Today is a day for family…

It’s thanksgiving here in the states, a good day to not write blog posts but to spend your time with family and the ones you care about.

So instead of writing something pithy or geeky, I’m going to spend the day with Laurie, and the rest of our family — Manon, the calico of little brain, and Tatiana, our little princess.

See you all later.

 

Visiting Moss Landing

I had a chance friday break free from work — no meetings and some work I knew I was going to do over the weekend but didn’t have to be done during work hours — so I hauled out the gear and wandered down to Moss Landing Harbor. This area is the entrance to Elkhorn Slough, and Monterey County birders will recognize it as Jetty Road, which is a big shorebird area on the road that heads out the jetty protecting the harbor. As it turns out, the tide was very high and at its peak, so there was little shorebird habitat and fewer shorebirds, but this is the home of a large group of sea otters, has regular haul outs of harbor seals, and has become the home of a permanent bachelor pod of california harbor seals. I’ve been fascinated by this group recently, so I’ve gone down there a couple of times to explore photographing it and trying to figure out how to describe it.

I also wanted a chance to try to replace the relatively poor images I took last trip down with the 100-400, now back at Canon to be looked at some point. Instead, I hauled out the 300F4+1.4x combo and went to see what I could find.

How to describe a Bachelor group of California Sea Lions? Well, they’ve “adopted” a piece in the harbor, what was formerly the visitor dock. Now, it’s entirely covered by a layer of sea lions — easily 100+ animals, piled in on top of each other and packed as densely as they can get.

The group consists of bachelor males; typically younger animals. The primary goal when on the dock is to catch some sleep. Anything that interrupts that sleep typically generates conflict. A sea lion haul out is 90% watching them do nothing, and 10% watching a few try to find a place to grab a nap while all of the lions around them either get out of the way or argue with them showing up, depending on the pecking order. So there’s always noise, sometimes a lot of it, as the sea lions yell at each other. Occasionally they fight. Mostly the posture. Sometimes the fights can get vicious. If you look at the lions you’ll see a number of them wearing scars, and it’s not uncommon to see some blood. Notice, for instance, the blood on the mouth of this guy:

Photographing this group for me means zeroing in on the conflicts. This is a tricky place to photograph, because if the sun is out the light is from a bad direction and you can get nasty shadows and massive dynamic range to deal with. Still, with some planning and thought, I think it generate some really dramatic images.

And sometimes, you see something different. Like this boat bumper that’s been converted into a pillow:

Overall, the group today was pretty mellow and quiet. Even better, the wind was such that I was upwind of them — that much animal density can get rather pungent — but still, there were some animals jousting for location, and they’re just fun to watch.

The harbor seals were there, hauled out, but in locations that weren’t conducive for photography. Oh well.

But lots was happening. This time of year, the harbor hosts some good sized flocks of terns; today I found both caspian and elegant terns hanging out on one of the breakwaters. As the tide turned and started flowing out, it brought schools of small fish, and the terns went fishing:

Terns fish by what can only be defined as a kamikaze dive. They see a fish under the surface, tuck their wings in and drop like a rock, and then hit the water. They end up fully submerged, grab the fish before it can leave, and then take off again with it.

A Brandt’s cormorant was also fishing near me, and did so quite successfully:

And then there were the otters. Most of them were asleep in a raft; I counted 34 individuals in the main raft, and up to 40 individuals in the harbor. I didn’t notice any carrying kids. One of the otters, bless him, was having a shellfish buffet near the sea lion docks, making getting some nice shots of him almost embarrassingly easy:

I swear to god, these animals mug for the camera. Look at that face. When otters hunt shellfish and need help opening them, they will bring a rock up from the bottom and place it on their belly, and then beat the crap out of the clam to crack it open. They do this — enthusiastically:

The otter did this at least three times near me, bringing up scallops or mussels, breaking them open and then munching away. After that, he wandered off, evidently full.

Overall, for only spending about 2 hours there, I was able to grab a nice number of images on a wide variety of subjects. You can see the entire set of them in this slideshow.

The challenge and opportunity of Zynga

Zynga’s Empires & Allies rockets to nearly 10M users in nine days | VentureBeat:

Zynga‘s Empires & Allies game has rocketed to nearly 10 million users in nine days. That’s a remarkable start for any Facebook game, but for Zynga that is becoming a predictable result.

 

Zynga has more than 249 million monthly active users on Facebook, according to AppData. Empires & Allies, a combat social strategy game which is akin to “CityVille meets Risk,” has more than 9.5 million monthly active users as of Friday. And it gained more than 5 million users on Friday alone. That makes the game one of the fastest growing in Facebook history.

But will they sustain that number? That’s their challenge. And the numbers seem to indicate no. Zynga’s model seems to be to always have a new shiny for users to flock to, and it seems to work. One wonders what will happen if they have a new game flop. So far, it hasn’t happened. Might now. Mafia Wars, which until Sunday was one of my guilty pleasures, has seen a significant drop in users and is now under 2 million active per day even though over 15 million users have “liked” it on Facebook at one time or another.

As I just noted, I used the word “was”. On Sunday, I completed Ruby level Brazil, which means in essence, I’ve lapped the game designers. I decided that was enough, spent some time distributing my high value items to my loyal mafia clan, set my character name to “gone fishing”, and walked away.

Zynga’s been very successful to date. They deserve it. Hey, I played the game for a long time, and I put some amount into buying upgrades (because I believe it’s worth a few bucks into the tip jar if I get some reasonable enjoyment out of it — this is where money I used to spend on Xbox games has gone for a while…). But they’ve also got some issues they need to figure out.

