Dry Ice Factory

No doubt this is a post that will evolve over time as I add more details (and pictures, as it turns out) and recover more memories. I'm utterly exhausted at the moment, although I do actually feel much improved over yesterday. The tl;dr version is: Corflu XXX was hosted by Dan and Lynn Steffan in Portland, Oregon over the weekend, and it was a total freaking blast. Wish you'd been there, if you weren't; it was terrific to see you there, if you were.

( The rest is noise ... )

Andy Hooper writes: "I've finally begun listing items for auction on eBay in order to raise money for Corflu XXX next May. Search for items with the phrase [Corflu 30] in the title. Right now I have 18 lots listed, almost all of them fanzines published some time in the past 30 years. To me, the prizes of the group are 9 issues of Jerry Kaufman and Suzle Tompkins' fanzine MAINSTREAM, all in one lot for a minimum bid of $4.99. I've intentionally started with common fanzines and less valuable items, in the assumption that we'll build momentum as I gather more donations from generous friends of Corflu."

So yesterday was the watershed moment for the reason I couldn't go to Corflu this year.

Every year around this time I have to send some files to an outside vendor who runs a website for us that allows students to sign up for the commencement exercises in June. This involves gathering some files from the three branch campuses, and I spent last Thursday and Friday consulting about and collecting the files. On Monday I imported them into the proper databases, reformatted them, refamiliarized myself with how everything fit together, and generally made sure that everything was ready to roll. What I had to do yesterday was pretty simple, basically running macros and then reformatting the resulting tables into tab-delimited text files. I also wrote up the procedures for all this, because I've become acutely aware of being the only one who knows how to do this job now.

These days I frequently feel like a monkey running around in the ruins of a previous civilization. I run databases that my forebears wrote -- forebears who were lost to death and budget cuts. These databases are often black boxes to me. I don't understand how they work, I just run the macros. There are some, like the commencement databases, that I've worked with enough that I have some understanding of them and have even made modifications. But if I were asked to write them from scratch, I probably wouldn't be able to do it. My expertise is really in the underlying data structures, the institutional knowledge and policies -- the "business rules" as they apply to student data. That's valuable knowledge, for sure, but we are sorely missing somebody with in-depth knowledge of SQL and/or statistics.

Well, that's more about work than I had intended to get into. I was explaining why I couldn't make it to Corflu this year. I did manage to join the fun in the virtual consuite/program a time or two, and many thanks to the folks who made that possible. I won a FAAn Award this year for Alternative Pants, so I also thank those who voted for me, bless your hearts -- and thanks also to carl for the great design and layout work on the zine. This award was in a new category for one-shots or fanthologies. This ended up being a weak category, and one that a lot of people didn't understand, although certainly there was another strong candidate in Travlin' Jiant, the collection of Art Widner's writing put together by Kim Huett, which came in second. Andy Hooper indicated during the ceremony that the category wouldn't be continued, and I would agree with that decision. It's true that single issue fanzines rarely get award recognition, and are expressly excluded from Hugo consideration, but there probably aren't enough of them in any given year to support their own award category. Still, it was nice to get the recognition, and it also reminded me of what a great trip that was. It reminded me of all the friends I visited and hung out with on my travels, and it reminded me of previous fun times, like the 2002 Corflu where I met the fishlifters, the 1996 Worldcon where I met gerisullivan, or my 2003 TAFF trip where I met reverendjim and pingopark.

It also made me think about my vague idea of going to Novacon again this year. I didn't make it to Corflu and won't be making it to the Chicago Worldcon, so Novacon beckons again. However, lately I've been feeling like that wasn't going to happen, both because I'm feeling so wiped out from work and because my sister and I are planning to take Mom to France in 2013 for her 80th birthday, and then it's the London Worldcon in 2014, and maybe another British Corflu in 2015. How many years in a row can I afford to travel across the Atlantic? But another Belgian adventure sounds like just what the doctor ordered right about now. Wouldn't that be a nice reward for all my hard work and stress this year?

Still dreaming ...

Now that I've gotten the anxiety out of my system, I can maybe report a few highlights of the recent Corflu, although I guess if I were doing a proper con report I'd merge those comments with these. E Corflu Vitus was held in Sunnyvale, California this year, right next to San Jose in the heart of Silicon Valley. "That's where the first Fry's store was," said magscanner as we drove by on Thursday. It wasn't until I arrived Wednesday night and drove through the area in a taxi that I really understood that I was in Silicon Valley, with many a familiar tech logo gleaming in the night. Then I arrived at the hotel, the Domain, and suddenly realized why it was called that. Duh.

( The glory details ... )

I am crap -- horribly crap! -- at taking pictures at conventions, so once again (as at Novacon and SFContario) I come away with just a few shots from pre-convention activities. This is a disorganized look at several shots I took in Sunnyvale, or actually mostly outside Sunnyvale. My brain is too dead to be doing this now, and yet I cannot stop myself. Caveat voyeur.



At St George Spirits on Alameda Island, we found Graham Charnock's brain in a jar. This is a reminder: Graham Charnock for TAFF!

( Strange days )

I'm going to Corflu this weekend. Here's my schedule:

Panel on fanzine reviews. Don't know when this is or who else is on it. Do you?

That's my schedule. Are you an important person? Would you like my autograph? Would you like a copy of my incomprehensible van Vogt mix-up? Are you on on the panel too? Can I be your sock-puppet?

This post has No Adult Content.

Well, I've finally booked my hotel room for Corflu in February, arriving on the 10th and departing on the 14th. Now I just need a flight to San Jose.

If you're not able to make it to Corflu Cobalt in Winchester this year (as I'm not), please consider buying a supporting membership. It's a good thing to do just on general principle, but there's also something in it for you. As announced in the second progress report, there will be an anthology of contemporary British fanwriting given to all members of the convention, including supporting members. The fanthology will be edited by Claire Brialey, Mark Plummer, and myself, and it will contain British fan writing and art from the period 1995 to 2009 (thus acting as a follow-up to the outstanding Time Bytes fanthologies produced by Lilian Edwards and Christina Lake for the 1995 Worldcon). This is pretty much exactly the era in which I became active in fanzine fandom, so it has been fascinating to look back at the fanzines that hit me right between the eyes as I was forming my first impressions of the field. There's plenty of great material for us to choose from, and I'm confident the resulting anthology will be a lot of fun to read.

Supporting memberships are cheap, too: £10 (UK) or $15 (US). If you are outside the UK or the US, I'm sure something can be arranged. Consult the Corflu homepage for instructions on how to join. A good time guaranteed for all!

Empty nest.

I'm back from the convention, but I am complete toast. It seemed to go very well. I have a few lost and found items, including David Levine's scarf and Gregg Trend's lens cap. I think I'm just going to crash for a while!

Thanks, everyone, for what was essentially a crisis-less good time.

*thud*

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz