Entertainment ⁽⁸⁷⁾

Brian Bilbrey November 11, 2018

11 November 2018

Thank you for your service. All of you! What with the northern half of the planet angling further away from the closest star, the light is weaker, and the cold is stronger. Tonight will be our second consecutive night in the mid-20's. Even so, the dog finds a way to lay in the sun... That said, she's battling fairly severe arthritis, primarily in her left rear hip and knee. Poor pupper. We're at about 50% over normal rainfall for the year, with more still to come. I've simply got to get out and do some remedial grading along the side…

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 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…