I stole her!

Posted on by hollyfrostgoldportpress
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hollyfrostgoldportpress

Neener neener I got our hostess! Also her husband!

Ok, actually they tried to steal my son, but he has college classes. But still. (I think they’d give him back after he ate them out of house and home.)

Son of Silvercon is a lovely, friendly little convention, and you all should consider booking yourselves into it next July.

92 thoughts on “I stole her!”

      1. We made the mistake of touring the Southwest in summer a couple of years ago. Maybe it was having my dream of going to a casino for lunch and a massage in the spa turn into spending the day in the Firestone tire center at Nellis AFB and having lunch at Popeye’s after we discovered we had a tire separation, but I was glad to leave town.

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        1. And our mascot is fine with that! The heat, not the meltdown. She’s VERY unhappy about the meltdown.

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      1. Room rates will be a LOT cheaper than they were at the BWP this past weekend, even with the resort fee – which we’re haggling over.

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    3. Indeed I did 1991 SIGGRAPH in Vegas in Late July. SIGGRAPH was/is notorious for going where the facilities are cheap (e.g New Orleans in Mid August, Orlando same time of year). I was walking 4-5 block from one hotel to another hotel to get from one meeting back to another and didn’t realize it was over 100 F. I walked into the second hotel and realized I was perishing of thirst. Do you know how frickin’ hard it is to get just WATER in a Las Vegas hotel? Oddly there was NOT a drop of sweat on me it must have all evaporated…

      I don’t think SIGGRAPH ever went back to Vegas, The conference committee had been put up in a suite in one of the big hotels but a Whale came in wanting his usual suite and they had to clear out mid week. They were offered lesser digs and compensation but were not amused. Vegas itself found that 35K+ nerdy engineers descending on the banquets like locust and not gambling much if at all meant they lost money so SIGGRAPH was never offered Vegas again.

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      1. A couple decades ago I attend a statistics seminar at UT Austin where the speaker asked the question “What’s the difference between statisticians and data scientists?”

        Then he gave us the answer “Statisticians go to their annual conference in Atlanta in August. Data scientists do theirs in Aspen in February.”

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        1. @ therandomtexan – statistician jokes have a high probability of being good for a laugh. One of my favorites (from an actual statistician, in Texas to boot):
          Q-What’s the difference between statisticians and accountants?
          A-Accountants have personality.

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          1. Fortunately for us statisticians, we have actuaries to poke fun at. Here’s my favorite actuary joke:

            An actuary, an accountant, and a lawyer were arguing the relative merits of being married or having a mistress. The accountant argued for a mistress, saying that the tax benefits of marriage were negligible, and a divorce settlement could be ruinous. The lawyer countered that, for some, it’s important that a wife cannot be compelled to testify against her husband. The actuary disagreed: “I opt for both a wife AND a mistress. That way, on Saturday morning, I tell my mistress I need to spend time with my wife. And, I tell my wife I’m stepping out to spend some time with my mistress. Then I go off my office so I can get some damn work done.”

            Bonus joke for everyone else:

            What’s the difference between two fashionistas and two statisticians in a conversation?

            The fashionistas stare at each other’s shoes. The statisticians stare at their own shoes.

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            1. A variant I’ve heard of that last joke: “How do you recognize an extrovert engineer? He’s staring at your shoes instead of his own.”

              I went on a date with an actuary once. It was disconcerting – she was flipping through a book and kept asking me for my age.

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              1. Definitely a dedicated actuary on that date. She was flipping through the book, studying for her next Actuary Exam (they gotta “qualify” for raises) while estimating your mortality, in case you kicked the bucket before picking up the check.

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      3. Went to Black Hat/Defcon once. Computer security conference in Vegas in August. There was a Star Trek convention in town as well. A significant fraction of America’s nerd population in one place.

        Not sure how Defcon still gets hosted – maybe more gamblers among them?
        I know I paid cash for everything that week, after seeing the fake ATM get confiscated by the feds.

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        2. Fort AP Hill, in August. Old location for BSA National Jamboree. I don’t know how the new location, further west in West Virginia Bechtel Preserve, compares. 2001 was told “The humidity will take you down!” Born raised in Oregon. Answer: “I can handle it!” Reality: Barely. Went back 2005. Reality: OMG! No!!!!!!! Never volunteered again. Just couldn’t handle it.

          The other time we hit humidity was our trip to Disney World. It was hot in Arizona when we got off the smaller plane on the tarmac, but dry heat. When we walked out of airport in Orlando, um, did not know you could breath water, and it had just rained (Feb. 1997).

          In Oregon humidity is either “Humid. It is 60, feels like 70.” (Not kidding.) Or “Humid. It is raining”, temperature not relevant. Heat over 75 = dry heat.

