The Mandelbear's Musings

08:13 am - TSA: Travelers with Disabilities and Medical Conditions

Here, courtesy of cpap.com's mailing list, is the TSA's official web page on Travelers with Disabilities and Medical Conditions.

[...] TSA has established a program for screening of persons with disabilities and their associated equipment, mobility aids, and devices. Our program covers all categories of disabilities (mobility, hearing, visual, and hidden). As part of that program, we established a coalition of over 70 disability-related groups and organizations to help us understand the concerns of persons with disabilities and medical conditions. These groups have assisted TSA with integrating the unique needs of persons with disabilities into our airport operations.

Includes pages about CPAP machines, wheelchairs, Assistive Devices and Mobility Aids, and quite a lot more. Think they've taken a bit of flak over this stuff? Take advantage of it if you need to.

08:01 pm - FilKONtario: odds, ends, and travel notes

A random link from FKO: A good photo of me and Debbie in the Hall of Fame concert. There are a few more shots of the concert from the same stream.

Travel notes:

• It helps to take an extension cord in the backpack, but only if you remember that it's there! I need to remember to take one of the little power-strips (3 outlets, 6" cord), too -- they'd be just the thing for the desk.
• We finally got sensible and asked for wheelchair assistance for Colleen. Major win. At least we had sense enough to ask for early boarding in both directions, and waited until almost everyone left the plane before getting up. Made all the difference. Probably still a bad idea to get anything but a non-stop flight, though.
• I thought that a 6:00pm flight was too late. On the contrary, it made for a pleasant, leisurely afternoon: early afternoon in the hotel saying goodbye to all and sundry, and late afternoon going through the airport without having to hurry.
• Next time, put some eBooks on the XO (or whatever's handy with a good battery life and the ability to read text, HTML, or PDF).

09:54 am - Travels with Plink and Cthulhu...

... not to mention the XO, which hasn't told me its official name yet. Right now it's just going by "steve", which is the name I gave it when I first booted it. I think that, with a reasonable window manager on it instead of the kid-oriented sugar, it will probably be fine. Or maybe with Debian -- I've been noticing lots of ways in which Fedora's package manager sucks compared to apt.

The biggest problem so far is that it seems to use control-O -- even when you're in terminal mode and ssh'ed to a machine running emacs -- to open the journal application. This is Not A Good Thing when your favorite LJ and mail clients are emacs modes. I've been reluctant to find out what other pootentially-vital keystrokes it eats.

On the other hand, my scheme to carry a basically naked machine across the border and pull in my keys from an encrypted tarball from home worked perfectly. Actually i didn't bother encrypting my ssh identity because it's *already* encrypted with a good passphrase. And the tarball's been deleted by now; I only needed it for a day.

Note to self: if we're going to play this game on a regular basis, the travel keyboard and mouse are essential. I currently have the XO's screen flipped around (halfway to tablet mode) so I can use my Thinkpad keyboard and a travel mouse. Works great.

08:55 am - Travels with Plink and Cthulhu

Yesterday was travel day -- pretty much a total write-off given a noon flight and a 3-hour time difference. We did manage to get dinner and hang out in the con suite for a while.

Colleen had a lot of trouble with the lack of legroom in the plane; thank goodness it was only a 5-hour flight, with no plane changes.

Forgot batteries for the H2 (and they're *expensive* in the hotel!); that seems to be the only major lack so far. The XO may not have been the best choice of computer; its "terminal" app seems to be failing to pass all of the control characters through. That makes using emacs problematic -- I'll have to see whether I can even post this. I'm *very* glad I thought to bring my Linksys travel router, though, since the XO also doesn't have ethernet.

11:43 pm - So here's the question...

... should I try to do a weekend trip with nothing but the XO, or should I take the Mac as well. The XO's keyboard isn't an issue, since I have a good one I can take along -- it would work better with a Linux box than it does with the Mac. The XO's screen and battery life are fantastic.

But the browser is *not* Firefox, and it doesn't do tabs as far as I can tell. The window manager is weird -- basically the whole thing is aimed at kids -- and the IM client only talks Jabber. OTOH, I might be able to dual-boot it with Ubuntu, in which case I'd probably be pretty happy with it.

I'd borrow the Asus Eee from work; it's more like a "traditional" Linux laptop. But then I'd have to get a new one for Colleen...

(Added 0401: I can almost certainly do everything I need to via ssh to home; there's even a console version of my usual IM app (finch, the console version of pidgin). That would have the added advantage of leaving the log files on my home machine. I'm already used to posting to LJ via an ssh connection.)

Current Mood: thoughtful

08:30 am - Travel Tips: computer security

There's a really great post on tips for airplane travel over on sweetmusic_2 that I've been meaning to point to for a long time. Go read it, especially if you haven't traveled by air much.

This post isn't very closely related at all; it just seemed like a convenient excuse for a link. This post is more directly related to this post on Techdirt.com and related matters, which point out that customs agents on both sides of the US/Canadian border are searching and in some cases seizing laptops and cell phones.

OK, we all know that keeping sensitive data on your laptop is a bad idea. And we all know that you can encrypt your home directory -- at least on Linux and Mac. And you can use something like TrueCrypt to make a complete virtual encrypted disk. Both will protect your privacy pretty well, but if your laptop gets stolen or seized, you still lose the use of your data. Similarly, you can set a master password in Firefox, but it's probably not going to protect your login cookies, it might be breakable, and customs might be able to force you to reveal it in any case.

So here's a better idea: don't have secrets anywhere on your computer when you cross the border. This is the software equivalent of taking all the metal out of your pockets and using a piece of rope for a belt as you go through the security checkpoint.

