Saint Nickanuck of the Tundra

• We had a brilliant time celebrating birthdays this past weekend with the Children of the 25th, the Child of the 19th, and associated family and friends - as recounted here and here.
• Laura is currently spending a week in Barcelona for the International Space University Summer Session Program, only this time, as a lecturer. How cool is that?
• Upon returning from the birthday festivities, we arrived home to discover our cable out. This has been a more frequent occurrence of late, and is invariably due to an “area” outage, instead of something particular to our house or account. As we both rely on the cablewebs at home to get our respective work done, and when the connection goes down, its more than just a mere inconvenience. As I am want to do, I expressed my feelings on this latest Comcast debacle via a rant on Twitter. What was interesting was that I was then contacted by someone on Twitter who is, apparently, a Comcast service representative, who offered assistance. This recent Slashdot thread points out other reports that Comcast is proactively trying to reach out to disgruntled customers through blogs and Twitter, perhaps as a way to improve it’s dismal service reputation. I chose not to follow up with said rep, as I was working with the local support people, but service wasn’t restored to our area until two days later. Sorry, Comcast - helpful customer service overtures do not make up for multiple frequent area outages and a reduced channel selection that supposedly, as per your notification letter, somehow “enhances my viewing experience.” Verizon recently installed FiOS hook-ups on our street, and I think we’ll be giving that a spin in the near future.
• There is a seekrit project I am working on for the weekend. I’d tell you, but… it wouldn’t be so seekrit, now, would it?
• Despite their advancing age, there are con recaps aplenty that will be gracing this space soon, and more content in the near future.
• Dragon*Con is looming on the horizon. There will be much more to say on this.

So, what exactly did Laura do in China this past summer? Earlier this week, she gave an excellent talk at the Space Telescope Science Institute on just that. She covered the history of the International Space University (which sponsored the program), her cultural experiences in Beijing, and her fascinating and awesome project, the Phoenix Lunar Archive. Don’t just take my word for it: Matt thought it was awesome, and he’s bigger than me. And a former professional wrestler. So listen to him.

Check out her site for more details, including a link to the archived webcast, and enjoy!

I took the infectious diseases board certification exam this past Tuesday, and am quite happy it’s done with. Unfortunately, I came down with an upper respiratory infection the day before - some would say that I was being a bit too “hands-on” in my studying - as well as a small migrane during the test itself, so hopefully my performance wasn’t too negatively impacted. I thought that overall, the questions were challenging, but not impossible. That said, I am fond of how one of my colleagues summed up his opinion of it:

“Are you kidding? Where the fuck did that exam come from?”

This weekend will be one of recuperation, but there’s quite a bit looming in the near future. Interviewing season for new residents is now in full swing, in which I’m playing a considerable role. My evidence-based medicine course is starting up again next week, which I still have quite a bit to prepare for. I also have some audio work to do, but there will be more on that as things progress.

Finally, Ronnie has moved his main blog to a new address, and been putting up some interesting posts. Check out the Pint ‘N Tome, and give him some comment love!

The PNME has been going on this weekend. A segment of the Tribe has been attending, and Laura had the chance to socialize there as well during her work trip - it sounds like everyone has had an excellent time. While clearly not a fan convention, the fact that many of my friends and acquaintances are there has made me a bit wistful for previous gatherings, like Dragon*Con, and reminded me that I haven’t blogged about them yet… That sounds like a good thing to remedy today.

The usual mantra of “things are well, but busy” still applies. The next big thing looming in my sights is the Infectious Diseases board exam, coming up on October 30. As always, there is much more, but that will come shortly.

A couple links of note:

• Ron is less than impressed with his recent foray into Fable.
• Ben nails the recent Archives acupuncture trial perfectly.

I had a more entertaining time at the Maryland Renaissance Festival than I expected, but more on that in a bit.

We are currently on the road to Dragon*Con, in Durham, NC for the night, with Tee, Thomas and Andrea, and Parsec awards trophies assimilated on the way. It is good to finally relax for a bit, especially after a day of mad packing, and tucking in work-related things for my absence, including the evidence-based medicine course.

As always, there is much more to say, but given the past few weeks, I just can’t bring myself to pass up the opportunity to get a solid night of sleep… especially as there will be little in the next few days. There is much fun, and much reconnecting with tribemates, to be had!

Tomorrow: hooking up with Mur, Jason, and crew from Lulu, and proceeding onward to Atlanta. More to follow…

Laura is back on US soil! Granted, in San Francisco, but it makes me happy nonetheless. She’ll be visiting with some of her NASA peeps at Ames over the next few days, before heading back here, and us proceeding on to Dragon*Con.

I’m sure she’ll have some experiences and images to share, now that she’s back from behind the Great Firewall and done with intensive coursework, so keep an eye on her feeds over the coming days and weeks.

We leave for Dragon*Con in a few short days, and I am quite stoked. It will be wonderful to reconnect with tribemates, both old and new, as well as to decompress a bit from the New Job, and properly (and belatedly) celebrate that employment transition.

Speaking of the New Job, it continues to be excellent. That said, between making daily on-the-fly changes to the evidence-based medicine course, as well as covering for other people to ensure adequate coverage for Dragon*Con, I haven’t made time to pass on some fun and interesting stuff in this forum.