Over the last year and a half (more or less) Mafia Wars has been my “minesweeper” a pleasant way to take a break and waste a few minutes while waiting for something else to happen or to ponder over something while hacking away and enemies, and during this time, I’ve grown a character to level 1176. It’s now powerful enough that I can complete a game area faster than they can add them to keep me busy.

That is, as they say, a problem, and one Zynga has been struggling with for a number of months; there are many users far senior to me, and Zynga has to build a game that’s balanced enough that it doesn’t obliterate or frustrate new users while having enough to do to keep the more senior members busy and interested. One way Zynga has been attempting to do so is through a proliferation of mini quests and side games. That has in many ways backfired, since the numbers indicate members have found this proliferation not interesting and many of the more senior members in my mafia have gone dark over the last few months. I sympathize; many of these new games are nothing more than

That’s not why I gave up the game. Mostly, it’d just run the course and it’s time to go do something else, and that shows one of the challenges Zynga has to figure out. As someone who’s now a recent retiree from the game who’s actually rather positive about the experience, I thought it might be interesting to write up my thoughts on this.

I went into Mafia Wars because I was curious about the game play design, and even more interested in the design and use of virtual goods and the virtual economy. it’s a huge aspect of the online universe (gameplay and not; it’s relevant to photos and writing as an aspect of in-app purchasing, for instance; it’s also a way to, I’m thinking, help fund endeavours without strong physical good aspects like web comics). The challenge of gameplay and game balance are nothing new; go back to the elder days of Rogue or Zork to see that the model Zynga uses in Mafia Wars is a classic one of matching the player’s power inflation to the game’s monsters and challenges.

Rogue and Zork had virtual money and virtual goods, too; you just didn’t put real money into the hopper to buy fake money to buy your virtual goods. What Mafia Wars has that Zork and Rogue don’t have are the words “multiplayer” and “social”.

The word “social” is one of the things Zynga pushed too hard for my taste. Everything at times seems like it’s aimed to get my to send a thing to someone to encourage them to send me a thing (it’s even worse in Farmville, which I don’t play, but my wife has). A point of frustration is that the game and/or Facebook have limits on how often you can throw messages around — and a common occurance if you have a thriving mafia is for you to attempt to send someone a thingie, only to have Facebook tell you you’re out of messages and come back tomorrow. Or for Zynga to tell you that the recipient has already gotten too many thingies, so send them another thingie instead. or that you got too many thingies from your mafia, so they’re converting it to a thingie of no real value.

So if you’re working in a fairly large and cooperative mafia, the message of “here! do this! Fool! we won’t let you do what you just got told to do! ha ha!” is common. Not a great gameplay, and Zynga frankly sucks at this; the system should recognize these limits and pull the requests or something, not have you click the buttons and be told you’ve failed. I found it one of the more frustrating aspects fo the game, and a number of mafia members I know feel the same, and ultimately, it caused me to really scale back on my attempts to join into the social aspects beyond being a good neighbor to my core mafioso. It seemed from watching how others were giving stuff to me that this is a fairly common occurrence.

I admit up front the way I prefer to game doesn’t lend itself to “social”. Nobody knows my Xbox Live account (by design); I’ve never joined World of Warcraft because too much of the gameplay forces you into guild and cooperative dungeoning to achieve many goals. That’s now how I game; I might not touch something for a few weeks, then play it a lot for a few days, then not touch it again for another few weeks; I’m more likely to put in a couple of hours late at night, when I decide I’m just not into geeking any longer — but it’s like pulling up a book, not something I’m going to schedule like I would going clubbing with friends. So to some degree, I’m not Zynga’s demograhic, just like I’m not Warcraft’s.

So I like Zynga’s casual aspect; not it’s social. it does well in “minesweeper” mode, at least until you get senior enough. Then it requires enough care and feeding to start feeling like a bit of a burden, which is why ultimately I decided it was a good time to retire. Having completed the primary challenges and finding the mini-games and side quests all pretty “meh” helped.

Ultimately two things made me decide to move on at this point. First is that Zynga’s design esthetic really started to annoy me; there’s a nasty lack of consistency to gameplay — simple things like when you fight in one city the fight screen rolls back to the top, and when you do the same thing in another city, the screen stays centered on the location where you initiated the fight. Isn’t there someone at Zynga defining what basic gameplay elements ought to be and making sure they all operate the same way within the same game? Evidently not. That may not be something that annoys you, but it started really annoying me, and to me, it shows a relative lack of “fit and finish” — and deep down inside, Mafia Wars was acting more and more to me like Zynga was throwing stuff at the wall and seeing which things the users didn’t hate, not really thinking through the game dynamics many times. Which is weird, because in other ways, watching how they refined and enhanced the game at times was really fascinating. I though the progression of gameplay through New York to Vegas to Italy to Brazil was great, and I really thought the design of Italy and Brazil was good in most ways (Italy was too easy, just as I thought Bangkok was too grinding but not really hard); Fight tournaments in Vegas was an interesting concept, but once you master the levels, they never did anything else with it. It’s a shiny stone that turns out to be cubic zirconia.

But the big thing that finally annoyed me out of the game was the QA. I got tired of tripping over bugs. Over basic rendering issues. Over inconsistencies. Server failwhales (although they seem to have those under control now, for a while, the system was badly unstable). But the QA? horrible. Buying items in Bangkok might seem a basic need; but when it breaks and stays broken for weeks? anyone paying attention? Or for a good giggle, try filtering your inventory on “giftable” and see how many data errors are in the set. Also look at how inconsistently it finds the same number of items in your inventory. oops.

Soultimately I realized it was trying to demand more of my time and I was enjoying it less, and the — the only word is sloppy, or maybe I’ll upgrade that to “hurried” — implementation just took the edge off it. So it was time to go do something else.

And if Zynga wants to better keep people like me, the more senior people in the game who’ve invested in the game in fairly significant ways, this would be me recommendation: fit and finish matter more than lots of crap tossed against the wall. Because what I finally came to see in mafia wars was something being treated as itinerant and disposable — and I finally did.

Not sure what I’ll do instead; Zynga’s new game looks okay, but not something I want to dig into. Honestly, I think I’m ready to spend most of that time with the Kindle, at least for now…. And maybe finally get around to starting up Dragon Age and go kill some orcs or something…

 

 

 

 

 

Guess where I am?

Yup. Still away from the blog. I’ll be back soon, honest.

 

 

On the Road Day 3 — Along the Coast

(don’t forget to read part 1 and part 2 — and check out all of the images from Piedras Blanacas)

Having gotten to Morro Bay, it was time to settle in and focus more on relaxing. I spent three nights in Morro Bay in all. I typically stay at one of two motels there, this trip it was the Best Western Tradewinds, which is clean, quiet, inexpensive and the folks who run it are nice and efficient. It’s also very close to the harbor and in a good location. The other place I like is the Best Western El Rancho, which is a bit to the North of town, also clean and quiet and generally a bit cheaper. But it doesn’t have Versus, and I don’t mind supporting a motel that lets me watch hockey in the evening…

I woke up after the first night to find out it’d rained overnight, which made a decision not to go back and explore Carrizo easy; even though it hadn’t rained much, Carrizo Plains isn’t a place I want to get stuck in the mud, and that’s very possible, especially for someone not very familiar with the area — my total time out in that area is about 6 hours three years ago, not exactly what I’d call making me an expert. The rain had cleared the fog out (always something you deal with around Morro Bay, and sometimes your friend, and sometimes making photography impossible) so I headed out and decided to go north up the coast to the Piedras Blancas area.

I ended up just south of the Piedras Blancas Lighthouse at the elephant seal rookery. Most the the seals there were younger calfs, most of the adults were gone, but it still was a pretty busy place, and it has good views of the lighthouse and I was lucky that there were some heavy surf going on leading to some interesting seascape possibilities. But mostly, it was about the seals.

 

In watching the seals, it’s clear the primary behaviors of the  seals on the beach when it’s not breeding season are sleeping, throwing sand on themselves to protect the skin from insects and the sun, and arguing. They argue a lot. the young males start play fighting early in life, and that’s important later, because if you aren’t good at fighting, you stay a bachelor.  These animals were all to young to show scarring from the breeding fights, but it was clear even then the pecking order was being sorted out and they were taking it fairly seriously.

nice night in morro bay….

not a bad evening, no?

 

out on the road…

So day 3 of the road trip is over. I’m tired, in a good way; sitting in a motel room in Morro Bay looking at the results so far — 1900 images and counting. Tomorrow is another day around Morro; the harbor is full of loons, but the otters are being coy and distant, and as usual, early and late you’re dodging fog. But I’m not complaining…

Just starting to sort through the images, but here are a few that caught my eye… 

More soon.

 

 

New Fiction — The Princess and the Dragon

Here’s another one of my early fiction shorts. This one was sold at one point to Pulphouse but never published. Once again I take a fairly straightforward fantasy idea and see if I can turn it on its ear. It’s similar in some ways to Fnord and Gord. And yes, I really did name the sword PligStüche. If you can’t figure that one out, sorry.

This work is not public domain. It is copyright 1994 by Charles Von Rospach. Please do not republish or post it anywhere else without my explicit approval.

The Princess and the Dragon

Once upon a time, many years ago in the kingdom of Nog there lived the Princess Mirabelle. Her father, the King, was quite proud of her, for Mirabelle was a beautiful, intelligent, and obedient girl. All was well in the kingdom until one day when the kingdom was attacked by an dragon. It burnt the fields, slew the sheep, and did all of the things dragons do. The King gathered his soldiers and rode to vanquish the dragon, but while he was gone the dragon flew to the castle, and as normally happens in Fairy Tales, stole the royal treasury and kidnapped Mirabelle, flying off with both to his lair hidden high in a cave in the Cragmont mountains.

The King, heartbroken over the loss of his daughter, not to mention his gold, called out for all his knights to rescue his daughter. He declared that the man who returned Mirabelle would be rewarded with the hand of  Mirabelle. One by one they pledged to return his daughter. One by one they climbed the Cragmont in search of the dragon. One by one they disappeared, never to be seen again. First went the tall knights in shining armor mounted on fearsome white steeds. Then went the shorter knights in slightly tarnished armor mounted on ponies. Then went those-who-would-be-knights, with their leather breeches and rusty swords. One by one, all those who were strong enough, brave enough, or stupid enough to try their wits against the dragon climbed the Cragmont, never to be seen again.

One morning, as king Nog sat on his throne, grieving for his daughter and trying to pay his bills , into the throne room came a knight. He wore armor that shined in a way that the King hadn’t seen since knight number thirteen, and he carried a sword whose edge gleamed in a way he hadn’t seen since knight number eight, and his horse, which didn’t belong in the throne room, was a white stallion the likes of which the King hadn’t seen since knight number five.

“Your Majesty,” said the knight. “I have traveled many days to answer your call for a champion to return the Princess Mirabelle to your side. Give me your leave and I shall dispatch that noisome worm and rescue your daughter!”

“Welcome, sir knight!” boomed the King. “Before I give me leave, you are aware that many before you have tried, and not a one has returned?”

“86 as of last Wednesday, but none were as strong nor as brave as I. Most importantly, none had this!” And the knight held his sword high over his head.

“Very nice sword. Sharp, too.”

“This, my Liege, is not just a sword, but the legendary PligStüche, forged by the god Nïvun and used by the hero Andrew the Giant to dispatch the dragon Högge on the island of Delft. No dragon can meet PligStüche in battle and survive!”