This relies on having all of your private data accessible via the web. It has to be either encrypted, or on your home server and accessible through an encrypted tunnel like ssh. Because your connections may be slow, it also helps to minimize what you really need: basically your keychain file(s) and your ssh and gpg private keys.

The private keys will all be protected by long passphrases anyway, if you're doing it right. You can encrypt your browser password file with a master password as well. Your IM client probably keeps your account passwords around; find that file too. If you keep a separate file of website passwords, as I do, you should encrypt that. Now put them all in a directory, zip it up, and encrypt the zip file. Note: do not use your gpg private key for this: it's not going to be on your machine when you need to decrypt the secrets! Use AES and a long passphrase.

Mail the resulting zip file, as an attachment, to yourself on any convenient webmail account. Or put it on a website that you control. If you want to be really safe, use steganography to put it inside an image.

Now delete all your secrets, using a secure deletion program that overwrites all the files with random bits before actually deleting them. Clear your browser cache, history, and cookies, again with a secure deletion program. Go.

When you get to your destination, retrieve the secrets file, decrypt and unzip it, and put everything back in the directories where they belong.

I'll be doing some international traveling in a couple of weeks; by that time I'll have some scripts I can post for you.

09:35 am - Conflilkt - day 1 (Friday)

The convoy from the Big Green Monster arrived at Conflikt around 1:30 and unloaded. Ended up swapping my suite (the only room left in the con's room block when I made the reservation) for a double/double at the convention rate (they had me at a higher rate in spite of the fact that I'd been told I'd be getting the con rate).

The rest of the afternoon was spent recording some songs for the brunch CD ("Jabberwocky" and "Stuff that Dreams are Made Of", and getting a haircut from (Interfilk guest) France Andrews. She's a professional hairdresser and has been doing haircuts at cons in exchange for an Interfilk contribution for years. She trimmed a couple of inches off the ponytail, and trimmed my beard rather aggressively with an eye toward having it grown out to the proper length in time for the wedding at Consonance.

By the time I noticed what time it was, it was after 6pm, so I had a soup-and-appetizer dinner in the hotel restaurant. I haven't been eating much this trip, and I'm not complaining. Perhaps the low-sugar diet is starting to work.

Concerts were predictably spectacular -- cadhla's started out with technical difficulties and included what she called a cursed song, but her usual amazing stage presence allowed her to make the mayhem feel like part of the set. Wow. jhitchen's set combined music and stand-up comedy, and katyhh's was simply beautiful.

I never made it back to the open filking, but there was some lots of good song-swapping in the con suite. Fun!

The only major hitch was losing track of the piece of paper where I'd written _amethyst_fire_'s parents' phone number, which I'd found earlier in the week and then both neglected to type in, and misplaced. Finally found it this morning, but haven't gotten a callback yet. Combination of phone phobia and procrastination strikes again. Dumb bear.

Current Mood: awake

08:34 am - Travels with Plink and Rolly: Almost Conflikt

I'm sitting at the kitchen table of the Big Green Monster; good place. No, let me rephrase that: a Very Good Place. Lived-in. Too many stairs for the flower_cat; I'm afraid she would have had a difficult time getting around.

Long talk in the afternoon with pocketnaomi. She needs to read "Mark Elf" by Cordwainer Smith. So does anyone else who wants to understand the Mandelbear's origins as the Middle-Sized Bear.

Dinner last night at Outback with concom, guests, and friends. I had fish, like a good bear. Afterwards there was music with cflute, tibicina, and pocketnaomi (who persuaded me to stick "Toolmakers" into my twofer slot, if I get one).

Still haven't heard from _amethyst_fire_; I suspect she's busy with school; but... Should have tried last week to track her down by phone; my phone phobia really gets in the way some times.

Current Mood: calm

10:42 am - Rough morning

First setback was discovering that the workstation I wanted to use to replace the possibly-flaky fileserver didn't appear able to find either of its ethernet ports when booted from the server's disk. Something in the boot-time kernel config, I suppose, but I didn't have time to diagnose it. If it goes down over the weekend, it goes down. The mirror's reasonably current, but I didn't have time to get it back in operation; the workstation is still in pieces and will stay that way until I get back.

Next (well, actually, while still hassling with recalcitrant boxen) came the FedEx guy knocking on the door to say that he remembers leaving the box of ribbons on the porch. Must have been stolen, then. So that's a loss, and all my fault for having it shipped to the house instead of work; just bad luck that Colleen was out taking the Y.D. home from school when it arrived. I'd figured that, if it was delayed, at least Colleen wouldn't have to go in to the lab to chase after it when she had a con and an engagement party to worry about.

They included my "Coffee, Computers & Song" ribbons, so it may be a business expense I can write off. But I came close to losing it, and drove the Cat nuts as usual by apologizing repeatedly. Glad I have her.

And I missed breakfast, but a protein bar and a bottle of chocolate milk are helping. And did I mention that the airport doesn't have free wi-fi. Paid through Boingo; about the same price but I already have the account, so no credit card needed. At least the airport has plenty of outlets; it's been substantially remodeled.

Spoons: low; Cope: low.

Current Mood: annoyed

10:31 am - Travels with Plink and Cthulhu and Rolly, too

... or maybe that would be "Rolly II", since it's a different rolly than the one I used to travel with. See, I have this Microsoft backpack now that works better than the old rolly (holds more, stands up by itself, well-organized -- very atypical for M$). But I now have a CPAP machine, and although I *could* cram it into the backpack, it's not very convenient there. Its bag really *doesn't* fit.