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          1. Riding across Misery Missouri in July. Wanted to mount a machete on the front fender to cut the air open. Took I-70 on the way back west. Did pick up some fireworks to shoot off on the 4th.

            Once rode down I-15 through Nevada on a July afternoon. Stopped at every rest stop, drank a quart of water, sweated it back out before reaching the next stop. Got home that night and saw on the news that it hit 122° in Baker right about the time I rode through.

            If it’s hot enough, the wind feels hotter than still air.

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          2. You just encountered a normal summer in the Commonwealth. OTOH, the reaction of people to the weather in Oregon puzzles the Reader. The Reader was on business in Beaverton in February. After dinner, the driver decided he knew a shortcut back to the hotel. After wandering around for a while, we came to a lighted sports field where adults (and the Reader uses that term loosely) were playing soccer in the rain with the temperature at 45F.

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            1. :D One of the things I liked about living in the Willamette Valley was the friendly winters. Just wear something long-sleeved that can shed a bit of water, and you’re good to go most of the time (there’s a reason why flannel is a NW stereotype).

              The Inland NW…worst of both worlds. Less rainy and cloudy, but still plenty of both to go around — and there’s a BIG difference between rain at 45-55 degrees and rain at 35 degrees. (We also get snow, which has its own pros and cons.) I hate winters out here so much. If it wouldn’t take me closer to progtardia than I could stand, I might be looking to move back to the west side. Southern Utah and Northern Arizona are looking very tempting these days.

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            2. Oregon “Black Months”. If you don’t do anything in the rain you don’t do anything. Troop camped a weekend, or more (summer camp and week long backpack), every month, regardless of weather. Usually rain. Good rain gear, not cheap plastic ponchos, are required. Good tents with rain flaps that go down or almost down to the ground, are required.

              There is a reason why cotton, even underlayers, is not recommended. Cotton gets wet, stays wet, is cold when it is wet. Not good combination even during PNW summers. Even if protected directly from rain, cotton still gets damp. Ask me how I know. Guess who is allergic to wool.

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    3. I’ve read it long ago (likely on clay tablet) but don’t recall much. Off to the search engine… Oh, that story. I like me some O. Henry.

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      1. Death by Flaky Pastry!!! Yeah that’s not going to work unless you make your opponent eat a bunch or they are severely lactose intolerant.

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        1. Reminds me of an old story: A foreign government (I can’t remember if was UK or France) heard that Amtrak tested the front windows on its engines with by launching a chicken carcass at the window with an air cannon. They wanted to try testing their train engines that way. The foreign government got the specs for air cannon, obtained some dead chickens, and commenced testing.

          After a month, they went back to Amtrak with a problem. No matter how thick the glass or how it was reinforced, the glass always shattered.

          Amtrak looked at their data and their film and came up with an answer: thaw the chicken first.

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          1. I heard the same one, only it was airplane windshields.

            Mythbusters built a Chicken Cannon and confirmed that frozen chickens were more destructive than unfrozen ones.

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            1. Correct. AF Times had an article many years (ahem, decades) ago about their using high velocity chicken carcasses to test aircraft canopies and other sensitive control surfaces.

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              1. Yeah; I think y’all are right; half-way through writing that I started to think it was airplane windshields. I’ll have to see what I can dig up out of old email archives (from the ’90s).

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          2. I thought it was geese, for all kinds of windshields, including passenger cars. Because a Canada goose is bigger than a chicken, and sometimes one does hit your windshield in real life!

            It’s bad enough when a flock takes out the engines, but when the pilot or driver takes a glass-covered goose in the face, he’s apt to too distracted to deal with the emergency – so the regulators like to be sure the goose will only crack the glass and slide off.

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            1. Trust me a big bird coming out of nowhere, well it was o-dark-late, hitting the side of your vehicle, traveling down the freeway at 60 – 70 MPH (I was driving, so 60), then flipping up to hit the top of the windshield to fly over the top of the pickup and canopy (have no idea if it then hit any vehicle behind, wasn’t looking, couldn’t see through back windows anyway, no one else pulled over), is more than a little startling. I was lucky I stayed in my lane (well the huge semi’s I was passing in the two lanes to my right, might have had a little to do with it). Hubby’s reaction “what did you hit?” (Response “It hit me!”.) Pulled over to the left margin, immediately. Whatever hit screwed up the left headlight, and grill. Thankfully not the windshield, even though it still hit there pretty hard. Thank you for zip ties in the emergency kits. Based on our luck that trip (it was same trip that took out the pickup transmission but we didn’t know we were burning through our luck), plus where we were (middle of nowhere Utah), we figured we were hit by an eagle. Reality, it was a goose, or most likely pheasant, as by rumor, in that area, pheasants are suicidal that way (plus January and not many resident goose winter over north of Salt Lake).

