Conclave Report

Conventions frequently promote themselves with room parties in hotel suites at other conventions. Cafe Penguicon and the ConVersation party were both great successes at ConClave.
Both conventions got many pre-registrations at their room parties, and a great time was had by all. We partied Friday and Saturday nights. In addition to the whole-bean freshly-ground coffee and espresso, Cafe Penguicon served the home-made fudge for which Kimba "The Fudge Goddess" is renowned. In honor of the latest addition to our guest of honor list, we featured a new flavor, "Google Fudge"!

ConClave has been going thirty years, and despite the definition of the word "conclave" has never elected a pope. This year the ConVersation room party had an event in which we did so. Sadly for palindromeg33k, who wanted the position very much, he came in a distant second to the door of the hotel room. The door was the way to... to... The Door was The Way. Since the pope costume and hat was unable to fit on the door, we gave them to palindromeg33k, who was dubbed AntiPope and blessed the balloon herding event as a huge cloud of balloons were pushed out of the ConSuite, down the hall, into the elevators, and into the ballroom for the dance.

Tux the Penguin put in a brief appearance. Tux wanted to meet Dr. Kage because of the "furry" connection, and although I (as Tux's agent and co-ordinator) am not into that, I felt it was appropriate. But due to poor timing that meeting was fated not to be.

I loved the panel "Fun With Liquid Nitrogen." After that event I got a pair of volunteers to bring liquid nitrogen to Penguicon and make liquid nitrogen ice cream in the consuite! Another panel I enjoyed very much was the discussion of Disney by Bill "Aksel" Kuehl and paranthropus. I knew paranthropus was a fantastically talented animator but until I looked through his portfolios it had not quite sunk in how stunningly accomplished he has been.

It's a three-year tradition for me after paying for the hotel room on Sunday to buy a book in the dealer's room at ConClave. But this year I didn't have cash. The minimum purchase to use credit was absurdly high, so I went completely overboard on cosette_valjean's credit card. In my insane, giddy spree I actually had nine or ten science fiction novels on the checkout pile, until she pointed out I already had enough. I culled the list down to Ventus by Karl Schroeder, Iron Sunrise by Charlie Stross (antipope), and two Robert Sawyer novels, Hominids and Calculating God. I owe cosette_valjean lots of money. With apologies to the Popeye character Wimpy, "I'd gladly pay you Friday for a library today." Fortunately cosette_valjean is only too happy for me to get mind-bending science fiction novels because I'll either tell her the complete story or actually read it aloud to her.

I like being with a rare woman who is interested in that. :)

( Thoughts about Karl Schroeder's Ventus. Spoiler warning. )

Doctor, It Hurts When I Boot My Linux

The hard drive on my Linux computer is 2.7 gigabytes. And yet when I upgraded from Kubuntu Breezy Badger Beta to the official release of Breezy Badger, it reported that it couldn't finish the process because the hard drive is full. I checked the properties panel for the hard drive and indeed, it was full.

My problem today is that when I type in my password (which I know is correct) to log into the computer, the monitor clicks as if changing resolution, the screen goes black, then grey with a grainy clock mouse cursor, and then back to the log in screen again.

Open Wireless at ConClave

One more important point to my con report, which will segue into a rant about computer security.

When I opened up the laptop computer at ConClave, I did not have a futile hours-long struggle to get on the internet. I had prepared for a struggle. I was even sitting in the middle of Cafe Penguicon where there were plenty of tech geeks who could help me figure it out. Instead, I was pleasantly surprised when the latest release of Ubuntu got me right onto the hotel's wireless network, effortlessly. I did nothing; not even a password; it just was there. Like the drinking fountains and bathrooms in the lobby, you walk up to it and it just works, no permissions, no charge. I had no such luck with the wireless in my own bedroom. In fact, I still don't. The difference is that the hotel wireless was not secured, whereas phecda is a computer professional and has locked down the wireless network at my house so well that it has formed a consistent barrier to its usefulness. I'd wager the vast majority of wireless internet access with the laptop has been elsewhere than at home. I have never gone somewhere else and accessed some other network, without losing it again in my own residence and waiting for it to be set up again by someone else.

I don't need to secure the internet; that's contrary to what the internet is. Especially when the person most often locked out of it is the only wireless user on the network, for whom alone the wireless exists. I've always thought of giving free wireless internet access to my neighborhood as a pleasant idea. I just don't want them getting the contents of my hard drive. Why is it these are not two different compartmentalized things? I have never, ever, used a home LAN network to transfer files from one of my home computers to another of my home computers. That just never works and I have no confidence that it will start working. All I use it for is the internet. Some smart techie somewhere has got to have come up with a way to offer an open internet node without "LAN" access. Don't tell me it can't be done.

As Dane Cook said in his wonderful comedy routine, "It can be anything you want, dreamers. So dream it! Go ahead, dream it ya #&@%in' dreamers!"