As many of you — perhaps most of you — know I was at ConFinement this weekend. We drove like insane people, a long, long time, without stopping, mostly because none of us could afford to take the time off for driving for two days.
I almost forgot to take books. With all the death and issues I completely forgot to get new copies of the newly issued books, or new-cover versions of the old things, including new hard covers.
So at the last minute I remembered and filled a box with far more books than I thought would ever sell, considering how old they are. I did sweeten the pot by putting them at half price, since they are old.
Anyway I didn’t have arrangements for a booth minder — in future, though not Liberty con this year, because since we aren’t absolutely sure our other stuff will allow us to go, so I didn’t book a table or booth. Next year, younger DIL (well, she’ll be by then) will figure it out — so I just put books on a table on the honor system, and had people come find me to pay. Yeah, real classy. Anyway, I only brought back four books everything else –50 or so — sold.
Other than that, it was a small con, but it was very friendly.
I stayed out very late talking to people. I met Devon Eriksen, who says he’s not a cat, and I need to read his book. I mean… shakes head… cats writing books.
Anyway, from the blog, and I will miss people, I saw Ben Olsen and his wife, Dorothy Dimock and her husband, the one who wrote the great baking book I advertised here a little while ago. I also met Turquoise Thyme, who is so sweet in person and had fun talking shop with my husband. And I met Nancy Edwards from Facebook. I thought I remembered her being older than myself, but I swear she’s forty and just faking it. And I got to see David Bock and his lovely wife again and–
Anyway, what is there to tell? I ate junk food. I stayed up too late discussing things like whether there were ancient civilizations or at least if we could lie and say it did in a convincing way so books can be written. And what books were fun, and–
I couldn’t make it to the Dave Drake Memorial Shoot, because I was doing a reading. Bad timing on my part, but at any rate, I need to get better at shooting before the next con, right? I just need to make range time. It’s been WEIRD.
It was great. That’s the short and long of it. Small, but intense, and full of highly engaged fans. I recommend it.
In fact, as difficult as leaving the house or being around more than 2 people at once, I am going to try to make it to Confinement next year again. Which is the highest compliment I can give any con.
I mean, I love Liberty con, but we really need a wide scattering of new cons, don’t we?
The good side of all this, is that the persistent depression from what this year has been so far seems to be gone.
The bad side is that I’m still exhausted, so this report is the least coherent thing I’ve ever written. Probably.
But…. well, I had fun. Would you consider coming out and hanging out next year? Even if you have to send me to bed at 2 am, because none of you are really up to carrying me to bed. It would take a carrying party and who wants to do that?
I don’t know if MadMike has scheduled next year’s yet, but you can ask him. I’d love to see more of you.
Anyway, we can hang out and talk and have totally unhealthy snacks (No, the con had very good food, like chill and sandwich makings. I just have a fatal attraction to unnaturally yellow cheese puffs, okay?) and talk and–
Just plan on it. It will be fun.
According To Hoyt 
Of course, it’s very possible that there were ancient civilizations that we don’t know about.
The question is “how advanced were they”? 😜
I do tend to agree with some of the so-called crack pots that a good chunk of the massive construction in Egypt doesn’t seem to be possible with just copper and stone hand tools once you calculate the distance, masses, precision and scale required.
There is speculation, but much is dismissed by the mainstream protecting their grant money and a strong discouragement of not staying in the lines of modern orthodoxy. And any evidence in the contrary gets buried or ridiculed, not examined.
We really don’t know but I’d bet the cause of die out was climate change that caused the glaciers and then the retreat of the ice and the rise of the seacoast along with floods.
Not man made, but either volcanic or a large rock from outer space*. Historians like ignoring volcanologists and astronomers when it’s convenient.
*(Unless those forerunners had a much better space program and weapons than we currently do…)
I mean, the Forerunners made the Halos, so …
If we did find any real evidence, it would be buried, classified and denied for “our own good”. Then again like Egypt, they will either loot it or hide it out of an inferiority complex about ancestors.
Like Epstein’s list and blackmail material, I say release everything and let the scarabs fall where they may.
In Igor Nikolic’s Space Legacy Series, we learn that the Vatican has a skeleton of an angel (wings and all) that looks like something had feed on it.
The Church had found the angel skeleton first and then the Church had found demon skeletons.
The heroes agree that the Church had good reasons to hide them and the other strange artifacts.