“With PligStüche at your side, brave knight, you can not possibly fail. Go with my blessings! And don’t forget to rescue the treasury.”

With that, the brave knight left the castle and began his trek for the Cragmont. It was an uneventful trip, except for the bears and the landslide that killed his stallion. Rather than bore the reader, we will join our knight many days later as he passes the final barrier and stands, finally, at the opening of the cave in which rests the dragon and the Princess Mirabelle.

“Dragon! Your doom has arrived! I am here to return the Princess Mirabelle to her father, the King! Exit that hole and prepare to die!”

From inside the cave came the noise of metal being dropped. A female voice whined, “Oh, bother! He made my soufflé collapse.”

“Princess Mirabelle! Your rescue is at hand!” said the brave knight. At the thought, the great knight shivered in anticipation. “Dragon! Your doom awaits! PligStüche demands your soul! Come out and take it like a reptile!”

From inside the cave came the sound of a large mass shifting. A few seconds later, the head of a huge dragon, steam wafting from one nostril, came into view. The eyes, the color of banked coals, evaluated this new threat as the dragon slowly exited the cave.

<<If you have any brains you’ll leave before it’s too late.>> There was no sound, but the knight heard the dragon as if it spoke within his head.

“Stupid worm! I carry PligStüche! I do not fear you! Meet your doom!”

<<PligStüche won’t protect you, knight. Leave while you can.>>

There was a rustle at the mouth of the cave, and from behind the dragon stepped a girl. She was tall and beautiful and carried herself with a grace that is only taught to girls whose fathers can afford Princess school.

<<Too late. Don’t say I didn’t I warn you.>>

“Princess Mirabelle, I have come to rescue you from this worm and restore you to your rightful place. Your father grieves for you. I shall deal with your captor, and then you shall be my bride.”

“I’m not going anywhere.” The Princess Mirabelle spoke, with a voice of the nightingale. “And you can’t make me.” Perhaps a slightly petulant nightingale.

“What magic is this? Princess, what has this dragon done to you?”

<<She’s all yours. I don’t want her. Take her, and good riddance.>>

The knight pulled PligStüche from its scabbard and held it high. “Dragon, enough lies! Mirabelle, stand aside while I dispatch this evil being!”

“I said I’m not going and that’s final. He wants Cindernose here dead so he can get his gold back. To my father, I’m a property to be sold like his sheep and farmland.  I like it here. I don’t have to wear those horrible clothes and chatter endlessly with people too stupid to dress themselves. Ovenbreath here makes sure I’m warm and safe. What more could I want?”

<<If you take her, I’ll give you the treasury. I’ll never eat another sheep in the Kingdom.>>

“Evil worm! Prepare to die!”

<<Have fun, you two. I’m going to go take a nap. I warned you, knight.>> At that, the dragon disappeared into the cave.

The knight stared at the empty cave-mouth and blinked. Slowly, he lowered PligStüche and returned it to its scabbard.

“Princess Mirabelle, you are rescued!” The knight stepped towards the Princess. “Let us return to your glub — “

The knight stopped, then reached up to grasp the handle of the dagger lodged in his throat. He turned and looked at Mirabelle, then collapsed in a heap and died.

Mirabelle stepped over and removed the dagger. Cleaning it on the knight’s shirt, she replaced it into the hidden place in her sleeve. “Hey, Embereyes! Dinner’s ready when you want it.”

The dragon shuffled out of the cave. <<I can feed myself.>>

“If I let you hunt, you’d have my father and a hundred knights up here rescuing me in an instant, dear. Now, we wouldn’t want that, would we?”

<<I do wish you hadn’t thrown that love potion on me while I was kidnapping you. It makes things so inconvenient.>>

“We’ve been over this before. It was the only thing within reach. How was I to know you’d fall in love with me? Besides, I think things have turned out quite nicely. We’re going to be happy together forever..”

The dragon snorted, puffing smoke rings at the girl. <<Well, perhaps the potion will wear off some day. I promise, love of my life, that we’ll stay together as long as we both live>>. It snorted again and smacked his lips.

She pulled PligStüche free from the body. “It had a lifetime guarantee. Tell you what, lover. Tonight we’ll snuggle up together in front of the fire and you can tell me everything you know about this new sword. It sounds like it might come in handy some day. Now let’s go try to save that soufflé.” With that, she turned and disappeared into the mouth of the cave.

A sound somewhere between a choke and a snort came from the dragon. It turned, and tail drooping just a bit, started for the cave. <<Yes, dear.>>

 

# End #

 

This work is not public domain. It is copyright 1994 by Charles Von Rospach. Please do not republish or post it anywhere else without my explicit approval.

Free Short Fiction — Gord and Fnord Go To the Zoo

The feedback I got for posting Downtime at Christmas was heartwarming and very positive, so I’m going to post some of my other fiction as well. Thank you all for the kind thoughts.

This story was originally titled Guilding the Lily, and was sold to Jane Yolen for Xanadu 3, published by Tor in 1995. It’s one of my favorites of all time, allowed me to honor Fritz Leiber and his Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser stories a bit while doing what I seemed to do best, which is take some standard genre conventions and poke at them until they squealed. In this case, it’s not so much a fantasy story as it is a story about living in a fantasy.

Neither of us liked the original title, and neither of us could really figure out what the title ought to be, so I mentioned my working title, which is actually an obscure reference to an obscure Bill Cosby comedy bit, and so we ran with that. You will either really like this story, or you’ll really hate it; it tended to polarize readers based on whether they could put up with me playing games with genre conventions.

This work is not public domain. It is copyright 1994 by Charles Von Rospach. Please do not republish or post it anywhere else without my explicit approval.

 

Gord and Fnord Go To the Zoo

“Gord!  Gord, wake up, dammit!”