Meanwhile, I have this travel guitar, and a raincoat. At the Container Store a while ago I found a great little rolly that's basically just a 2-foot deep bag on a rolling platform. The wheels fold flat, and the whole thing crams down into something that turns into a little outside pocket. The facehugger, Plink, a fleece jacket, and the raincoat all fit. Plink sticks out a little, but...

Going through security was pretty easy, though they now check your ID on the far side of the metal detector after having scrutinized it with a flashlight at the start of the line. Stupid.

Current Mood: awake

09:10 am - Getting ready for Seattle

Gradually getting ready to go; spent altogether too much time last night and this morning on lingering household computer issues, and not enough on taxes. Hopefully I'll have time to deal with them today while I'm supposed to be working during lunch. Makes sense anyway, since I ought to copy the forms before I send them.

Did a preliminary test-pack -- I'm going to need a second carry-on for things -- mostly gifts -- that are light but bulky. I'm using the flower_cat's new purple suitcase that we got at Costco last year; the second carry-on will be an ancient Hartman duffel that my parents bought in Japan 30-odd years ago for a similar purpose. It'll squish down into the suitcase for the trip home.

I'll be taking up 50 or so copies of Coffee, Computers, and Song -- hopefully there will be some dealers to take some of them off my hands when I get there.

09:36 am - Conflikt: Travel plans

Here's my itinerary for Conflikt:

    leave:  Alaska 339 SJC Thu 01-24 12:33 -> SEA 14:40	seat 23A
    return: Alaska 356 SEA Wed 01-30 17:45 -> SJC 19:54	seat 23A

... so I'll be getting in to Seattle at just before 3pm.

I'm going to be staying with cflute, et. al. in the Big Green Monster Thursday night, arriving at the hotel sometime Friday afternoon. I will also be there after the con, until sometime Wednesday afternoon.

Contact info in the next post upwhen, or see theStarport.org.

08:31 am - The latest air-safety threat

Now the TSA is afraid that spare lithium batteries will spontaneously combust. Or that somebody will try to light them instead of their shoe, but if so why are thay banned from checked baggage and not from carry-ons?

Never mind that they're just as likely to combust inside a laptop. Maybe more, since an external short might develop. (Added 08:55 sbisson points out that there's a real reason for the apparent anomaly: cabin fire extinguishers can cope with lithium fires, while the automatic ones in the baggage hold can't. But you can still check a laptop through, and those have been known to burst into flames.)

(From BoingBoing.) Note that most batteries installed in devices are permitted, and even a lot of add-on batteries. Forget about checking through a big pile of camcorder batteries, though.

Current Mood: cynical

09:54 pm - Conflikt: travel plans

Have my plane tickets. It came to under $200, so I decided to just pay it and save the up-to-$500 points flights for a later occasion. Like maybe wedding guests.

Anyway, here's the itinerary:

    leave:  Alaska 339 SJC Thu 01-24 12:33 -> SEA 14:40	seat 23A
    return: Alaska 356 SEA Wed 01-30 17:45 -> SJC 19:54	seat 23A

... so I'll probably be checked in at the hotel by 5pm or so, and have the rest of Thursday evening free.

11:15 pm - Headed for Conflikt: Trip-planning post

Current plan is to fly to SeaTac for Conflikt on Thursday January 24th; I'll probably get in late afternoon. I'll look around for a rental car on Monday so I'll be relatively mobile. Probably head home on Wednesday the 30th unless somebody gives me a good reason to stay through Thursday. I'll be making my plane reservation sometime this week.

Besides the departure date, about the only other things that need deciding are what gear to take. First category is instruments: I need to decide whether to take Plink, my travel guitar, or Ruby, my usually gig guitar. I'm leaning toward Plink, since I'm flying, and she sounds really good plugged in through a direct box.

The other question is computer hardware. I'm leaning toward taking the Macbook Pro and (assuming it arrives when it's supposed to) the OLPC. I don't think I'm quite crazy enough to attempt the trip with nothing but the OLPC or even the OLPC, an external keyboard, and a massive USB hard drive. I might, however, take the OLPC instead of my songbook.

Added: Comments on this post would be a convenient place to discuss trip logistics.

09:36 pm - Travels with Ruby: Home again, home again

We're back. The facehugger has really made a difference -- this was the first return trip in several years where I wasn't yawning continuously and fighting sleep for the last 150 miles. I yawned a couple of times, and felt a little sleepy a couple of times (a seven-hour car trip will do that), but I didn't feel as though I was about to fall asleep. Yay!

Many goodbyes and a couple of good conversations this morning. Having a CD out gives me something new to talk about, which is always a good thing.

Total CD sales at the con: 1. Oh, well. Eric sold a few, I think. Having a CD also gives one an excuse to hang out with the dealers.

07:58 pm - Travels with Ruby: Loscon so far

It occurs to me that my last Loscon post was Thursday, so I have a bit of catching up to do. Fortunately it's been mostly concerts and conversations so far, so there isn't as much to report as might be.

AJA and Dr. Jim Robinson both gave concerts yesterday -- that was good. Dinner with selenesue in the "good restaurant". Some open filking that started breaking up around midnight; I went up to the parties and finally got in about 1:30. Slept well.

Side note on the facehugger -- I seem to be getting used to it. I'm still having some trouble getting the mask tight enough so that it doesn't leak, and a little trouble getting to sleep. But by the time morning comes around I sometimes have to check to see whether I'm still wearing it, the way I do with my glasses sometimes. I can live with this. Ordered a CPAP pillow, which is back-ordered and should be back in stock later next week.

My concert (with the chaoswolf on drum and backup vocals) was today at 2:00, and seemed to go very well indeed. Smallish audience, but I think my performance was better than usual. Three weeks of practicing every couple of days with the Wolfling seemed to help. Got a decent recording with the H2. I think the drum came out too loud; we'll probably have to skip it when it's just two of us, and drop down to something quieter like shaker.

I'll post the set list later; for now, I'll just note the shortnames: cicero bugs rosie tool rrprayer barratry stuff bigger. Obviously I need a script that conses up an Emacs abbrev file, or something.

I'm no good at reporting conversations. I'll just note a good talk around dinner with mysticfig, mostly about CD production, and a couple of nice chats during soundchecks with Moira Stern.

Right now I'm avoiding the "Banned from Argo" sing; I'll probably go down in half an hour or so. The flower_cat is napping; she -- and a lot of other people -- seem to be suffering from an excess of air conditioning. Doesn't seem cold to me, but...

Current Mood: happy

10:43 pm - Travels with Ruby: Thursday before Loscon

So here we are at the LAX Marriott. I couldn't get the wired internet connection in the room to work; the wireless sucks rocks but it's better than nothing. I'll bug the hotel in the morning.

I've already bugged the hotel about the lack of an outlet near the bed for the facehugger: they sent up a bloke with a power strip, extension cord, and what sounded like an Aussie accent. I can haz facehuggr now. The Wofling has just put herself to bed. She very sensibly brought an air mattress this time (sharing a bed with her little sister is Right Out).

The trip, down US 101, was uneventful. It's much prettier than I5 and the traffic is consistently less (though it was heavier this year than I've seen it in the last decade of Loscons). About 7:30 including the break for lunch at Pea Soup Anderson's.

Annoyingly, I snapped off a fingernail unloading the car. Even more annoyingly, it was the right forefinger, which is what I use most for fingerpicking. And of course there's no superglue -- I forgot to pack it. Could have used it to extend the stub a fraction. I can get by, though. Won't sound quite as clear, but the difference is surprisingly slight.

The flower_cat, chaoswolf, and I had dinner with AJA and Kore; I hadn't really had much of a conversation with K before, so that was good. There was enough discussion of CD production and related matters that I figured I could treat it as a business expense. The Y.D. joined us briefly for desert; she'd already had dinner up in the Con Suite.

I should probably go to bed soon.

Current Mood: tired

11:27 pm - Travels with Plink and Cthulhu: final thoughts

This is just a rather disconnected set of notes.

With 42 CDs (30 shrinkwrapped copies of CC&S and 6 "pre-order" sets) in it, the backpack is a bit too heavy, but it still fit nicely under the seat, even with my shoulderbag under the flap and my rather bulky headphones in the "CD player" compartment.

In any case it's awkward, especially combined with Plink, since I can only have one of the two at a time on my back. Next time I'll bring a folding luggage cart -- it can live in the overhead rack strapped onto Plink. Or, better, with Plink strapped onto the back so that it can fold up easily, and so I can set the backpack on it without having to move Plink.

Next time I have to fly I need to ship CDs to the dealers, and just take enough to cover unexpected shortfalls and a few in-person sales.

50 CDs took up most of the suitcase. I think I need a bigger one; there wasn't room for the hiking boots, which would have come in handy.

I have to remember to print out a fresh songbook before every con. And practice up a two-fer ahead of time.

10:38 pm - Travels with Plink and Cthulhu

Back from OVFF. Not dead yet. Moribund.

Got up about 8:30 this morning; breakfast and many hugs. Shared a cab to the airport with gorgeousgary and the_sheryl. Had a Chinese chicken salad in the terminal, and hung out for a while with catalana, pocketnaomi, and mnemex until their respective flights left.

Made my connection in Dallas -- I'd been a little worried, with only an hour to do it, but the flight out of Columbus was on time and comparatively lightly loaded. Flew out of the brand-new Terminal D. There was an oriental fast-food joint behind the prominent McD's; I skipped the sushi (shudder!) and went for "orange chicken" without the rice that normally comes with it, which wasn't bad.

Came home to a stack of mail, a bathtub full of soda and beer left over from Saturday's party, a home-cooked steak, and my family. Not complaining. I've been sleepy all day; can't imagine why.

Total CD sales: 45 plus 2 pre-order sets. Not quite break-even, but close if you don't count the CDs I bought.

06:52 pm - Live from the OVFF Dead Dog.

This is likely to be a little disconnected; I'm sitting in the Dead Dog filk at OVFF, but pretty far back against the wall. There's power and a strong WiFi signal here. Almost like being there.

(Pause while I set up the H2. Should have done it sooner. I'll get to that later.)

I've been getting to bed much too late, and getting up much too late, to have done any real-time blogging. This will have to do. Let's see.

I managed to capture most of the Pegasus nominee concert; missed the "Songs of home" section because I stupidly forgot that the H2 has a standby mode. Got most of the concerts yesterday; nothing today until now.

Had a two-fer slot yesterday. I originally planned to do "Stuff that Dreams are Made Of" and "Rambling Silver Rose", but discovered that I'd pulled "Stuff..." sometime in the past and hadn't replaced it. Substituted "Cicero", which was a better choice anyway because it gave me a good excuse to mention the album. The guitar work in the last verse was a train wreck, and I had a couple of serious vocal flubs as well. Got much more relaxed for "Rose" and I think turned in a decent performance.

Apart from Thursday night and the two-fer I did next to no singing, except for a couple of hours in the hall last night swapping songs with pocketnaomi. Mostly I sat around in the consuite or hallways and talked. I realized several years ago that that's what I really go to cons for. Might have been different if any of the usual Tres Gique suspects had been around, but they weren't. Even so, there a lot of people here who I wanted to spend more time with.

08:14 am - Travels with Plink and Cthulhu

I have my computer and songbook; the only thing I seem to have forgotten to pack was the coffee. Foo!