Of course, the heroes know more of the actual story than the Church did. 😈
With Egypt, there’s…. well, are you familiar with the politics of archeology, there?
I am not very familiar, beyond “you say the right things or you are not allowed in, and nobody will talk to you so you can GET stuff, or they won’t be allowed in, either.”
I’ve heard some academics discuss the politics there. There’s definitely areas that are no-go and no-mention that might reveal some interesting findings. But I also heard that Egyptians in the field can be sensitive about Westerners to the point of zealousness. And in many cases, I don’t blame them.
At least they don’t currently do wholesale destruction like ISIS and the Taliban. But there’s probably tons of illegal artifacts in certain collections hidden to the public or scholars.
The Egyptians did a lot with stone tools, pegs, rope, sand, and so on. And temporary canals to carry stone from the quarries, on boats.
Same thing with the Incas and Mayans, except fewer canalboats.
“The Egyptians did a lot with stone tools, pegs, rope, sand, and so on.”
But no one has been able to replicate a single one of the massive, super accurate blocks with the same tools in modern times, let alone explain how millions of blocks were created and moved with the same tools.
I think we are missing a few pieces to the puzzle on the tools and processes.
Not even vaguely on the same “technical” scale, but arguably a larger undertaking in total than the pyramids are the “dry stone walls” of the hills of Northern England (thousands upon thousands of miles of them).
This is an area that has poor, thin, rocky soil and, thus always supported only a relatively small population, yet ‘every’ field is surrounded by a wall constructed from the rocks ploughed and picked from it. Think about the amount of labour, and skill involved (constructing a dry stone wall is like constructing a 3D miles long jigsaw puzzle). Replicating them would probably take the entire population ‘now’ decades.
Before joining up (to escape, military life is holiday compared to farming) I was trained to lay both wall and hedge, and you may not have any real idea of the obvious (dare I say) genius involved in the tools and techniques. The amount of back-breaking labour involved is simply staggering (even ‘with’ modern aids). But whilst it was a cumulative effort of everyone farming it for centuries/millennia, the bulk of it ‘must’ have been done after the initial clearing of the land (and how much effort did that take too?) or … the land would have been useless/worthless. I wonder just how many people were broken, crippled and died doing even that (and what techniques and tools are now lost).
Point? Whilst “no one has been able to replicate a single one of the massive, super accurate blocks with the same tools in modern times” I suspect the reality is that “they weren’t willing to spend the time, effort and lives involved”.
I admit I became a bit of an addict to the “Mr. Chickadee” YT channel because of the purely traditional methods of building ‘and’ the honest display of just how much effort and skill is involved (we gloss over how even a beam, or plank of wood, was obtained, and the amount of labour and skill involved). Yet, on his own, using nothing more than basic hand-tools he constructs beautiful buildings, now imagine what an army like him could do (and that’s with his honest admission he doesn’t have the skills and experience our ‘recent’ ancestors did, ‘and’ we don’t know how a lot of what they did was done, and he is using tools/techniques common even a few decades ago, now lost).
[I’m not even going to get into the almost automatic assumption that ‘we moderns’ are somehow smarter than our ancestors, when the evidence is plainly the opposite is true.
I’m reminded of the effect of opening more choices and career paths to women. Prior, the best and brightest had fewer choices, so many simply brilliant women ended up as teachers. Now, those women have many other options, so teaching … ‘isn’t what it used to be’! In the past, the genius’ would be … building monuments, etc. (when the choice is that or herding oats?!).
So a few Einstein’s, Feynman’s and Buckminster-Fuller’s and an army of skilled labour working for decades and … we wonder how they managed some pitiful blocks?! I’m surprised they didn’t do more].
I think your last sentence says it all.
Grew up on farms, so I’m well acquainted with rock picking, either manually or with attachments for the tractor. We also created a dam across a creek for a swimming hole, moving sandstone and basalt boulders* over spring break by hand. Still there according to Google Maps. Probably an EPA crime to so now.
Spouse has a cousin that’s a project manager on huge scale projects like building dams, large pit mines, highways, etc, mostly overseas. He’s familiar with the capabilities of the best and largest technology we have and has toured Egypt along with most of the world. He got to see most of the crusader castles including those in Syria before the area got too dangerous, lucky dude.
His responses to the whole primate tools question was, “No fricking way”, or “It took a lot longer than the so-called experts claim”.
Glacier moraines and “dropstones” are another source of random rocks. Ice rivers move megatons of rocks and pebbles.
