My Baycon Schedule

Baycon has their preliminary (ver 2.0) schedule up. Here is my current list of panels. Not moderating this year (yay.)

Friday 1900 Drama Llama Protection Alameda
How do you deal with the drama llamas? How do you avoid picking up the negative energy they emit? Listen to our panelists as they expound upon the ways to shield yourself and not feed the drama...

Friday 2130 So There I Was... Camino Real
"So There I Was... in the middle of the field when..." Join RPGers as they share their gaming war stories. Bring your own to share.

Saturday 1900 Does Speculative Fiction Have Room for LGBTQ Characters? Bayshore East
The LGBTQ community is under represented in speculative fiction; possibly less than in other genre literature and media. Why should this be so, when speculative fiction is supposed to push the envelope and break down society's prejudice? Where are the LGBTQ characters in speculative literature and the media? We may all know about Torchwood and Mercedes Lackey's Valdemar, but where else are these characters to be found? How do we encourage more authors to include LGBTQ characters in their work?

Sunday 1300 Value For Piracy Lafayette/San Tomas/Lawrence
What commodities are valuable to a pirate? What are the likely future commodities? Is there any advantage for size/weight/density? What do they need to operate and be successful? What sort of environment allows piracy to thrive?

Monday 1300 Legal Systems Very Different From Ours Cypress
Laws pervade our lives — whether the laws of physics or the laws created by government. What defines a legal system? How different can a legal system be from that we currently have in the United States? Our panelists discuss what systems currently exist, those from the past and those possible in the future or in fiction.

Monday 1430 Arthur C. Clarke Lafayette/San Tomas/Lawrence
Sir Arthur Clarke died earlier this year. Many of us took our first foray into SciFi by reading one of his works. Our panelists discuss their favorites and his life.

Pretty good schedule. Gives me time to see the con, and I'm pretty confident about my ability to contribute to all the panels except the last one (been a couple of years since I've read much Clarke.)

The one moment of horror came when I first saw the preliminary schedule and saw that I was double-seated in the piracy panel and Where Would I Be Without D&D? I really wanted to do both, but had to choose. I may send a penguin to sit on the panel in my stead. Of course, this also the slot the Cassini panel is set for. Anyone got a cloning vat handy? Or one of those time-twisting thingies Hermione used?

Now a couple of things I will probably attend.

Friday 1630 And When You're a Professional Pirate...

Saturday 1000 The Factory of the Future

Saturday 1300 Plot Point Research

Sunday 1130 Suborbital: Halfway to halfway to anywhere.

Should be a good weekend.

I just have one quibble, and it's nothing major. But I've always felt that if you're going to do a theme for the con, it should reflect the Writer GOH's works and that programming should tie into the theme heavily. We've got Tim Powers, and the theme is Space Pirates? Were I in charge, the con theme would have been Secret Histories (since that's what he writes.. don't believe me? Read Declare.) and there would have been programming tacks that reflect the ideas embodied in Powers' work. Save space pirates for when we get Alaister Reynolds or one of the other New Space Opera writers as GOH.

Ah, well. As I said, a minor quibble coming from my over-developed need for balance in all things.

Now to rock on research for these panels.

Crashlanding's march to world domination continues!

Assuming that by "world" you mean an island laid out in a perfect square. Anyway, I've cracked the top 600 thanks to all y'all clicking! Keep it up!

Increase population http://crashlanding.myminicity.com

Increase industry http://crashlanding.myminicity.com/ind

Improve the transport network http://crashlanding.myminicity.com/tra

Increase security http://crashlanding.myminicity.com/sec

Improve environment http://crashlanding.myminicity.com/env

A welcome change.

Things have been better on the work front. I made a locked post last week about this, but I can share one change that has made a huge difference for us.

Last year we had a temp driver, Victor, who we all loved. Big bear of a guy, dedicated Raiders fan, and cool as shit. Of course, we let him go when times got a little rough.

They've rehired him, permanently, and have him doing "clean up" duties. taking work off routes that are overloaded, covering Hot Shot orders that come in, doing the material transfers between 7th Street and Trimble.

The result? Thursday and Friday most of us had close to eight-hour days. Having that one extra driver reduced the workload that much, allowed more deliveries to go out on time, and cut down on the needed overtime. I really hope they go ahead and hire two more warehouse/driver people. We have ten trucks (seven International 4300DTs, and three Fords; a F-450, a F-350 [configured as a flatbed with wood gates], and a F-150) so why not use them?

The easy days will end soon, since summer is coming and construction really picks up during the months of guaranteed good weather. We also start delivering to a lot of schools that are undergoing renovation while classes are out. So soon enough I'll be doing 9.5 hours a day again.

Let's Go Giants!!!

Vizquel returns, helps Giants beat Phillies to end skid at 5

San Francisco Giants: 8
Philadelphia Phillies: 2

Tim Lincecum goes for eight strong innings, the G-men get 15 freaking hits, and the defense actually works in Omar the Out-Maker's return to the line up. Jose Castillo went 4 for 4. This is how we're supposed to look this year, lots of hits, lots of base running, and solid starting pitching.

The Giants are currently 15-22, 4th in the NL West, 8 back of division leading Arizona and half a game behind Colorado for third place.

GO GIANTS!!!

And in other news...

I have lost track of how much laundry I've done today. Several loads. And I've moved all of kshandra's stuff out of the old dresser to the top of her new dresser so I can put things away.

I was planning on doing some dishes, but those can wait at this point.

Hmmm.. I may actually own too many t-shirts.

A slight miscalculation on my part.

My plan of rewarding myself with a beer for every load of laundry done was all well and good. Until I got up to the seventh load or so.

Baby, the dryer ain't the only thing loaded and spinning around in these parts!

Woo!