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  5. Yes, Vegas in July when room rates are cheap and you lounge in the air conditioning or by the surprisingly extensive pool at the con hotel.

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    1. The Plaza’s pool is bigger, but it’s outside. We’re moving there from the BWP in Henderson because they have a lot more function space for us to expand into and the BWP wasn’t available on Trinity weekend – or any other weekend in the summer, really.

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    2. The Plaza’s pool is bigger, but it’s outside. We’re moving there from the BWP in Henderson because they have a lot more function space for us to expand into and the BWP wasn’t available on Trinity weekend – or any other weekend in the summer, really.

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    1. “They put their Scotch or rye down, and lie down.”

      And from what con experience I have, putting the whiskey down is unlikely. Downing the whiskey is another matter, of course.

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    2. Nobody ever offered to kidnap my MIL. On the other hand, she was such a rabid liberal and feminist, any kidnapper would have paid me to take her back.

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  9. You do realize that if you steal our hostess, then certain responsibilities devolve down to you…

    /em looks pointedly at the lack of a Monday post

    We’re waiting, Holly!

    :p

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  10. Joe Biden said over the weekend said “Who needs a gun with a 100 rounds in the chamber”, proving once again that the brain dead pedophile should be removed from office, I won’t even go into how ignorant the statement is. I am a self confessed Gun Novice and I know that that is total bullshit. The real question is not who needs one, but what fucking business is it of the federal or any government, or anyone else for that matter what I have in my chamber? Answer, None of your fucking business.
    Don’t step on snek

    And yes I know of the weapon called Metal Storm. And if you want the truth, any competent welder/plumber/gunsmith/a functioning brain, could build one. Besides that is multiple chambers to begin with. It is how they say not rocket science. And sorry feds, we can figure out a lot of things ourselves. Give us a welder and a bulldozer and we can build a tank. I as a teenage delinquent built a mortar, those old tin can tennis ball launchers were exactly that. Once something is in the knowledge base it is there for good. And you still haven’t destroyed the dark web either. “You Can’t Stop the Wave Mal” Stop pissing down our backs and telling us its raining.

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      1. IMO there are questions that sound stupid but are just an ignorant person seeking knowledge.

        And then there are questions that are asked by stupid people.

        And there are big differences between “ignorant people” and “stupid people”.

        Biden* is a stupid person.

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                  1. I’ve seen them so fixated on their preferred lies that it renders them impervious to any contrary information. No matter how much proof you shove in their faces.

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          1. Minor nit, there’s an element of “can not learn” to ignorance.

            Of course, that may fit Biden* :wink:

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      2. My wife the teacher told her students, “There are no stupid questions. There are, however, insincere ones. The former is welcome. The latter will be met with appropriate scorn, or force, depending on what’s required.”

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    2. There’s a popularish meme that shows a machine gun with an extra long line of ammo in a belt with a reminder that you can’t be affected by high capacity magazine bans if you don’t have a magazine.

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      1. Except in California, belts longer than 10 rounds ARE ‘large-capacity ammunition feeding devices’; can’t speak to other jurisdictions (Oregon is still unsettled), but many seem to copy CA in part.

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          1. Judge Raschio has not yet ruled after the trial; that’s expected maybe 45 days? Then OR will appeal, and Raschio will be overturned, then plaintiffs will appeal that and Oregon Supremes will affirm the Appeals court, then there will be some hemming and hawing before 114 goes back to the Legislature to ‘fix’, because it’s unenforcable as is, and maybe something will be in place for 2025 (though the mag ban is likely to go into effect, as it’s less of a technical mess).

            In parallel, plaintiffs (OFF et al) have appealed Judge Immergut’s ridiculous ruling to the 9th Circuit; no action on that last I looked. There are 3 Federal cases; Immergut consolidated them for her ruling, and seems like 9th will do the same. Nothing since September 1.

            Hi, Sarah! See if you can get to the range while you’re out socializing.

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          2. Had to do some searching; a federal judge managed to find 114 constitutional, but it’s going the the 9th Circus for appeal, and most likely will have to go to SCOTUS. At the state level, a Harney county judge found it extremely unconstitutional, but that’ll go to Despicable Kate Brown’s pets in black robes.

            Meanwhile, I keep seeing more signs for Greater Idaho.

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            1. Hopefully Supreme Court will kill the dang thing and slap some hands. Not that it won’t stop the Oregon Demorats.