I wish these were glacial erratics, but as far as we could tell the smaller ones broke off a dike or sill that was about 100 yards away. Upstream some massive slabs formed a small cave and had backed the flow of the creak into a small marsh that was great for frogs.
Didn’t have the permission to dig on the dairy farm on the next section over, but they hit the same rock 15′ down when digging out a new storm shelter. We just had to deal with purple, yellow, and brown sandstone layers for ours.
Farm isn’t in the family any more, was sold in the ’80s. Would love to have a pro geologist evaluate the immediate area, since there’s not much of a record of those geological units in that area.
Since it was different from the surrounding it made for a great alien planet for vivid young imaginations.
Stone wall building isn’t that hard. Lot of work, yes. But I can do a 3x3x10 foot section per day easily with just muscles and a stout wooden pole or iron crowbar.
I’m not going to disagree (I’d once have said ‘likewise’ but age and lack of practice have taken their toll, so not sure I still could) but … there’s walls, and then there’s walls.
You can identify regions, and sub regions, by the specific wall lays (there are arguments that this shows they were “community” projects, not sure I agree). Then, whilst there are whole areas that were rebuilt by the Napoleonic War prisoners (and some small areas by WW2 German prisoners), there are walls that have been dated as not just pre-Roman but neolithic. I can’t speak to yours, but I seriously doubt even my best work would last that long.
But … even with that 10 foot section a day, the results would take the bulk of ‘todays’ population, decades.
I’m afraid your information is outdated– they figured out how it worked because of the Unfinished Monolith.
Basically, they didn’t use a saw. They used sand and then rubbed that. A lot.
Basically, grinding through the stone.
And part of why the rocks seem so super accurate is that they only USED the ones they got right enough.
It’s….kind of like using a diamond edged tool? But the tough stuff that actually contacts the rock isn’t part of the saw.
What’s missing are the technical experts of that day and age. Lost knowledge, especially of manual ancient techniques, is very difficult to acquire for people of our day and age who can’t think that way.
Don’t have to think that way, you mean. You don’t expend enormous effort figuring out how to do a job with primitive tools when you have access to better tools.
Years ago I saw a piece from somebody speculating that the Egyptians used vibrating copper tools with sand grit to cut rock. Attach the tool to a wooden shaft and grind something covered with damp leather against the end to make it vibrate.
We don’t do that any more. We use diamond power saws.
I saw a video of somebody demonstrating how to raise a dolmen like the ones at Stonehenge with 20 men and some logs for levers and cribbing. Lever up the end, chock it with logs, build up the fulcrum and lever it up some more. Capstones are hoisted the same way from both ends.
We don’t organize gangs of men to haul big rocks these days. We use bulldozers and cranes.
Heh. Log levers on stone fulcrums is how I raised a 3 ton rock alongside my driveway. Took me two weeks of off and on work to do it though. And we’re talking a few 10-foot poles with only a couple inches on the other side of the fulcrum to get the leverage to move the damn rock a quarter of a inch at a time. Of course that was just me providing the man-power, and shoving stones under the boulder every time I had enough room to smush one under it.
I also have to wonder about those illustrations (we’ve all seen them) of dozens of men dragging a big stone block by pulling on ropes. Stupid!
Take a long pole, jam one end in the ground and loop a rope around it about a foot from the bottom. You can easily apply 5 times more force than by just hauling on the rope directly.
A gang of 20 men working that way could haul a 20-ton block with less effort than 100 men playing tug-of-war with it.
Look under the stone.
There’s rollers.
It’s a really easy method, you have a few guys pulling, and a few guys picking up the rounded logs as they come out from under, and hauling them back to lay under the block.
I use it to move big stuff in the yard pretty often.
Oh, I’m sure the artist believed that would work. 20 or 30 nice, straight, round logs of perfectly uniform size and composition. So easy to draw in a picture.
Real logs make lousy rollers for heavy loads. They’re all different sizes, they’re not actually round or straight, and they split and break down under pressure in a short time.
Are you trying to say the ancient Egyptians built giant lathes and turned thousands of logs until they were straight, round and of identical size?
Even if they did that, the logs would still split under pressure.
Try it yourself. Take a dozen round pencils and roll a 400 pound weight across a hard surface. They’ll be splinters before you get 20 feet.