08:03 am - Travels with Plink and Cthulhu

(written Thursday afternoon; posted via web because I can't ping my home network. Grump.

On the whole, I think the backpack is a win: I haven't had any trouble squeezing it under the seat in front of me, and it's at least manageable most of the time. Not very convenient in lines; it would be better to have a rolly I can kick ahead of me, and sometimes juggling Plink is a bit of a pain. It's tempting to get a small folding luggage cart that I could lash Plink onto.

Snapped off a fingernail juggling bags and bins in the security line. Grump. Fortunately it the second finger, which I don't use nearly as much. My few guitar lessons, way back when, were in two-finger Travis picking. Still comes in handy.

Struck up a conversation in the airport with a cute girl - just out of High School and on her way to Guatamala for a Spanish immersion program. Turns out folk music and science fiction are major interests of hers, but she hadn't heard of filk. Handed her a flier for CC&S; offered to give her a listen in Dallas but she'd vanished by the time I got off the plane.

A couple more conversations on the plane. The woman in the seat in front of me had even heard of filk! Amazing. I think being a musician is probably better for conversation than being a software researcher, though the guy next to me on the flight to DFW was a marketer at Sun. We both spent most of the flight reading, though.

I overestimated the amount of time I'd have for a layover in Dallas, spent much of the time walking, and ended up eating a hot dog as a fast-food lunch. The flight was about half an hour late leaving: they were replacing a light. Better safe, and all that... Not clear how much dinner I'm going to get, but there's a good supply of Odwalla bars in my luggage; I'll do OK.

The Dallas-to-Columbus leg of the flight is a puddle-jumper; my seat is both an aisle and a window. So no conversations. No legroom, either. I'm going to hurt tomorrow.

Current Mood: awake

06:55 am - Travels with Plink and Cthulhu

In the end, the littlest plush Cthulhu manifested its loathsome body behind the monitor (I always knew that corner was non-Euclidean), so He will be traveling in my coat pocket after all.

The flower_cat offered to lend me her mimmoth, but the risk of it hooking up with Ozymandias was just too great. (\me shudders)

Looks like no breakfast until after I get to the airport. Could be a long day.

10:23 pm - Travels with Plink: Packed

I'm packed. Interestingly, the Rick Steves backpack holds more than the Travelpro rolly -- I test-fitted both of them. The backpack is also lighter -- there are simply a lot fewer atoms there -- and it has a flap that I can stuff my shoulder bag under to make it look like I only have two carry-on bags. Plink, the travel guitar, being the other.

I've managed to cram in 80 CDs: 50 in the checked suitcase, and 30 in the backpack. Plus 6 "pre-order" sets and the Interfilk package (binder plus two CDs). Don't think I'll be able to squeeze in the little plush Cthulhu, and in any case he seems to be hiding. I may be a little light on reading material on the way back.

Current Mood: accomplished

04:29 pm - Beginning to sound a lot like OVFF

Made my hotel reservation for OVFF yesterday, at the flower_cat's insistence. (Anyone who didn't know her might think she was trying to get me out of town so she could spend time with her lover. I personally suspect she just wants a weekend without my snoring waking her up.)

I'll send in my registration on Monday, and probably book my flight then as well.

I don't normally get to OVFF, but with a newly-released album it would appear to be a good idea. I may need to get a bigger suitcase.

08:40 pm - Travel notes

The small backpack is much more maneuverable than the rolly -- easier to get around with and easier to find a place for. On the other hand it gets hot, heavy, and uncomfortable after a while. The rolly is better for evening filking, since my guitar gig-bag can be backpacked and the rolly works as a music stand (though it's too low to be a good one). For concerts, the rolly holds my recording gear and can be turned into an impromptu mic stand with a simple clamp.

A rollycrate full of preordered CDs is large and clumsy. You have to be careful going over irregular surfaces; I've had it capsize several times on sidewalks. Possibly not a major consideration, since I will be doing pre-orders differently, if at all, in the future. It does hold a lot, though: all our food fit into one.

I need a smaller shoulder bag. Jammed full of a wallet, two checkbooks, a stack of $5's for making change, a big pile of receipts, business cards, tools, phone, camera, Nokia 770, earbuds, keys, ... it's heavy, bulky, and often a literal pain in the neck and shoulder. On the other hand, I need a lot of that stuff, much of it every day and most of the rest at least a couple of times a week. Once the OpenMoko phone becomes useable I'll be able to drop the Nokia, but it's not there yet.

I'm probably going to end up with multiple bags: one little one with the stuff I absolutely have to have whenever I leave the house, and one (or more!) that I can either clip on or drop it into when I need the rest.

Having two computers along was a win: the Mac for wireless and recording, and the Linux Thinkpad for the direct connection in the room. Should have brought an extra ethernet card for the Thinkpad, though; then I could have used it as a router in the room.

12:01 am - Conchord: finale, and the journey home

Slept badly last night; a mixture of the flower_cat's also sleeping badly, and the hotel beds being too squishy. Spent an hour or two cleaning up my recording of the concert. With the mics in the very back of the room, the sound was excellent but the audience reaction tended to be significantly louder than the performance (9-12 dB on the applause). Needs more work, but I was able to start transferring a 1.1GB .tar.bz2 file of the Audacity project to my spare USB keychain drive. The Mac said it would take 11 minutes, so I trundled down to breakfast.

Breakfast with cflute, who wanted to show off some lovely batik quilt fabric to the Cat. Afterward we went up to the room and I handed her the keychain drive and had her sign her recording contract, which I had finally gotten around to throwing together sometime Thursday evening.