Across the stained and battered table, a mightily-thewed warrior lifted his head and groaned, staring at his companion through blood-shot, unfocused eyes.

“Keep your voice down, Fnord.  My brain hurts.  What do you want?”  The head fell back to the table with a thump.

The thin-faced, shifty-looking thief stared at the quivering hulk of his partner.  ”Gord, I’m bored.  Let’s go do something.”

Gord stirred again.  ”You woke me up to tell me you’re bored?”  He sat up.  Swaying, he almost fell off his stool, but grabbed the table to steady himself.  ”Would you rather be bored?  Or dead?  Barkeep!  Another beer!”

“Gord, it’s going to be another week before the Count musters the army and marches us off to attack the Archmage Frelming’s castle in the Valley of the Archetypes.  Until then, we have nothing to do.”  A large, bald man scurried up, left a full tankard, and hurried back behind the bar across the room.  ”We can’t just sit here drinking for another week!”

“Why the hell not?  Seems like a reasonable pastime to me!”

“For one thing, you overgrown dolt, if we sit here for a week doing nothing but drinking and watching you pass out for hours at a time, the readers are all going to flip past us and go read the next story.”

“Who cares?  I don’t care about those voyeurs, anyway.  Have you ever seen one?  If they were real men, they’d be carrying swords, not reading about them.  The hell with them.”  Gord took a huge swallow and then symbolically belched at the ceiling.

“For another thing, we only have enough money for one more day of drinking at the rate you’re putting it away.  After that, we’re on the wagon unless we can find some cash to tide us through until the muster.”

“Well why didn’t you say so?”  Gord shuddered and then gulped down the last of his beer.  ”I am not looking forward to meeting Frelming sober.”

“You don’t have to.  I know where there’s a large treasure store about a day’s walk away.  We’ll even get a reward from the Count for recovering it, and have enough cash on hand to not only let you drink yourself into oblivion, but to do so at Katrina’s House of Humping.”

The Barbarian’s face lit up.  ”Really?  Great!”  Suddenly, the face clouded over in a frown.  ”What’s the catch?  If it’s only a day away, why hasn’t someone else gone and got it yet?”

“Nothing serious, Gord.  The treasure is protected by a dragon, that’s all.”

“That’s all!”  Gord reached across the table and grabbed the thief by the throat.  Around the room, conversations stopped.  A few of the more timid people dove under their tables.

“Gord!  Gord, put me down and listen!  GAK!  Gord!  Put me down!”

The barbarian let go, and Fnord fell to his stool with a clunk.  He sat there for a second, rubbing his throat and staring at Gord in disgust.

“Listen, you lunkhead.  Think it through.  We have a week before the war starts.  We’re almost out of money.  There’s a treasure hoard just out of town, and it’s being guarded by a dragon.  The author needs a sub-plot to keep the reader interested in the story until the real action starts.  All we need to do is wander down to the dragon’s cave, kill the dragon, bring back the money, and then the Author will send us offstage for a few days of carousing until the war starts.”

“Right, Fnord.  Why can’t the Author simply have us kill the dragon offstage and give us a few days of on stage carousing at Katrina’s instead?”

“We’re not in that kind of book, Gord.  You know that.”

“Yeah, well.  How do you know the sub-plot isn’t two idiots get eaten by a dragon’?”

“Think about it.  Have you seen any other characters in this story?  Everyone in the bar is a spear carrier.  They don’t really exist.  Even the bartender is a generic stereotype, and he’s the only guy who’s even had a walk-on.  We’re the stars of this novel.  The Author can’t kill us off for at least another 100 pages!  Nothing can go wrong!”

Gord rubbed his forehead.  ”I dunno, Fnord.”

“Here, look at this.”  Fnord reached down to the floor for his pack, opened it and pulled out a sheaf of papers.  ”This is the first draft of the book.  I sneaked if off the clerk’s desk at the Hero Guild before we signed up for this story.  We not only survive the dragon, but we go on to rally the armies when all seems helpless and carry the day on to victory.  We’re heroes, Gord!”

“I can’t read, Fnord.  I’m a Barbarian, remember?  Never trusted all those squiggles and stuff.  I still don’t know.  Dragons are nasty business.  I don’t like the idea of going up against a dragon single-handed.”

“You won’t be going against it alone.  I’ll be there, too.”

“Oh, well, that’s different.  What the hell.  Let’s go.  I like the idea of finally being the star of my own story.”

# # #

The next morning, the two adventurers set out.  Gord, his furs only slightly matted and his eyes almost focused, bore a huge, gleaming broadsword slung across his back.  The thief was in his green-dyed leather armor, and carried a short sword and two daggers stuck into scabbards in his belt.

“Wow, Gord.  What a great day.  We’re heading out on adventure, just like Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser, or Bing and Bob.”

“Who?”

“Never mind.  Just some other famous teams of adventurers.”

They followed the wagon path out of town, and at a fork took the smaller path that led off in the general direction of Mount Blackheart, a huge, black outcrop of obsidian that loomed to the south.  It was there they’d been told the dragon had his lair.

They made the base of the mountain by early afternoon and decided to rest before beginning the climb.  While munching on their cheese and stale bread, they saw a huge black shape cross the sky and disappear into the mountain about a third of the way up.  ”See, Gord!  There he is!  Piece of cake!”

The barbarian shuddered.  ”You don’t suppose we can convince the Author to turn the dragon into a rabid wolverine, could we?”

“No, Gord.  Has to be a dragon.  C’mon, let’s go.”

“How are we supposed to kill this thing, anyway?”