Rollers under the stone don’t work well on dirt. Works okay on solid rock surfaces, but for normal ground transport, you really want something like smooth logs for the rollers to ride on, kind of like rails.
We don’t have to do that ‘now’ but it’s really not that long ago that we did. I suspect the very same techniques, refined as were the tools, were used to build most of the ‘closer to home’ edifices we know (there weren’t many bulldozers and cranes available in 1793 to build The Capitol).
So, tools and techniques ‘we’ used for millennia were supplanted and utterly lost. And isn’t that the story of so much of modern life?
I’d tend towards feeling depressed about that if it wasn’t for the fact that there are so many ‘odds’ about. Look to the massive popularity of “bushcraft” skills, the resurgence of “primitive” trades and skills and … even Mike and his log fulcrums (when he could easily have rented a crane or tool, but wanted to prove(?) he could do it himself) – it’s only evidence like, that if not most, at least some, many people are ‘difficult’, that allow me some small faith in people and the future even now (and a surprisingly large number of ‘young’ people are involved in learning all these skills, perhaps as a return to sanity from what previous generations have wrought – it may show the local “Border Reiver” mentality, or just “boys being boys” but the local ‘primitive’ bow making groups are inundated, and … just don’t ask about the trebuchet club).
<I>So, tools and techniques ‘we’ used for millennia were supplanted and utterly lost. And isn’t that the story of so much of modern life?</i>
The Vanishing Breed!
-Baxter Black
They call ‘em a vanishing breed.
They write books and take pictures
and talk like they’re all dyin’ out.
Like dinosaurs goin’ to seed
But that’s my friends yer talkin’ about.
Like Tex from Juniper Mountain.
He carved out a way of life
where only the toughest prevail.
He’s fifty-seven an’ countin’.
His sons now follow his trail.
And Mike who still ain’t got married.
At home in the seat of a saddle,
a sagebrush aristocrat.
I reckon that’s how he’ll be buried;
A’horseback, still wearin’ his hat.
There’s Bryan, Albert and Floyd.
Cowmen as good as the legends
to whom their livelihood’s linked,
Who’d be just a little annoyed
To know they’re considered extinct.
Some say they’re endangered species
Destined to fade into footnotes
like ropes that never get throwed.
To that I reply, “Bull Feces!”
They’re just hard to see from the road.
I’ve also tried my hand at knapping knives and spearheads. Got the cuts to show for it too. But one thing I did learn trying it was just how many chips it creates, and how many times people failed at making them. Which is really instructive on why so many spear and arrow heads were found at sites along the Mohawk River near where I grew up. The ones dug up are all the rejects tossed to the side by the knappers.
I think the whole “roller” issue was figured out a while back. If, instead of loading the block onto a set of logs, you load it on a sled and those logs cease to be rollers (with the attendant diameter and rotational splintering issues) and they become … merely parts of a moving corrugated roadway. Grease the runners and the only impediment (hills and gravity depending) is inertia (get it moving on the flat and the only issue becomes stopping the damn thing).
I only know because ‘we’ had to ‘shuffle’ a few Conex’ and pallet loaded Scorpions across a boggy field … by hand (don’t ask), which sounds difficult, but once on the runners was relatively easy (the hardest part was digging the logs out of the mud).
The Egyptians did a lot with stone tools, pegs, rope, sand, and so on. And temporary canals to carry stone from the quarries, on boats.
Same thing with the Incas and Mayans, except fewer canalboats.
I read one writer guy who brought up discrepancies in the pottery timeline… then had to stop, because the archaeologist he was with seriously claimed the thought made him suicidal, and the writer was depending on him to get back out of the desert. Eep.
Makes Agatha Christie being the biggest expert in Egyptian pottery both more reachable and more impressive because she kept GOING on that path.
I think she was actually the Mesopotamian expert, but… yeah.
We’re not exactly exhausted (of course, we didn’t have nearly so far to drive) but my beloved appears to have caught a cold. We enjoyed ourselves, and the only suggestion I’d have for improvement, until the con grows enough to need a bigger hotel, would be a battery-powered microphone.
And a public service announcement for all- go vote, if your state is part of Super Tuesday.
Microphone or megaphone?
I’ve got both. (one’s for karaoke, one’s for shouting, both are for the kids)
Just something to make it easy to hear the presenters and panel discussions.
Texas is part of Super Tuesday, but spouse and I voted early since the county is majority Republican plus paper ballots. Polls should be extra busy today.