This will be remedied shortly…

Hmmm… I continue to be impressed with how quickly time’s been zipping by. Things are getting busier at work, in large part because I’ve started supervising a rotation in evidence-based medicine - I consider this, from a pure philosophy standpoint, to be the most important contribution I can make in my job, so I’m a bit preoccupied with hammering it out into a useful thing. The other piece of distraction has been getting things straightened out as much as possible before Laura returns to the area in a couple of weeks, and we depart for the glorious madhouse that is Dragon*Con.

The North Carolina trip was wonderful, as I’ll brief you on shortly. For now, let’s say that Trinoc*coN 8 was a bit lame, while the belatedly-dubbed Murcon 2 was not.

This past weekend, I had the good fortune of blowing off a bit of steam with a couple of tribemates. Friday evening, I visited Tee and family for a relaxing evening, highlights of which included recording some audio for a couple of podcast projects, and finally trying the Remarkable and Partakable (so the bottle says) Breckenridge Vanilla Porter. This I found to be a bit less of the former and a bit more of the latter, but an excellent brew overall. We also watched the pilot episode of the SciFi Channel’s re-imagining of Flash Gordon, which offended us so much that we recorded an impromptu special edition of the Survival Guide to Writing Fantasy about it. Be warned that the episode is, essentially, a long and geeky rant/conversation that is only tangentially related to writing, but it was quite fun to do.

Saturday evening was spent most excellently with the Command Lineage. We did a bit of gaming, and partook of a variety of tasty beverages, the highlight of which was Jim Van Verth’s homebrewed Belgian-style weiss beer (gifted to me the previous weekend). For reasons unclear, I was viewed for much of the evening by both collies and the feline as some grafted hybrid of Dr. Dolittle and St. Francis of Assisi, as every time I sat down I found several dozens of pounds of animal drooling contentedly in my lap.

I decided to try the full-color edition of Kill Doctor Lucky as the monkey-inclusive family game of the evening, which went over fairly well. Laura and I have played it several times, and it works well with a mid-sized group in a family setting - the theme is similar to Clue, only the goal is to actually commit the murder, not solve it. The younger monkey was a bit far out of the age range, and so got to “help Dr. Cmar play” (although he clearly thought the experience was totally airwolf anyway), while the elder monkey tried his own hand at the game. Due in large part to fatigue from a long day outside, the monkeys were having a hard time focusing, so we “allowed” Command Line to win so that they could get to bed.

We finished off the night with an excellent game I’d not played before - Sunken City. Although it has several different mechanics involved in-game, it is elegantly simple to play, with a reasonable amount of strategic depth, and ended up being very enjoyable. I definitely plan on seeking this one out in the future, especially as it (somewhat unusually for a Eurogame) supports two players, although I suspect that three (as we played it) or four gives a more interesting experience.

Overall, a great recharge to the batteries, although I must admit they’re already mostly drained again… feh! That said, all is truly well. Laura continues to be well-occupied and thriving in China. Next post, the weekend of two cons recap…

…however briefly.

Darn you, Kilroy 2.0. Wrecking my login for almost a month just to hack my site and promote one of the greatest podcast novels I’ve have a chance to experience, J. C. Hutchins’ 7th Son Trilogy. All you had to do was ask, and clearly I’d have been more than happy to pimp it for you, but no… that’s not how you work!

[sigh.] I comply.

I have vast stuff to catch you all up on - in addition to what I’ve previously been promising, I’ve had the great pleasure of participating in several podcasts, from being interviewed with Laura about our space and medical work, to doing a voice in an audio dramatization of a short story. Not to mention the illustrated tale of how I gibbed myself on the 4th of July. Unfortunately, that gets to wait a bit more, as I’m off for the weekend to hook up with a bunch of tribemates in North Carolina, to celebrate Mur Lafferty’s birthday, and Jim Van Verth’s transition from Red Storm to NVIDIA.

Quick updates: the new job is great, but very busy, as you can tell. Laura is doing well in China, but is working insanely hard, and so is bummed about having little time to blog.

Enjoy the weekend! There’s a lot to come next week…

Many aspects of life have been interesting, busy, and and confounding to me of late. I’ve had quite a bit of newness I’ve wanted to update y’all on and rant about, let alone all the previously promised opining, but I’m still honing an “efficient blog reflex” that hasn’t really kicked in as of yet. That’s one thing to work on.

Laura’s in China, and doing quite well, by the sound of things. She’s working on getting interwebs access in her dorm room, and sorting out what web sites and programs are blocked, which ones are not. One way or another, her blog will start getting updates shortly.

Last day at the “old job” tomorrow. More to come on that, and plenty of other things, in a bit.

Did I ever have a wonderful part 2 of my Balticon post-mortem for you! Then, through a series of events that could only happen to yours truly, I somehow deleted it prior to posting.

“CMAAARRR!!!”

It will see the light of day… just not until after this weekend. It is coming, and will contain many entertaining and confounding anecdotes, such as how the above cry has become immortalized as my new moniker.

As to this weekend, I am about to head out to meet up with Laura (on the way back from Ireland) and catch a plane out to Phoenix for the Wingin’ It pool party, which should be quite fun and interesting, given recent developments.

Tee is unable to make it. I have been deputized by him to say something in his absence. This could be dangerous.