“Well, here’s how the Author’s written it in the first draft.  We climb the mountain to the dragon’s cave.  He’s just returned from feeding on the Count’s cattle, so he’ll be sleeping.  We sneak into the cave without waking him up.  I sneak behind the beast to hamstring him, but the dragon wakes up and swipes at me.  I’m thrown against the wall and badly injured.  It looks like the end for both of us, but in a final desperate move, you make a wonderfully dramatic attack and behead the beast.  It dies, you give me the potion of healing I have in my pack, and then we grab as much gold as we can and the head of the dragon and head off for our reward and a few days at Katrina’s.  Sound reasonable?”

“I don’t like this, Fnord.  How about I give you the broadsword and you make the dramatic attack?”

“Gord, we can’t do that.  I’m a thief.  You’re the barbarian, right?  The Guild rules say that I have to run around in the background and make sneaky backstab attacks, while you scream at the top of your lungs and do berserk things with your sword.  You don’t want to lose your card, do you?”

“Um, no.”

“Good.  So it’s settled.”  Fnord stood up.  ”Let’s get climbing.”

There was a sudden rush of wind and flapping of reptilian wings, and the dragon landed on Gord from above.  Gord did the only possible thing: he collapsed in a heap.

The dragon turned around and stared at Fnord.  He smiled.  ”Ah, fresh meat!  And they deliver.  How nice.”

The thief stared at the huge, black beast.  It picked up the former barbarian in one large claw and poked him with the tip of one wing.  ”Hmm.  They sent this one already marinated.”  With a sudden movement, the dragon snapped off Gord’s head and swallowed it.  The dragon dropped the former barbarian to the ground and looked at Fnord.  ”Your turn.”

“You can’t do that!  You’re supposed to be up in your cave asleep so we can kill you!  We saw you come back from your cattle hunt!”

“I wasn’t hunting.  I was at a Dragon Guild meeting that ran late.  I’m lucky I got home in time for your visit.”  He licked his chops.  ”I’m starved.”

“You can’t do this!  The Author won’t allow it!  We’re the heroes of this book!  We can’t die!  We’ve got at least another 100 pages and a war to fight!”

“How long has it been since you checked in with the Guild?  You dimwit!  There’s been a change.  The Editor thought you two were boring, so the Author cut you out of the book.  This isn’t a novel any more.  It’s a short story!”

That day, the dragon fed well.  The next, he returned to the Dragon Guild to apply for a new story.

# END #

This work is not public domain. It is copyright 1994 by Charles Von Rospach. Please do not republish or post it anywhere else without my explicit approval.

 

 

A special Christmas gift: downtime

Merry Christmas!

Here’s a little christmas surprise — the story is called Downtime, and I wrote it in the early 90′s. It was at one point going to be published by Pulphouse but never made it into print. This is the first time it’s been published.

This work is not public domain. It is copyright 1994 by Charles Von Rospach. Please do not republish or post it anywhere else without my explicit approval.

A bit of history — I wrote a number of stories about your typical IT type contractor, who got into doing work for an unusual clientele;  other stories in this series that got published including being hired by God to hack Satan’s databases and working for a witch to fix her spell database on Halloween. The series was about your typical middle class normal working stiff finding out that things we consider fantasy elements were in fact true. I enjoyed twisting the standards of the field in different ways, just to see what happened, and treating fantasy as SF (or vice versa) was a writing hack I liked. These stories also tended to feature Apple computers and cockatoos, just because I could….

The intent was to write a continuing series of these stories, other future clients included an embezzling Tooth Fairy that wanted the evidence deleted, A leprechaun who lost his pot of gold at the track, Elvis and the Easter Bunny. Ultimately I thought I might tie it all together into a novel.

For now, though, it’s just a fun remnant of my writing life, and I hope you enjoy it.

Downtime

The phone rang just as I taped my finger to Kevin’s present.  I didn’t want to spend Christmas Eve working, but when you run a business like mine, you do what you have to do.  You can’t ignore your customers.  Emergencies don’t take holidays off, and nobody would be calling me tonight for anything else.  I ran and grabbed it on the third ring.

“Jason Chilson?  My name is William Shields.  My apologies for calling so late, but we have an emergency and you come highly recommended.”

“Mr. Shields, if you need me tonight I’m available, but it is Christmas Eve.  You would save a lot of money by waiting until the 26th.”

“I realize this is an imposition, but we have a critical deadline and the entire operation is at a standstill.  If we don’t get things finished up tonight, we’ll lose a major contract.”

There went my hope for spending the evening with my family.

“If you’ll let me know where to meet you, Mr. Shields, I’ll see what I can do.  With any luck we can resolve this quickly and get everyone home for Christmas.”

The streets were almost empty, most people already home with their families and the rest jamming the malls.  The jeweler who had the earrings that Gina wanted had already closed, not that I could afford them, but the bike shop was staying open late.  Maybe, just maybe, I could get there before they closed and buy Kevin that bike he longed for.  That I could squeeze in knowing the money was coming, so maybe this job wouldn’t be a complete loss.

I drove past that travel agency with the Bermuda posters. Sigh. We went to Bermuda on our honeymoon.  Kevin would love Bermuda.  I haven’t had a vacation since I started this damn business.  Sometimes I wonder if it’s worth it.

My destination was on the outskirts of the financial district, a company called Toyland Imports.  A bored guard signed me in and escorted me to the elevator, which took me to the 15th floor.  The elevator door slid open and I stepped out into the snow.

Snow?  I looked around. The floor of the 15th floor was covered with snow.  The elevator door closed behind me. I glance behind me, to see the elevator door firmly attached to a large, granite rock. In front of me, across the snow-covered ground, stood a small cottage.  Behind it I saw another building the must have been a barn, since there was a corral attached to it.  The animals in the corral were definitely not horses. Elk? On the 15th floor?

I decided I must be hallucinating. I’m on the 15th floor of an office building in downtown Los Angeles. It doesn’t snow in buildings in downtown Los Angeles.

