…and that’s another one in the books.  This year’s Ravencon ended up being a good experience, largely due to the presence of some very good friends I don’t see often enough and a reasonably relaxed vibe when I wasn’t rushing to sit panels, play shows, running equally-busy offspring to off-site commitments, or working around inconveniently […]

As the title of this post suggests, we’re smack in the middle of that stretch of springtime with a total dearth of federal holidays; this year with 96 days between Washington’s Birthday (observed) and Memorial Day. In public service, one can usually count on a long weekend or some such break every six weeks or […]

There’s everything and nothing going on all at the same time, and I can’t find motivation or focus for more than two or three hours at a time. Sure, I’ve kind of hit the “acceptance” stage of the whole current American experience and it’s constant threats to my livelihood, but the constant load is a […]

My personal week looked an awful lot like the curve of the stock markets this week. A couple of middling peaks, but mostly trending down and occasionally cratering. Most of the highs involved interactions with media, which…okay. Since my lovely spouse picked up an iPad a couple of weeks ago (she’s swinging her train into […]

So, Ret-Con last week was cool. I was made to feel very welcome by all, and had fun doing neat panels, even if I didn’t get much of an audience for my show. Oh well, it happens. This past week in the real world, as you might imagine, seriously sucked, apart from my regular after-work […]

So….yeah. Another week; thousands of probationary employees all over the government fired, so many of us glued to r/fednews for the latest rumors, all-hands Teams meetings where HR guys in rumpled suits allude to “huge RIF” using all kinds of words except for those two. The new SECDEF (who’s a moron) doing a video townhall […]

Been another week getting lost in the work (the last few days? A hugely successful development sprint for much-needed budget and planning data reporting tools) and trying to not think too hard about the larger world, at least when it’s not intruding into my work inbox. I’ve been mostly successful, I think; the fact that […]

Another particularly stressful week in the public sector, as one would certainly expect if you’re paying attention to the news at all (though the DeRP/”Fork” offer is being addressed only tangentially on a lot of mainstream media sources, especially the more right-of-center ones). Still, when uncleared, unelected Techbros and their minions start taking down whole […]

Like so many people this morning, after going to bed (way early, as I’m feeling rather awful, but not too awful, since my immune system basically works, unlike other parts of me, at fighting off elementary-school sourced respiratory virii) watching the new guy cave to Colombia’s hitting back at his bullying then claim victory, we […]

So, last weekend’s Marscon was a reasonably successful endeavor, with us playing a couple of good shows (even if the time slots could’ve been better), the band clicking with a great energy you really want for every show, but know really only hits occasionally. We also had a couple of nice official and unofficial circles, […]