An extreme amount of extra money got poured into the Republican primaries for State House. We received over 20 shit-slinging mailers for our incumbent purple RINO, plus another 20 from PACs “opposing” their opponent. Most years we would get two or three. Media buys on television, cable and internet for this person totaled over $250K a week.
The source of the money seems to be from drunk RINO Speaker of the House PAC and a good chunk of the donations seem to have come from either neocons or the blue team. Apparently somebody doesn’t like the Texas AG. He’s corrupt, (aren’t they all), but he’s a bigger thorn in the purple/blue team side than they like and they were stupid enough to try to impeach him with heresy and fall on their face with all the pundits pointing and laughing.
And all parties involved in the races decided they were going to spend spam text messages repeatedly. To which I replied with crude anatomical requests and blocked the number. I will call up some losers and explain this is why they lost my vote, just to salt the wounds.
I’m sort of fortunate that no one primaried my district’s state rep. All the excitement (?) is one county north. Still got a fair number of texts and fliers for down-ticket races, including party chaircritter.
Looks like RINO hunting was fairly successful last night.
Indeed.
Maybe that’s it? I feel horrible. However, I’m getting another copy of his book next year. Signed this time.
Go for quality over volume. A ‘public address’ rig spoils the sound, and ruins the atmosphere of a small group. A small-but-good stereo with good speakers and a good mike can avoid that.
If, and this is a rather large font IF, I can train someone to do the stuff I do and not make messes or burn down the shop… I might start lurking at cons again. Maybe. Because health, and hospitals are evil. Do not like.
We shall see.
Very glad to hear that it was a good con. There needs to be more of those. Our kind of people need to meet other actual real human beings from time to time. Yes, really. I know some of you (me included) are dyed in the wool curmudgeon, can’t make me go, there’s STRANGE people out there! types.
But seriously. Sunlight won’t kill you (probably). And other people, while they might kill you if they’re murderers, at least some of them are necessary and they might even be cool. So what’s they risk? Other than violent death, I mean, you could drown in the tub for Bob’s sake. Be dangerous. Meet people.
Maybe even have fun.
Meeting people IS dangerous, murder aside. They might actually want to talk (shudder) and I could end up a prisoner for hours, not knowing how to extricate myself. And they might think I’m interesting, which is the click of the lock.
It is my curse that I learned how to interact well enough that people don’t run away screaming (mostly) and think I’m a flaming extrovert, after which I fall in bed and sleep for a week.
I had to fake extroversion when I was teaching in Japan. It was difficult, but I made it.
There were times at cons where I had to go take a nap, I was so exhausted from all the peopling.
Also learned not more than three panels as panelist in a day, or five overall.
I realized that a while back, yes.
Not cons. Holidays. This is with family. But I can believe it of larger gatherings like cons.
Doubt I’ll ever be on a panel, ever. One would do me in. Being up in front of people, even with others is not my forte. I can do it, if I have to, thanks to Toastmasters (the room walls don’t move anymore), but not something I do, willingly, ever.
the lady in the blue pants has an invisible stool
I thought was slipping and falling on the wet pavement, but hadn’t realized it yet.
(she was)
maybe an Antigrav suppository?
Not enough brain bleach in the galaxy…..
Anti-grav panties. With soft cotton liners.
“The ultimate on comfortable wedgie!”
Yeah, that brain bleach order? Double it. 😎
Anti-grav bicycle seats. You can control the height using an app on your phone. Easy to carry and deploy anywhere you like.
The same company makes a combination backpacking towed-carrier/elevated sleeping platform so you can have a dry tent even in marshy ground. Some of their users don’t even bother breaking their tent down for the day’s hike, and just tow the whole tent setup!
/sigh
If only we had the technology…
She looks mighty casual for being in the middle of falling on her ass. Looks more like she’s just walking along and MidJourney forgot to draw her left leg.
QUITE likely. I think she’s alien.
Even an alien wouldn’t be happy with a leg missing. 😀
“Where’s my other leg? Curse you MidJourney!”
“It’s just a flesh wound. I can still hop!”
Right?