I managed to pack things down to five loads: the two rollycrates (mine with the file box of undistributed pre-orders, the box of unsold CDs, and the coffeepot piggybacked on it), two rolling suitcases with the Travelpro rolling briefcases piggybacked on them (plus the backpack and the gig bag), and the Y.D.'s rolling suitacase and backpack. The small rolling suitcase (originally presents, now dirty laundry) was light enough to hand-carry with one of the rollycrates. So that was a win.

The drive home (via US 101, as usual) was uneventful, which is just the way I like it. Not as sleepy as usual, mainly I think because we stopped more often than usual. On one of the stops the restroom in question was in a Charbucks, so I had an iced mocha. I'm sure the caffeine and sugar helped.

09:38 am - There and Back Again

Travel notes:

The Portland airport is a good place for walkies. I'll have to remember that the two sides of the terminal are connected; the security-check lines were considerably shorter on the D/E side. It's not as if I mind walking.

The backpack is a lot easier to get around with than the rolly, but it's less accessible for getting stuff in and out, and it gets hard on my back after a while. I may look for a folding cart.

With the Tux Droid taking up nearly half the suitcase, things were a little tighter than I like. Wound up wearing my fleece jacket, which worked great on the way to the airport but was less convenient after I got there.

A luggage strap with a plastic quick-connect buckle makes a great temporary belt for going through security. I basically just sailed through, except for nearly forgetting to pull my computer out of the backpack.

One of these days I may just have to design the perfect travel backpack and folding cart, and get somebody to manufacture them.

Album notes

We're uploading artwork today, hooray!

I still haven't quite gotten the hang of selling out my soul my stuff; I only sold one physical preorder pack, plus a couple of nibbles that may lead to web sales. A dozen or so people found the cards I put out on the flier table. I should also have been handing them out more freely at the breakfast and lunch tables; I had a tendency to do it only when the subject came up in the course of the conversation.

Talked briefly with Therese Michaud, who was playing piano in the airport, and her daughter who was manning the table selling a 5-song demo CD. Only realized later that I should have just swapped for a preorder pack. Did I mention that I'm a slow learner?

06:30 am - Travels without Rolly and Plink

(I really need a travel icon, don't I?)

11am: SJC

I'm travelling lighter than usual this week. Decided to go back to a backpack as my carry-on after finding out the hard way that a TravelPro rolling briefcase is remarkably easy to overstuff to the point where it won't fit under an airplane seat. Ended up with a pretty nice backpack with the Rick Steves brand, but actually made by somebody else. It's enough larger than my old Jansport that it comfortably holds a modern 15.4" laptop, and the front flap hangs in front of the zippered back section rather than over the zipper. So you can get out the laptop without unsnapping the flap.

The flap is also asymmetrical, covering a sizeable zippered pocket (which I'm not using at the moment) but not the mesh bag that holds a water bottle. Yay! There's a back compartment that the straps stash into, and enough room over the front pocket and under the flap for me to put my shoulder bag in order to convince the airline that I only have one bag. That's less important this trip because I decided not to take Plink, my little Vagabond travel guitar.

Instead of Plink I took my new Yamaha recorder and my (very) old recorder book; I'll either re-learn recorder or get dragged out of my hotel room by my neighbors and drowned in the pool. To give you some idea of how long I've been out of practice, let me just say that the book is only a few years younger than my wife.

This is being written at around 11am in the San Jose airport -- they have nice desks where you can sit and plug in a laptop, but they don't have free WiFi. So it'll get posted sometime after I get to Portland.

I note in passing that the master for CC&S has been dropped off at work for UPS to pick up this afternoon.

4:20pm: Portland Convention Center

I'm here. Nothing much going on, and it seems to be difficult to connect with LJ here. Hopefully that's temporary. Doesn't matter much, since I'm currently ssh'ed in to home. I just love the net!

The Mac is its usual hatefull self. Should've brought a real keyboard. Think I'll go out and look for something to eat before the Meet and Geek at 7:30.

6:34pm: Convention Center

Seems LJ is totally hosed due to a power outage in San Francisco. So it goes. Dinner at a Red Robin's. Fried shrinp and fish and chips. Tasty, and not terribly expensive. They have several local brews on tap; I had a porter from a brewery whose name I don't remember.

The new backpack is definitely more manoeverable than Rolly, and holds at least as much stuff. Turns out, from having stuffed it under an airplane seat, that it's almost exactly the same dimensions. But because it doesn't have the wheels and so on it's lighter and holds more (though arranged differently and not necessarily more accessibly. Not quite as handy if you just want to toss something into it and move on (for example in a dealer's room or trade show). I'll probably keep using Rolly for SF cons, for example; you also can't easily use a backpack as an impromptu music stand.

6:30 am: Red Lion Hotel at the Convention Center

LJ may be back, and my master is "out for delivery". Web access here at the hotel is unuseably slow, but I can ssh ok, for the moment. Here goes!

08:55 am - Back at the Winchester Mystery Hotel

Well, the Bear is moderately caffeinated and at least nominally awake. I have four panels on my schedule for this afternoon, and a concert tonight. The Gods alone know when -- or if -- I'll have time for practice. Or dinner. Then there's the fact that I'm not sure whether I'll have amplification for the concert, or when it starts, or whether Joyce will be up to singing. She's been sick, so we never did get a chance to practice much, but at least it hasn't been all that long since Baycon.

Well, it'll be interesting. I'll start off with a couple of Tres Gique pieces that can work with just me and drums, and wing it from there. I've lined up some stuff that I haven't done lately because it either flat doesn't work in a group, or we haven't worked up arrangements.