Does it?

“Mr. Chilson! Glad you could make it.  Let’s go inside where it’s warm and we can get started.”

I shook myself out of my reverie, and bent down to shake the outstretched hand.  That was when I noticed that the hand was attached to a four-foot tall man wearing Spock ears. I decided I was definitely hallucinating. I must be.

“Mr. Shields?”

He must have noticed my confusion, because he smiled and wiggled his ears.  ”Call me Bill.  My elven name is Hëathflig, but I don’t use it with humans.  Welcome to North Pole Station.  C’mon into the workshop and I’ll explain.  We’ve got some wonderful mulled cider on the stove.”

I followed him down the path, around the cottage and past the barn to a large, square building.  I wished I had a jacket, but I hadn’t realized it was going to be snowing.

The cider was as good as he’d claimed, but it didn’t make me less confused.  ”Bill, how did I get to the North Pole?”

“Not the North Pole, North Pole Station.  We’re currently somewhere outside the orbit of Mars.  We had to abandon the Pole itself in the ’30s when airplanes and scientists got too close for comfort.  The elevator is a teleportation unit.  Toyland Imports is a front operation for my employer, Santa Claus.  We like to keep a low profile.”

“You work for Santa Claus?”

“Jolly old man, wears red clothes, laughs a lot, needs to go on a diet.  Maybe you’ve heard of him.”

“I’ve heard of him.  I just stopped believing in him about thirty years ago.  I don’t believe in the Easter Bunny, either.”

“If this project works out, I can arrange for you to meet him.  The rabbit could use a good consultant.”

I choked on my cider.  As he handed me a napkin, he was trying hard not to laugh and doing a rotten job of it.  ”I’m sorry about that, but I couldn’t resist.  No, the Easter Bunny doesn’t exist, but I hate passing up a good straight line.”

His ears twitched when he laughed.  I tried really hard to hate him, but I found myself grinning along with him.  Well, if I had to hallucinate, I guess I could do a lot worse than this. I haven’t had cider this good since grandmom died. “Remind me to wear a bib before I ask about the Tooth Fairy. You probably realize this is a bit tough to accept right away but given that the alternatives is that I’ve gone stark, raving mad and I don’t believe even Roger would try to pull off a practical joke this, um, enthusiastic, I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt for now, and I’ll worry about my sanity once your computer is back on-line.” I took another sip. “Damn, but this is good cider.”

“If you want, I’ll get the recipe from Mrs. Claus for you. How about we get you a refill and go check out the disaster zone? We wouldn’t want Kevin to wake up to a missing dad on Christmas.  The machine’s in the over here.”

“How did you know his name?”

He stood up.  ”I work for Santa, remember?  Making a list and checking it twice and all that stuff. Good kid, but he needs to cut back on sweets.  Too many cavities in his last checkup. What do you think the computer is for? Oh, and the Tooth Fairy is real. Pays in cash, if you don’t mind quarters.”

He laughed and grabbed my cup and took it into the back room. When he re-appeared, the cup was steaming. He waved me over, and I followed him. I realized I was smiling.

We ended up on what was  obviously a manufacturing floor. Manufacturing is the same everywhere, even if the line workers are three feet tall with orange skin and beards, even on the women.  However, a healthy floor is alive with noise and chaos and the silence was deafening.  There were at least a dozen production lines building, boxing, or wrapping what seemed to be every possible toy in existence, from dolls and tapes to bikes and stereos.  Nothing was moving.

“Jesus.  You’re completely shut down?”

“Our entire system is computerized now.  Fully relational database, with cross-references into the good/bad lists, the wish lists and the need lists.  We didn’t realize we had a problem until the Quality group noticed we were sending a subscription for Organic Gardening to Rush Limbaugh.  We started checking, and we found the entire database was corrupted.  We had to shut down because.”

“Let me guess, Bill.  If we don’t fix it tonight, there’ll be no Christmas, right?”

“This isn’t a TV show, Jason.  You’ve done your Christmas shopping, right? Will those presents magically disappear at midnight?” He shook his head. “No, we don’t own Christmas, but there are thousands of people out there — kids and adults — who will wake up tomorrow and be disappointed if we don’t pull this off. We don’t do major miracles up here, but thousands of minor miracles can be just as satisfying.”

We walked past a workbench where a couple of computers were being assembled.

“Bill, you build computers, too?”

“Yeah — those are Apple II’s.  We worked out a special deal with Wozniak years back.  He thought it was great idea.  We’ve been trying to do the same for the Macintosh for three years, but the contract is stuck somewhere in Legal.  The Brownies are a pain when negotiating a contract, but we haven’t lost a suit yet.  IBM won’t return our calls though, and we can’t work with the Asian clone manufacturers. So while we do some clones, our mainstay is still the Apple II.” He sighed.

“Seems like easy money for them. Why won’t they cut a deal?”

“They don’t believe in Santa Claus.  They say they won’t do business with ghosts.”

“You contract with the toy companies for this, then?  This stuff is legit?”

“Sure.  We have contracts with everyone.  We don’t want to steal their product or cut into their income, so we get samples, build our version here and then deposit funds into the company’s account to cover what we built.  As far as their accountants are concerned, we’re just another third world sub-contractor that builds their product off-shore and ships directly to the retail outlets.  To the kids, it’s as good as the originals.  Sometimes better.  Our failure rate is a lot lower than most companies.”

We walked through another door into an office filled with computer terminals, and then into the computer room, filled almost to overflowing with a collection of machines that would make the most jaded techno-nerd drool.  He sat me down in front of a terminal and logged me onto the machine.