Mom got dizzy while on a walk. She thought it was another small TIA stroke, but different that the one she had almost 15 years ago. By her description, instead I think her blood sugar was low. She is diagnosed Hypoglycemic. Dry toast and cup of black coffee 15 minutes before leaving the house isn’t good enough. 1. Not enough food. 2. not enough time for BS to full react. Told her what I thought. Also told her that was exactly what I experience now, and did through about age 13 through early 60’s. Wasn’t diagnosed until I was 30. Her response was “Why didn’t you say anything?” My response was quiet. Why? This would have been the mid/late ’60s. I guaranty saying anything would have been waved off, dismissed as “nothing”, short of full faint, which never got to. Not that anything would have been done then. There is no treatment now. I now have monitoring tools that weren’t available 50+ years ago.
And you would’ve gotten the reputation of being a hypochondriac so nobody would listen to you now.
Yep.
Maybe she’s a female dufflepud?
Looks like she’s in the process of kicking armor guy.
Sounds like fun. I may have to give it a try next year.
Their rules seem … proper. I am used to commercial gatherings shrieking “Nothing that even -looks- dangerous! Bad serf! Nonononono!” This one looks positively civilized. I am assuming that is uncommon to rare for cons. I tend to avoid recreational places that value their lawyers more than my life.
Note: My last non-work-related con was the Pittsburgh Star Trektacular, in 1975. (as a child, unattended, sheesh) That was kinda fun. Still have my Tribble.
Almost forgot the Mystery Writers con in the mid 90s in Florida. Was helping Pop with range day for the writers. Technically, that was “work” for him and “fun” for me, but worked my tush off teaching n00bs to shoot and answering questions.
Well, I’m going to Liberty con this year.
We hope to make it, but can’t promise 100%
Anyone have the link to the con-list someone here was maintaining?
Search isn’t turning it up, which usually means I’m forgetting a word (less often WPDE).
I made it and had a great time. I hope to go again.
“I couldn’t make it to the Dave Drake Memorial Shoot, because I was doing a reading. Bad timing on my part, but at any rate, I need to get better at shooting before the next con, right? I just need to make range time. It’s been WEIRD.”
Not your fault. The Memorial shoot was originally planned for Friday before opening ceremonies. Inclement weather turned the field into a bog, so it was postponed until Sunday early afternoon.
When I assemble the panel schedule for next year, I’m thinking of putting author readings Friday and/or Saturday evenings after dinner. That might work better for both authors and attendance.
It was lovely to see you too, cousin. Hopefully next year, we get more time to sit and chat.
Unless my current employer no longer needs my services next year, I can’t go more than a few hours (4-5) away between January and May. So I never made LTUE while it was still good, and other distant Cons are a no-go. (The weekend before the big international academic tests begin is another “If you request leave you had better send a death certificate first. Yours.” date.) Thpoil-thports.
I’m out due to the nature of my work as well. Basically on call for interesting events and end up losing a week of PTO every year.
I could go part of a day to a local DFW con instead of a weekend, but that’s like eating a meal by sampling at Costco.
Any vacation time is planned a year ahead and has to match my spouses. So we ended up doing what she wants.
Also I feel the need to stay close to home, especially this crazy year. Most local family has either bugged out to the country or isn’t dependable. New neighborhood has good people, but not many good “experts” or vets. We do have some 3-gun friends a few minutes away as backup.
In our case it was hubby’s work. Vacations are scheduled by seniority for the entire year starting in September for the next calendar year. By the time the schedule got to us (when I was still working for the same outfit) the only weeks available were winter (great if we skied, we didn’t/don’t).
Ah the joys of the teaching profession. You can have any time you want off from Late June to early August, and during Spring break or Christmas break.
I don’t remember if I’ve posted this here before or not, but something like laserlyte training is a really good way to get fairly cheap small arm training. Most of accuracy is about trigger pull, so it’s a really cheap way to get lots of that in.
It’s basically the way the Olympic shooters train.
I’ve got a MantisX system, and it helped me realize my grip was less than optimal. Just changing finger position a bit got my laser “groupings” to shrink about 50%. All from the comfort of my house, in a room without cats for a couple of minutes.
Sounds like fun, like Son of Silvercon was last year. So far I’ve got WonderCon at the end of the month, LibertyCon in June, and SoS II in July. Planning for two trips to Tennessee next year might be a little excessive but perhaps the powers that be will give me parole from The People’s Republic of California. I got, what, four blog posts out of LibertyCon and the trip to and from last year, so there’s that.
As for the shooting range, it’s been decades since I’ve fired a gun. I specialize more in shooting my mouth off. Remind me to tell you about ThrillerFest II next time I sees any of youse.