08:35 pm - Travels with Plink and Rolly [part 4: gear]

I'm still not really satisfied with my travelling gear, but I don't think a whole lot of changes are needed to make it work well for me. But let's go through it piece-by-piece.

Plink: My little Vagabond travel guitar worked just fine, of course. It fits easily in the overhead compartments on most planes. The only problem would come about if the plane is very crowded -- it really has to go in back. It does not really fit in Delta's box, though it used to when they had an extension for garment bags. I lied and told them "it fit the last time I checked." I brought a little amp intended for MP3 players, but never had occasion to try it. (update 1/14 it doesn't work. Not really surprising) One of the tiny guitar amps would probably be smaller and would actually work better.

On the way back I found that Plink's side compartment holds a thick paperback, and that it's convenient to wrap my coat around it and hold it on by tying the arms. Provides a little extra padding.

Rolly: My Travelpro rolling briefcase just barely fits under an airplane seat. And it has to, because Plink doesn't. In most cases it has to go sideways, too, which makes it harder to get at. On the way out it actually didn't fit until I pulled out the phones, my shoulder bag, and the Science magazines. Things fit much better on the other two legs of the trip, but it was still a bit marginal. I think that if I get a bigger suitcase and take all of the miscellaneous cables and other electronic gear out when travelling, it will work OK.

Plink and Rolly go well together -- wrapping Plink's strap around Rolly's handle results in a convenient stack, though it makes it a little difficult to get at the computer.

Headphones: My Vic Firth headphones performed admirably in the air, blocking most of the engine noise. Delightful. The only real problems are that they're uncomfortable to wear for more than 45 minutes or so at a time, and that they're very bulky. I usually dealt with the latter by pulling them out of the rolly and putting them in the literature pocket in front of me. Not entirely satisfactory.

Recording gear: I brought the Edirol UA25 and a couple of microphones, but never used them. Still too much trouble to haul them out, set them up, find a place to perch the laptop, and fiddle with settings. For circles and audience-recorded concerts, I'm just going to have to bite the bullet and get a recorder. Or build one. The little Zoom H4 flash recorder is starting to look tempting again. It was probably a mistake to pack the UA25 in the Rolly for travel.

Suitcase: I probably need a bigger suitcase. Everything fit, but it was pretty tight, especially going out. A little more space would let me pack things like the UA25 and a lot of the other junk that I had in the Rolly but didn't need on the plane.

Current Mood: thoughtful

08:33 am - Travels with Plink and Rolly [part 3]

Wednesday at Mom's was fairly quiet -- breakfast with the Hochstuls[sp?], a Mac demo, a firedrill, an outing to A Southern Season, buffet dinner with the Rodins (family friends and neighbors from back in Connecticut), a Mac demo, and ending with sitting in the living room jeering at Bush's speech. I love my Mom!

Thursday was mostly spent getting ready to go; easy because I was already packed from the night before. I had a three-hour layover in Atlanta; since I hadn't had much exercise and since the airport is nearly a mile long (6 terminals with 1000' between them, and an underground corridor that runs the full length) I got in almost 4 miles worth of walking before I settled down to some Chinese fast food and a bit of work on the laptop.

My reading on the plane was Stars, edited by Janis Ian and Mike Resnick. Excellent; I'm about 2/3 of the way through it.

Finally got home to my family, and hugs. I like traveling, but... Had a late but fantastic home-cooked dinner of chicken and dumplings, a nice hot bath, evicted the stuffies from my side of the bed, and a good long snuggle with my flower_cat.

Got up at 5am, of course, due to the time change. Used it all catching up with LJ and Groklaw. I definitely need to cut back on blog reading -- I need to get some stuff done this year. I'll prune when I get home this evening.

07:43 pm - Travels with Plink and Rolly

This morning was spent packing, eating breakfast in the hotel's buffet, checking out, and saying goodbye to friends. Grump. The shuttle bus was crammed most trips, apparently because of people who had missed connections yesterday due to the tornado warnings.

Ran into cflute and technoshaman in the airport, grabbing a bite to eat before picking up a rental car. Switched tables and hung out with billroper and others. Went to security and got redirected to the group W bench "special screening" line. Oops. But as it turned out, there were only about 5 people in front of me, and apart from a pat-down search and checking my shoes and laptop for explosives, the "special screening" was less thorough than what I got in the regular line. They didn't even look in my rolly.

Rolly fit under the seat in front of me with no problems this time, though I didn't try to stuff my bag into it, just put it under my seat behind my feet. Again, the Vic Firth headphones rocked. Best $50 I ever spent.

Mom's new place is gorgeous and she seems happy and busy -- she's running the library. Why am I not surprised?

01:51 pm - Booked

Booked my hotel room and flight for GAFilk this morning. Total of about an hour on the phone, but I was able to book the flights (complicated by the side trip to NC to visit my Mom) by talking to a real person at Wells Fargo's point-redemption center. Their website is incapable of booking a triangle flight, but their people know how to do it. It costs extra points because the middle leg has to be booked separately. Weird, but then it's not supposed to make sense to me, it's supposed to make more money for them.

Current Mood: accomplished

08:11 pm - Lemmings on the metro

How many metros have you been on? (from trektone and telynor)

09:13 am - Travel notes

Full-sized coffee filters work just fine in the little hotel coffeemakers. You can often find them under the TV.

Marriott hotels have an odd arrangement where they slide a table -- the right height for typing -- underneath the desk. If I remember to bring a keyboard and mouse, the desk would put a laptop screen at eye level where it belongs, and I wouldn't have to pull the table out as far.

Make an account for the chaoswolf if she forgets to bring her lappie. (Silly wolfling). Show her how to snag her SSH keys and how to navigate our peculiar home network. Why are my kids not geeks?