              So, after one goes through the firearm safety coarse and get their certificate, the second half it to setup two appointments. 1) Sheriff’s department for background checks and concealed permit. Second fee, but not required, although, why not? No problem there. 2) Appointment with a deputy at a firearm range to prove you can transport safely, setup safely, fire safely, and finally put away safely, a firearm, preferably a handgun. Before can be issued the “purchase permit”. Question. How does one arrange second when one doesn’t have firearms? Pretty sure “borrowing” one gets the firearm owner in trouble. ;-)

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  11. I agree with Holly.

    As a side note, I have now seen both Robert and Oscar in person–but not together at the same time, so I’m reserving judgement. Then there was the whole disavowal of Robert’s heritage at LibertyCon to consider. (Please note the preceding sentences are to be taken in jest.)

    Son of SilverCon was a barrel of fun. As Princess Margaret declared, “It was more like a very fun 3-day party than a con.” Where else could you discuss military hijinks, exotic software and even hardware adventures, explosive pranks, conversations with the distaff Heinlein, Harlan Ellison, Ray Bradbury, dining options in India (all from first-hand participants)? We even discussed the topics of 3 or 4 of the panels. That doesn’t even cover D.J. (No, I don’t spin records; I play guitar.) Butler and his Baen Roadshow. I also promise Princess Margaret to refrain from inappropriate breakfast topics next year. (I swear I didn’t even mention cannibalism!) The Dealer’s Bedroom is perhaps best left unmentioned–whoops!

    My congratulations (and condolences) to Kevin “THE” Trainor. (You have to sign up for next year to hear how that came about because he swears revenge on promoters of said moniker.
    As to next year’s dates, after this year’s disastrous timing with the Friday the 13th, Hamas threat, solar eclipse convergence, it was decided to discuss the prospects with the wizards of Ankh-Morpork who helped pick out the mid-July dates. The heat should be a non-factor, since, with no eclipse, there is no reason to go outside. Since the hotel is in the middle of nowhere, there’s no reason to walk anywhere. (I realize the middle of nowhere is a relative term in Nevada, but come next year, and see what I mean.)

    In any case, I had such a blast I had to book another night’s room rather than try to traverse 300 miles in the dead of night. So for a possible preview of next year’s Con: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=phs3i0onDDg.

    If all that doesn’t convince you that you missed out by not going, sign up for the sequel and see for yourself!

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    1. I will remind the perpetrators of that moniker that there are thousands of abandoned mines in Nevada, many of them within easy commuting distance of next year’s con hotel…which will be the Plaza in downtown Las Vegas, since we couldn’t get this year’s hotel on the July 19-21 weekend in 2024. (You still won’t have to go outside.)

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  13. Off-topic, but I finally encountered the Trump 22nd amendment argument in the wild, with a new twist:
    Random Internet Leftist, commenting on one of the prosecutions^H persecutions of DJT, that if he wasn’t fraudulently claiming to have won the election, he would be ineligible via the 22nd.

    It did seem to be all who/whom with RIL, though, as his opinion of the 2nd Amendment varied based on whether the arms belonged to Capitalist Oppressors or Noble Freedom Fighters.

    I’m not a Capitalist Oppressor: didn’t want to pay the $200 fee for one.

    Other addenda – I read this, probably deserves a Fisking later:
    https://www.theamericanconservative.com/conserving-the-new-deal/

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    1. Nobody at the time anticipated that somebody could be elected President, but prevented from taking office due to massive election fraud. There was corruption back then, but they never dreamed it could get this bad.

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    2. @ Taciturn > “probably deserves a Fisking later:”

      You got that right (guest post, maybe?) – repurposing FDR as a conservative icon is gonna be a hard sell, and the AC author didn’t convince me at all.

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      1. That would have to be an epic Fisking. The writer got one point dead wrong — bureaucracy tries to do the job of tweezers with a sledgehammer, not the other way round. Government is always a Bigger Hammer.

        As for those Eeevul ‘Economic Royalists’ — they made their money by providing some valuable product or service, and their power was limited. You could avoid them, or work for their competitors. Fascist Dictator Roosevelt wanted to replace them with inescapable political/bureaucratic royalists backed by unlimited government power.
        ———————————
        Why do so many idiots believe that our problems will be solved by the same shitheads that caused them?

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  15. Try Havasu in July if you all are gluttons for heat. I can even arrange a pool party and an early morning at the range. But I lived through a few July’s in Vegas. One was interrupted by a sandbox deployment- I was thankful it was so cool when I got back and it was only 110. Drove around with windows down. Now a confirmed desert rat only use vehicle AC when spouse in car.

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    1. I am considering Laughlin as a future site for the convention, which is up the road from Lake Havasu City, but moving it outside Nevada is a no-go. Having it in Mesquite or Wendover (to make it easy on the Utahns) is as close to outside the state as we want to be.

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