scott_sanford

I've gotten fan art! I'm unreasonably tickled by this.

Aristide Twain, who's done a lot of Jenny Everywhere work himself, was inspired to depict some of the recurring supporting characters from my stories.

Here's Kim, looking quite sharp in black today. Click to embiggen these pictures; the thumbnails don't do them justice. ( Read more... )

Various tidbits too small to stand on their own. The completely arbitrary cutoff is 500 words; longer than that and stories get their own files.( Read more... )

As some may know, there was a ham radio event in Rickreall on Saturday the 15th.

Getting down there was interesting, as my whim to drive down via McMinnville did not take me by the fastest possible route, but I saw parts of rural Oregon I’d never seen before and drove past the Evergreen Air Museum.

This is basically a large garage sale or flea market, only pretty much everything in the building is obsolete specialty electronics. Want vacuum tubes? They got those. Want back issues of QST? They got those. Want a gigantic radio that the seller assures you worked when his grandfather bought it off some other ham? You have come to the right place.

Among other things I was after a power supply of specific parameters, and I found many that were too small and a few too powerful. (Frustratingly, I was hardly in the door when I spotted a box with the right amp and volt ratings - but it was a battery charger.) There was a lot of other junk. I did find something that I’m pretty sure will work, literally as the dealers were packing up their table to go; they were willing to knock off five dollars to avoid hauling another heavy thing home with them, so lucky me. This was near the end of the event, so by the time I realized that I had everything I needed to get on the air except an antenna it was too late to cruise around for a two meter antenna that would let me test the radio I could now power.

Along with the junk dealers were some Girl Scouts with cookies; this was a good cause and I bought some Thin Mints. I also dropped five dollars into the prize drawing, for the heck of it.

That gave me reason to hang around until the drawing, so I was nearby when they had trouble with the ticket rolling barrel. One got on the PA to announce, “Does anyone here have a Leatherman tool or a pair of pliers?” He started to explain the problem but by then I was at the table with my Swisschamp out, unfolding the pliers. It turned out they just needed to pull out a wooden dowel that locked the barrel rotation.

For the drawing itself tickets were pulled out by the most obviously trustworthy people in the building, a pair of Girl Scouts.

And then something happened that I’d made no plans to handle: I actually won something! I now have a Yaesu VX-6R triple band handy-talkie. Honestly, I have no idea yet what I’ll do with it; my collection of radios is expanding past any plausible need for radios. (I am aware this happens a lot.) I am looking forward to trying it out; my cheap Baofeng often loses reception even in town and I suspect that it’s not all the fault of the tiny rubber duckie antenna.

So I had nothing much to do this Friday and, in retrospect, spent it in the most stereotypically Portland manner I could without a visit to Voodoo Doughnuts. Around noon I listened to Science Friday on NPR. (There are radio stations other than NPR or KBOO, right?) Then, after one of my housemates ranted about environmental issues, I escaped the house and went to the Bagdad Theater to catch the latest X-Men movie in matinee. Afterward I grabbed a snack at the aggressively decorative and alternative Roxy downtown, to tide me over through a presentation at Powell's about queer and counterculture themes in superhero comics - this being Portland, the room was full of nerds who actually wanted to chat about that for two hours.

My whole day has been a sequence of landmarks and Portlandia skits.

...that using the phrase "lying libtards at Snopes" with a straight face tells your readers all they need to know about your own accuracy.

I was out walking the other day on an ordinary suburban street and I heard a soft quiet thump from just behind me. Puzzled, I looked back - nothing had been there a moment ago. Once I thought to look down all was explained; there was a small bird in the grass, on its back with its legs sticking up in an overly dramatic way. As I watch it twitched several times, getting less energetic over time. The situation was pretty obvious.

This shouldn't be too surprising, given the number of birds and their short average lifespan - but we rarely see it happen right in front of us.

After a convention committee meeting Sunday I stopped at the Bagdad on the way home and saw the movie Brave. It's a good parable about why the song is Scotland the Brave. Not Scotland the Wise, Scotland the Smart, Scotland the Reasonable, or Scotland the 'I Planned Ahead.' Brave.

So I noticed that today is the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Puebla, which I hope has been pointed out by many people in the media - I only knew because I read up on it, but it's the sort of thing which could pad out a news broadcast or newspaper article. And most of us are aware that Cinco de Mayo is a bigger deal in the US than in most parts of Mexico.

But the US has a neighbor to the north, too; why don't we have a Canadian holiday? This may bear pondering.

While googling I stumbled upon thessalian; I knew this name due to reading Daria fanfic...and she'd just posted some commentary about Charles Stross's blog, where I often contribute. Cool.

My original quest was to see if anyone had written anything clever linking the cartoon Daria to the Sandman character Thessaly; for no reason I can see this has yet to happen...

MJ, we have lived a few houses apart for several years now. I've petted you frequently, and you've rubbed up against me enough that a second cat could be knitted from the fur you've shed onto my pants. It's always nice to see you and I'm happy to stop to pet you, particularly when - as today - you sit on the porch meowing for attention.

But once the petting has started and you're purring, it is not necessary to suddenly leap up into the air as if you have never seen a human before, nor to run in blind panic into the bushes. This only confuses the humans around you.