05:25 pm - Travelers take warning

At U.S. Borders, Laptops Have No Right to Privacy - New York Times

A LOT of business travelers are walking around with laptops that contain private corporate information that their employers really do not want outsiders to see.

Until recently, their biggest concern was that someone might steal the laptop. But now there’s a new worry — that the laptop will be seized or its contents scrutinized at United States customs and immigration checkpoints upon entering the United States from abroad.

Although much of the evidence for the confiscations remains anecdotal, it’s a hot topic this week among more than 1,000 corporate travel managers and travel industry officials meeting in Barcelona at a conference of the Association of Corporate Travel Executives.

[...]

“We need to be able to better inform our business travelers what the processes are if their laptops and data are seized — what happens to it, how do you get it back,” Ms. Gurley said.

She added: “The issue is what happens to the proprietary business information that might be on a laptop. Is information copied? Is it returned? We understand that the U.S. government needs to protect its borders. But we want to have transparent information so business travelers know what to do. Should they leave business proprietary information at home?”

Besides the possibility for misuse of proprietary information, travel executives are also concerned that a seized computer, and the information it holds, is unavailable to its owner for a time. One remedy some companies are considering is telling travelers coming back into the country with sensitive information to encrypt it and e-mail it to themselves, which at least protects access to the data, if not its privacy.

finagler

11:49 am - Drooling on my keyboard again

Neiman Marcus Online -- Six-Person Space Trip Charter -- $1,764,000.00

You've wished upon a star, tried to find the man in the moon, and secretly still want to be an astronaut (remember when you were 8 years old?). Now, for the first time, the heavens are truly within reach, when you charter Virgin Galactic for the journey into space. It may sound like science fiction, but it's very real indeed.

Current Mood: enthralled

04:38 pm - Leaving Portland

Here I am at the Portland airport, taking advantage of their free wireless. Why can't San Jose do something like that?

Had a wonderful visit with cflute and technoshaman; lots of singing. Today Callie and I worked on catsittingstill's song "Wings" (which I love, and have always imagined being sung by a male anyway). Callie had the correct chords worked out, and I think I've finally nailed the melody modulo one note that keeps trying to go different ways. I'll have to check on it.

Also did "Ship of Stone", "Desolation Row/Desolation - Oh No!", "Rambling Silver Rose", and "Bouncing Potatoes". (And I'm probably forgetting one.) "John Silicon". (10pm) "I Am the Walrus".

Looks like the plane may be running twenty ten minutes or so late.

Current Mood: calm

06:42 am - Good morning!

I'm sitting at cflute's dining table leeching off an obliging neighbor's open wireless and Comcast link. Fast as a bat. (We know it's Comcast because it was pointing to their setup page most of yesterday afternoon.) Just made a pot of coffee. Somehow I managed to misread my watch (it was dark) and must have gotten up at about 6:20 thinking it was 7:30. That's OK; I'll be back in my own bed tonight, with my own flower_cat.

Had a good chat yesterday afternoon with technoshaman (he picked me up at the hotel around 3pm), followed by a delightful dinner of grilled salmon, asparagus, and fruit salad, followed by much music. Let's see if I can remember...

"Cicero in the 21st Century"
"TEOTWAWKI v2.0"
"Bigger on the Inside"
"House Carpenter/Demon Lover" -- that really does make a good pairing.
"Shores of the Night" (my very first filksong)
"Silk and Steel"
(I think there may have been one other, but I'm blanking on it right now. Need more coffee.)(8:20: got it!)
"Someplace In the Net"

I'm looking forward to the Lamplighters production of Ruddygore tomorrow.

Current Mood: awake

07:27 pm

Had dinner at a local restaurant called "Red Robin" - obviously a chain. The clam strips looked good, but more breading than clam. I'll try someplace else tomorrow.

The hotel advertises free wireless, but I wasn't able to connect either in my room or in the lobby. Apparently on different access points; I'll try again later.

Stupid goddamned Mac crashed on me! I thought OSX wasn't supposed to do that! Fortunately, LJ saves drafts! I'm not complaining.

Anybody know how to set up groups on this stupid thing? On a real unix I'd just add a line to /etc/group, but it has a comment saying that it's not used. Something called lookupd is, but there's no /etc/lookupd/ (mentioned in the man page for lookupd). Foo.

04:57 pm - OSCon

Well, here I am at OSCon, enjoying the fast wireless connectivity and the proximity of a wall outlet, in the company of all the other geeks.

The flight was uneventful. I'm travelling light: rolling suitcase and briefcase ("the rolly"), shoulderbag (goes into the rolly's outside pocket), and Plink, my Vagabond travel guitar. Plink is a trifle awkward as a shoulderbag, but when I don't have the suitcase she fits nicely on board the rolly. I'm seriously considering having a custom gig bag made.

update -- looks as though evening programming runs until 9:30.

Current Mood: content

08:12 am - Flight and contact info for this week

I'll probably be getting to the hotel (the Red Lion Convention Center) 4-ish, which will give me just enough time to unpack and have dinner before the convention kickoff session at 7:00.

I'm almost done packing; I still need to make a final decision about which travel guitar to bring; at the moment I'm leaning toward "Plink", the little Vagabond. It's smaller. (cflute has one, but I want something for the hotel room so I can get in practice for Worldcon, which is in less than a month.

07:18 am - OSCamp

OC: OSCamp

Welcome to the planning wiki for OSCAMP 2006: "Free as in Freedom!" OSCAMP is a grassroots cooperative effort with O'Reilly. OSCAMP seeks to organize the fringe of activity that has grown up around OSCON during the last several years so that the whole event can rock even more! If you can see a way to add value to the event … just go for it and do it.