The journey continues...

Brian Bilbrey October 17, 2018

17 Octogre 2018

Y'all: VOTE! Where registration is still open, do that. Then vote! Where registration is closed, many states offer on-site registration in concert with early voting, so check it out, carve out some time, and do that. Failing everything else, if you're unregistered, at least find out where your correct voting location is, and totter down there with ID and do a provisional ballot. Important to be at the right polling place, though. I haven't forgotten, I've just been busy. Especially Sunday, which had an evening full of song and a bit of dance at Cabaret Night at the Annapolis Shakespeare…

Brian Bilbrey October 8, 2018

8 Octogre 2018

A day late and a dollar short. Well, one of those, anyway. Yesterday was a half-day at work, updating firmware versions and upgrading hypervisor versions on the fleet at $FIRM HQ. When I say half-day, I mean in the CEO-sense: 12+ hours... long day. But it all got done, and everything was still working when the ball dropped. That's not always guaranteed when working with systems that get rebooted and/or power cycled with no regularity at all. And BIOS updates are a feature in one of the special circles of Hell. Since I was planning on a long Sunday, I…

Brian Bilbrey September 30, 2018

30 September 2018

This has been a busy, busy weekend. Two words: Capclave, Theatre. First up: Capclave. This is a lovely small literary SF/F/H/etc. conference run and sponsored by the WSFA (Washington Science Fiction Association). They're a wonderful, motivated, well-organized group who've been putting on Capclave annually for a long time - Hat's off to the team and organizers! The Guests of Honor (usually GoH) this year were Alyssa Wong and Nancy Kress. I was, frankly, embarrassed to know not very much about the work of either, for very different reasons. Alyssa writes superb, award-winning short stories, most of which may be considered…

Brian Bilbrey September 23, 2018

23 September 2018

More rain. Seriously. And we live close enough to DC that the rain-hole that exists there shadows us a bit - we got just a bit over half of the 22 inches that BWI got in the same time span, and that's less than 30 minutes drive. We're at 15 inches in the last two months. That's four month's worth of annualized rainfall. And I'm tired of it. Oh, yeah... the app on the phone says each one of the next 24 hours has rain due, better than 50% chance. I count Fall as officially started on the first night…

Brian Bilbrey September 17, 2018

17 September 2018

It was a busy week. As I tell Marcia every evening ... I worked on computers. It was an even busier weekend. I mowed. And mowed. And mowed. The front yard still needed a double cut, just to catch up from the two weekends away while we were in Maine. The back yard ... Shudder. Well, it's much, much flatter now, but the yard looks like it's been shaved by a great grandfather with the shakes! Between rain and travel, I'd not mowed for six weeks. Yikes! Other accomplishments over the weekend included working on the donor plaques on the…