Friday, Sunday
Sep. 28th, 2003 06:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
elfsFriday, after finishing up work, I met with Omaha in downtown and we drove through the miserable rush-hour traffic to Tacoma, where we met up with some friends who had come for Conifur. Y'know how some people accuse science fiction fans, especially the ones who go to coventions, as the sort of people who never grow up? Conifur is the sort of convention that not only fits that description, but does so in a way that makes all other science fiction conventions look bad.
That's not to say that the convention is boisterous or full of miscreants. It's just full of people who have no real concept of where the boundaries of good taste lie. Furry fans, for the most part, remain children in adult clothes. If they're growing up, they're doing so very, very slowly. They might hit the maturation of puberty by the time senility starts to kick in.
But, there were a few people who were there, old friends from when the fandom more or less started, people who have grown up... mostly. Two of them were single men from the Silicon Valley era who both still had excellent high-paying jobs and stock worth something, and I was feeling moments of envy watching them play with their quite incredible gadgets-- 40 gig Archos, micro digital cameras, full-sized Ti-books-- and had serious moments of miswanting. I know, yes, that eventually I will be able to afford such gadgets, when the price comes down and I can buy them used and install Linx on them-- but right now I have an okay computer that lets me write, an okay camera that lets me share moments with the world, and an okay CD player that I can take with me when I want to listen to music on the road. In the meantime, the things that really make me happy, like writing, or playing with my kid, are still perfectly available.
Anyways, we hung out an Conifur, saw a few of the more interesting people there-- Kagemushi, for the best example-- and generally had a good time, a good dinner, and a good drive home.
See the previous post for Saturday.
Sunday, I went to work. Unfortunately, my company decided that for internal reasons we had to move the release date up a week. That means that instead of 5-day weeks and so 25 days, we only had 20 work days. No problem, "You're all working one weekend day a week," and viola, 24 days.
I got up before everyone else and went in. Wow, am I feeling the effort from yesterday. My back doesn't hurt and my wrists are doing great, but every line of every muscle in my biceps, torso, and legs reminds me that I overdid it just a wee bit yesterday. I went into work to discover that I had a major bug awaiting me; a feature request at the last minute had broken something in a downgrade situation-- rare, but possible.
I worked my way through that, and then through another minor bug. I have two left that require clarification and then I will be all done, right? Well, probably not. But hopefully close enough that I won't have to kill myself over the next three weeks.
I got home around two and for the past four hours have just not had any energy to do anything. Omaha and I surveyed the work to be done and set two more stones, then played out in the back with Kouryou-chan, who had the best watergun of the three of us. She's helping Omaha clean up the flower beds while I sit upstairs and type. I know if I lay down for "just a minute" I'll end up sleeping for three hours. And I tried to play Freespace 2 but was so overwhelmed with incoming data I had no idea what to do next. My brain is just fuzzed.
We're going to take Kouryou-chan out to her favorite restaurant tonight as a gift for being so good yesterday, staying out of the way and being such a great listener. She's an amazing kid, she just is.
That's not to say that the convention is boisterous or full of miscreants. It's just full of people who have no real concept of where the boundaries of good taste lie. Furry fans, for the most part, remain children in adult clothes. If they're growing up, they're doing so very, very slowly. They might hit the maturation of puberty by the time senility starts to kick in.
But, there were a few people who were there, old friends from when the fandom more or less started, people who have grown up... mostly. Two of them were single men from the Silicon Valley era who both still had excellent high-paying jobs and stock worth something, and I was feeling moments of envy watching them play with their quite incredible gadgets-- 40 gig Archos, micro digital cameras, full-sized Ti-books-- and had serious moments of miswanting. I know, yes, that eventually I will be able to afford such gadgets, when the price comes down and I can buy them used and install Linx on them-- but right now I have an okay computer that lets me write, an okay camera that lets me share moments with the world, and an okay CD player that I can take with me when I want to listen to music on the road. In the meantime, the things that really make me happy, like writing, or playing with my kid, are still perfectly available.
Anyways, we hung out an Conifur, saw a few of the more interesting people there-- Kagemushi, for the best example-- and generally had a good time, a good dinner, and a good drive home.
See the previous post for Saturday.
Sunday, I went to work. Unfortunately, my company decided that for internal reasons we had to move the release date up a week. That means that instead of 5-day weeks and so 25 days, we only had 20 work days. No problem, "You're all working one weekend day a week," and viola, 24 days.
I got up before everyone else and went in. Wow, am I feeling the effort from yesterday. My back doesn't hurt and my wrists are doing great, but every line of every muscle in my biceps, torso, and legs reminds me that I overdid it just a wee bit yesterday. I went into work to discover that I had a major bug awaiting me; a feature request at the last minute had broken something in a downgrade situation-- rare, but possible.
I worked my way through that, and then through another minor bug. I have two left that require clarification and then I will be all done, right? Well, probably not. But hopefully close enough that I won't have to kill myself over the next three weeks.
I got home around two and for the past four hours have just not had any energy to do anything. Omaha and I surveyed the work to be done and set two more stones, then played out in the back with Kouryou-chan, who had the best watergun of the three of us. She's helping Omaha clean up the flower beds while I sit upstairs and type. I know if I lay down for "just a minute" I'll end up sleeping for three hours. And I tried to play Freespace 2 but was so overwhelmed with incoming data I had no idea what to do next. My brain is just fuzzed.
We're going to take Kouryou-chan out to her favorite restaurant tonight as a gift for being so good yesterday, staying out of the way and being such a great listener. She's an amazing kid, she just is.
