phi

A few nights ago, I had a dream that I was at Aussiecon Four and some SMOFs were trying to convince me that Arisia (or rather, a group with some Arisia people at its core) should bid for the 2015 Worldcon. I responded "But we just ran a Worldcon! It's too soon". They looked at me uncomprehendingly and pointed out that 2004 was six years ago and that it had been 11 years since the previous Australian Worldcon, at which point I said "No no, Arisia wasn't all that involved with Noreascon IV. I'm talking about Anticipation".

It's certainly true that Arisia the organization and many of the individual movers and shakers of Arisia put a lot more effort into Anticipation than we did into N4. It's also true that Anticipation was... disorganized. And much as I'd like to think that the bright spots are the ones I and my friends were in charge of -- areas like Logistics and Treasury and Staff Den which are either easily scalable or points of particular excellence at Arisia or both -- there are some dim spots which I can't escape thinking were due to the way Arisia approaches running conventions, and we would have to make structural changes before we were really capable of running a con with some of the features people expect from a Worldcon. Maybe we don't really care about those things, I don't know. But even if we did, when I say it's too soon, I'm not really talking about how long it has been since the previous con.

wiscon is updating their photography/videography policies. I know this because I'm the clerk of arisia and they asked for copies of ours, for reference.

This is awesome because Wiscon is hands down the best-organized sf convention on the planet. Part of being well-organized is being quick to ask others for advice, but that we were among the people they thought to ask is a nice compliment.

Not bothering with the Arisia debrief that's going on right now. Who wants to go out on a bike in the snow anyway. It's not like I'll be a div head next year or anything.

Meanwhile, I've got half a pound of Dunkin Donuts coffee all ready to take to work with me tomorrow. Mm, mm.

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All true, after a fashion. I'm home sick and would just as soon not infect all the Arisia staffers, nor make the crud worse by biking in the cold and wet. I'll still be reading conchair@arisia.org, I suspect, but my actual position will most likely report to Ben and not to Jill. And someone's got to drink the commercial stuff Rosa brought in to the house while we were waiting for the 18-pound Sweet Maria's order to show up. It's not going to be any of us, so it might as well be my unsuspecting coworkers.

Sunday afternoon at Arisia I'm hosting a Coffee Tasting.

I've roasted up fifteen batches of coffee. I'm going to do drip as I don't think even my prosumer espresso maker has the bandwidth to brew it all in only four hors. Can I borrow your drip coffee pot, or even just the carafe? I won't be able to brew a lot of machines at once but having them on hand will mean I can be setting one up and serving from another while a third one brews.

I'd be much appreciative, and there's be good coffee in it for you.

At Arisia we have 24-hour events, and there is a chair on duty at all times and someone in the ops room overnight. Gaming and anime and the Con Suite run around the clock. But it's not just at-con that we're a 24-hour operation. Often the last-minute rush to prepare programming and publications involves burning a lot of midnight oil. In the last week I've pulled two near-all-nighters preparing documents for the hotel, once staying up until 7:45am and the second time until 6:15 (happily, in neither case did I have to go to work the next day). Even on "normal" nights deguspice and I are often up until 3, which is when cintyber wakes up from what I would call a nap and gets online. Email to Arisia public-facing addresses is likely to be answered at any time of day or night. So far I'm managing not to violate Passovoy's rule. But last year after a week in which no hour of the day failed to contain email from me at least sometimes, our then hotel rep asked me whether I ever slept, and I'm expecting a similar question from her replacement.

+ I got a new job in January
+ the interview process was great for my ego
+ the pay is good
+ the benefits are even better
+ they sponsored Arisia
+ I have a nice computer on my desk
- I have a tiny shared office
- there aren't enough conference rooms to be able to make private phone calls
- there's no wireless infrastructure to be able to work in any of the nice large open spaces
- the project is huge
- the project is written in Ancient Greek
- the project is out of management's control
- the methods I know to bring it under control don't apply to huge projects written in Ancient Greek
+ there was a smaller project in a modern language which needed someone with my skills to kick its ass
+ I got up to speed very quickly
+ I kicked a lot of ass in a very visible way
- there's no more ass to kick there for at least six months
- there aren't any other projects here like it
- most of the other projects here are sufficiently out of control that adding people to them won't help
- changing projects here is mired in bureaucracy, even if a good project could be found
- overall, I am down enough on my job to be willing to say that I'm thinking of leaving in an unlocked post
+ I have a job interview at Vanu on Tuesday
+ they want me to give a presentation
+ this is an excuse to write up some stuff I did on the rally app a while ago
+ a presentation-based interview process is more likely to result in a company that can see the big picture than a coding-puzzle-based process

