Mac Powerbook, and I'm not sure if I can edit the hosts file and have it take, which while admittedly something of a dirty solution it's the only solution that actually works every time, forever for getting rid of the craptastic snapsh*t barf when I view some folks journals.

[1] Rant applies to LJ, not IJ. IJ is clearly the sane one here.

Or maybe, ACME Delivery: Lessons from Penguicon.

I'm not sure that the ACME ale went as well as it could have. It's not that what happened was bad, as I know some folks drank it, as evidenced by the odd empty bottle I saw in the con suite. It's just that... well, it seemed to not quite hit as well is could have. I recall that at MFF I was rather busy and didn't do a proper Orvan delivery but just took some to the gopher area. I think that if I do anything with it again, I might just check out room parties and pick one. I was tempted to write "most deserving" but that's hard to say, and "most in need" doesn't sound very nice. Right now I'm debating if I'll do that bit at all at RCFM - though if I read one comment right, someone might be disappointed if ACME IPA doesn't show up. I don't have any recipient in mind, and I don't recall any room parties last year. But then last year Jay & I went for the "Booster" level and I spent a fair amount of time at the Booster (and GoH) Appreciation Party. Therefore I wasn't checking out any of the rest of the con in that time. As far as I can tell, RCFM doesn't coordinate and try to block together room parties, but I could be wrong.

Orvan needs some sort of ribbon dispenser. It's just too awkward to deal with ribbons in a pocket with those hooves. Though now that I have the gold-on-black "ACME Customer" ribbons, they can be included with the delivered items or be attached to the parcels next Penguicon. Also, I should only need the black-on-yellow ACME ribbons next time, so they should be right. Or so I thought, I have reason to add another ribbon, which could also cause confusion. I should probably order a lot more than I did this year. This year I was really trying to get rid those defective things. I'm not sure how such a dispenser would work, but I have a while to think of something.

I'm debating if Orvan should have a holstered pocket knife or such. Many folks don't have a knife handy and have to ask to borrow from someone in the vicinity. Such a thing would have to be clearly not a weapon so as to avoid getting peace-bonded and thus have its utility removed. I've also noticed that some folks choose to open a parcel from the bottom. Perhaps I need to split the top label to make it easier to see the top of the box and where to cut.

While the big huge ACME sack works well for big things, it's not so good for smaller items. Rather than (just) a smaller version, perhaps I need to make, or have made, a pouch. That would allow for smaller items and give Orvan a place to stow odd little items for those who ask him if he has anything for them. Though he might need lots of whatever that might be, once word gets out. This sort of thing is another item I get to think about and be on the lookout for.

And... I need to shed a bunch of pounds. Again, dagnabbit. While I fit into the fursuit well enough, Orvan's belt is rather tight and that needs to be fixed. That's just one of many reasons for me to shed that weight, but it's added to the list.

I've been getting things together for ACME deliveries at Penguicon in April and RCFM is only a month or so after that. That means I need ACME delivery ideas for RCFM. Both who to deliver something to, what to deliver to them. I don't know everyone well enough to work it all out by myself, so I'm asking for some help.

( Delivery guidelines )

( RCFM: Sunday and Monday )