I met Devon Eriksen, who says he’s not a cat, and I need to read his book. I mean… shakes head… cats writing books.
Are you sure he simply doesn’t identify as not being a cat?
Sarah, It’s good you got out. And you need to shoot. A Bunch. Or at least dry fire. About a month ago I got a CheapShot.comUSA lazer setup for 9mm and .38 special. Helps and I am getting better. Shooting 12 yards across the basement. You might want to check them out.
No way I could get off work for ConFinement this year. Next year we will see. We really can’t afford to go to Son Of SilverConII, but we are going anyway. My wife made the mistake of wondering out loud when we might ever get to go to Las Vegas again. I was at my computer desk, so she couldn’t see my eyes light up, but I said ‘ What about the middle of July?’ and she didn’t say No. She did say ( in that ‘questioning’ voice) ‘Why?’. So I explained, and she said as long as she could do some of the stuff SHE wanted to do ( well, of course…) and we figured it out, and both agreed that this was going to strain the budget, but, darn, if I don’t take the opportunity now, I don’t know when it might work out again! SO, an extra day before to do something together that SHE wants to do, and other planning, and I have to keep hoping my job will keep needing me to do plenty of overtime…..
Middle of July? Be prepared to melt and pick your hotel accordingly.
Note: Walking outside in the evening or night is almost as bad as the day since all that concrete just radiates the stored heat from the day.
We’re sorry to have missed it. Medical recoveries were happening, and are almost done.
Sounds like it was a lot of fun. We will try to make it next year.
Got memberships for LibertyCon, so hope to see you all there.
John in Indy
We’re sorry to have missed it. Medical recoveries were happening, and are almost done.
Sounds like it was a lot of fun. We will try to make it next year.
Got memberships for LibertyCon, so hope to see you all there.
John in Indy
Congratulation on your book sales.
For me, the word, confinement, always raises a weird association when it comes to women; being an older term for pregnancy. Or does that particular con have a reputation for blessed events that culminate with happy arrivals in nine months?
Confinement started during the covid lockdowns.
Good clear report. Keep it up, trooper.
I really, really want to go to one of these small cons. It’d be good for the soul. Unfortunately, there are none close to where I live, and traveling is expensive…but the family reunion this summer just might be the same week as Son of Silvercon, and if it is, I’ll already be more than halfway to Vegas…we’ll see.
Sounds like you had a blast at the con. Groovy cool.
Someday I’d like to attend a con and meet some of you. Probably won’t be any time soon though. Hope everyone has fun though at the cons they go to.
I was at the store today and the orange juice was marked down to $1.99 because it’s getting close to its expiration date. Seems people weren’t buying it at $7.50 a gallon. FJB!
Sarah wrote, “I mean, I love Liberty con, but we really need a wide scattering of new cons, don’t we? […] Would you consider coming out and hanging out next year? […]”
We do need a wide scattering of new cons. And when I say “wide”, I mean lots of them west of the Mississippi.
Even if there WERE a con or two within five hundred miles, I can’t promise anything, especially when they’re usually in the Pits [large cities]. But most of them end up being over two thousand miles away, and that’s just a non-starter.
Signed, A Very Annoyed Resident of Rural Puget Sound
The problem I have with cons in New England is that they are usually either left-leaning or woke. I’m primarily talking about my perceptions of Boskone and Arisia, with a side order of Granite State Comicon (which is a bit more specialized than a flat-out sci-fi/fantasy convention, although the genres do overlap.) Of course, the last time I attended Boskone was back when Jerry Pournelle made his last appearance there; but I’ve not been all that enthused about their guest line ups or panels since then.
all of those are woke, yes.
Speaking of “confinement” and the older meaning related to pregnancy….. we’re experiencing that now. Not me, of course, that train left the station a long time ago — we took in a stray cat that turned out to be pregnant, and she’s ready to give birth any day. Vet took an x-ray and saw 5 kittens. So we have been setting up nesting boxes in a nice cozy corner of our basement, which she has yet to show any interest in. Hoping this kitty, who seems rather young, probably only about a year old, knows what to do when the time comes and that all her kittens survive…. we’re hoping to keep 1 or 2 of them as companions for her. In the meantime we are on 24 hour kitten watch and preparing for possible late night feedings, weight checks, etc. (if it comes to that).
Bless you.
Thank you for your kind words about the food at Confinement V…
We do try!
Annie and Blair
—
You guys had quite a spread. I’m just bad at eating!