+ I learned a lot about how hotel room blocking should be done at the last Arisia
+ I've come up with a really good new blocking scheme
- it's still not quite clear where the open parties should go in this scheme
- I got pretty far behind schedule on getting reservations open
- our rep at the hotel has left, which will delay it further
- people are starting to ask when we'll be ready
+ we're still a long way ahead of last year

- my laptop died two weeks ago with swap file corruption, and then wouldn't boot due to corruption in a system file
- Norton Ghost's bootable recovery CD couldn't see the drive at all
- I hadn't made a backup in over a year
- I couldn't find the recovery CDs, and my subsequent backups were of personal data only
- this happened a month or two before the likely release date of a couple of very sexy new machines that I would have liked to have an excuse to buy
- the next revision of my old laptop dropped a feature no one but me cared about, but which I cared about very much
+ the revision after that has the feature again
+ it has a bunch of other features I like too, and only one very minor negative change which turns out not to matter at all
- that revision has been discontinued
+ I found one refurb for about a third of what the price was before it was discontinued
+ the new machine takes all the same peripherals including the port replicator and extended battery
+ the new machine is handily capable of the one or two CPU-intensive tasks I had been frustrated at not being able to do on the old machine
+ USB disk enclosures for the drive in the old machine are fairly cheap
- UPS took five days to deliver one sent by air from Connecticut
- UPS tracking tells you where the package ought to be, not where it is
- it was the wrong enclosure when it arrived
+ I found this out in enough time to have a new one shipped out that day, from California this time
+ it arrived in time for the very next chance I had to play with it, without paying an arm and a leg for shipping
+ GetDataBack could see the drive no problem
+ GetDataBack doesn't make you register before you can tell whether it will be useful or not
+ GetDataBack can be used for small collections of files without registering at all, and only insists on the registration for a bulk restore
- GetDataBack is kind of pricy for shareware
+ I like supporting shareware authors (as you might have guessed by my naming the piece of shareware in question four times in this post)
- I now have two restores, one complete but possibly slightly damaged, and one old but intact, and will have to sift through it at some point
+ that task can be deferred because the new machine has plenty of disk
+ it doesn't look like very much of the data is damaged at all

+ we found a great contractor to do our front porch
+ he came highly recommended from previous customers
+ he was obviously very knowledgeable about old houses and gave us some advice of the "we'd never have thought of this obviously correct statement" variety
+ he wasn't out of line in cost
+ he was available in only six weeks
- he sent some email around the scheduled start date saying that he was behind schedule
- then he want completely dark
- it has been a week since the revised start date and still no sign of him
- he has a large deposit from us
- one of his buddies thinks he has absconded
+ there is a state fund paid for from license fees for reimbursing people in this situation
+ it will actually cover us, since he was licensed when we signed the contract with him
- it takes a while and involved jumping through enough hoops that you really need a lawyer
- the fund won't reimburse legal fees
+ we found a great lawyer (turns out Bill White, who we already knew was great, is taking clients)
+ he's reasonably affordable for a lawyer and can get us through this process without spending so much money that it's not worth it
- this pretty much kills the idea of doing the porch this year

I've always been fondest of Wednesday, Thursday, and Monday of Arisia. The sense of impending flood, and the aftermath. The tight knit cadre of volunteers. The panic building and subsiding.

The dancefloors and risers in the ballroom are all set up, mostly correctly even, and the ITA Software banner is hung in what will be the film room with care. People are posting about their parties. It's time for me to go post about mine.

A little more than fifteen years ago I got a call from Kim van Auken asking if I could run a Staff Den for her a few days later. I could, I said, what's my budget and when do I pick up the room, and then I went off and did it.

I didn't really understand at the time why she sounded so relieved on the phone.

Now I do.

Proof that I really am leaving Permabit:

The company party has just been announced. For 6pm on Thursday, January 11.

Next they'll be swapping out the MLK day holiday for one on Presidents' Day.

For the Arisia party, cintyber picked up some cute Rubik's Cubes. Not real Rubik's Cubes, though; they were knockoffs, because the patent has expired.