While their hardware was exotic, the software was pretty vanilla. When one thinks of Santa Claus, if you think of him at all, it’s a man with a parchment book and a quill pen scribbling notes, not a couple of mini-computers with an Accounts Payable program and a relational database, but the reality is that down below the facade, even the most romantic and exotic industries are pretty mundane. The bills have to get paid, the orders have to get shipped. Right now, however, that wasn’t happening. Time to get to work.

I pulled up a few sample records to see what happens.  They definitely were having some problems, but nothing that some time and sweat wouldn’t fix.  Fortunately, their system was based on a program I’d worked with, which makes things easier for me. Going into software cold is scary.

I started a couple of background procedures to re-initialize the table indexes.

“I think you’re in luck, Bill.  As far as I can tell, nothing’s lost, and I should be able to get things patched together. Did the system crash recently?”

He nodded. “Three days ago. Rudolph was practicing landings and put a sled into a powerline. Diagnostics showed it was clean, so we thought everything was fine. We noticed the problems this morning.”

“He’s okay, isn’t he?” I suddenly realized I was worried about the health of a deer with a light bulb for a nose. When did I decide this was for real? I mentally shrugged.

“Rudolph is fine. No injuries, just short enough power failure to kill the computers. It happens once in a while. This is the first problem we’ve had.”

“Normally, you shouldn’t have a problem. Unfortunately, there’s a bug in this version of your database where under some circumstances, if it crashes it doesn’t realize that the index files weren’t completely updated. Very small window of exposure, and it doesn’t happen very often. I found this out the hard way with a different client. The database manufacturer has fixed it, but decided to sit on reporting the bug to customers rather than have to deal with updating everyone. Saves them money, they say, since so few customers were going to be affected. Idiot beancounters forget that customers lose money and have deadlines. I’ll give you the name of the patch to ask for after the holiday.

“Fortunately, there’s a fairly easy way to patch things up. If it works, you should be back in about ninety minutes.”

“Great!  If we prioritize based on time zone, we might still make it.  It’ll be a long night, though.”

I’ll do what I can. Maybe I can isolate out the corrupted records and let you work on the rest, then do those on a separate batch. Would that work for you?”

He brightened. “Perfect!”

“Great. Let me pound on this for a bit, and you can go alert the troops that they’ll be back on the job in, oh, twenty minutes with the first batches. I almost hate to ask, though: does Mrs. Claus have any more of that cider?”

He smiled. “I’ll check. Back in a few.”

I started isolating out the problem records and clearing access to the rest so he could get his people back to work. People? Are three foot tall, pointy-eared beings people? Well, why wouldn’t they be?

He returned about 15 minutes later, carrying a large Thermos. “So, Doctor, how is the patient?” He set the Thermos down on the console. “I thought I’d save myself a few trips.”

I smiled. “Good thinking, because you’re ready for the first batch. There are only about 5,000 corrupted records, so you’re lucky you even noticed them in time. I’ve got them locked out, so I can update them manually. The rest are yours. I’ll merge these in as I get them fixed.”

“Yippee!” he yelled, and, I swear, he jumped up and clicked his heels. The toes on the tips of his shoes jingled merrily. He yippee-d his way out the door, and I sat and listened to the floor come back to life as I tracked down and eliminated the bitrot.

I continued plugging away, completely losing track of time. Suddenly I realized Bill was standing over my shoulder, watching.

“By George, we’re going to make it. Not only that, your cider is getting cold.”

“Well, I’m never going to finish this cider in time alone. Go find a cup grab a chair. I’m on the last batch.” I looked at my watch. “Whoof. I’ve been here that long?”

“Time flies when you’re having fun.”

“Or in the company of good friends.”

We clinked mugs, and I leaned back in the chair. “I was thinking. If we’re in space, why aren’t we floating?  There shouldn’t be any gravity here.”

“Our technology is advanced compared to what you have on Earth, Jason.  We have the ability to transport people and material long distances instantaneously.  Remember the transporters on Star Trek?  Ours actually work.”

“And the snow?”

“The boss is a traditionalist.  The reindeer like it, too, and the gnomes and dwarves come from the colder lands, and it reminds them of home.”

“Reindeer.  That explains why you have a stable.  I was wondering about that..”

“You know, if you have contracts with all these large companies, how have you kept your operation a secret?  What’s to keep me from spilling the beans on you?  Elven hit-men?”

He laughed so hard his shoes tinkled.  ”Nothing that baroque.  What person in the world is going to admit publicly to working with Santa Claus?  Would anyone believe you?  If the president of Sega announced he was dealing with Santa Claus, what would happen?  What sane person would take that chance?” He took a sip from his mug. “Besides, we investigated you before calling, and your customers appreciate your judgment and discretion.  We don’t believe you’d do anything stupid, either to us or to yourself.”

He had a point.  Maybe the National Enquirer would buy the story, but would I want to have my name attached? “You know, this isn’t exactly a small operation.  How do you pay for all this?  Royalties on the Santa Claus name?”

The elf laughed again.  ”No, that’s in the public domain.  Our funding comes from strategic minerals.  We mine the asteroid belt, transfer the raw materials down to Earth and sell on the open market.  With our technology, the mining is dirt cheap, so to speak.  We make enough to support ourselves and carry on our operation.  Everyone wins.”

“If you really have all this high tech stuff — teleportation, space stations, advanced manufacturing concepts and I don’t know what else, why are you selling raw materials and not technology or engineering?”

“We do. Not all at once, and we don’t sell technology that is so advanced it’ll raise questions Earthside. It’s impossible right now for us to make, say, teleportation available because it requires too many technology advances for people to accept it without wondering about the source. We don’t want to start those UFO rumors again, do we? Besides, technology is a tool that can be used for both good and evil, and if society is given something before it’s ready to cope with the implications, you run the risk of it destroying itself. We learned the hard way to be careful.”

He had a point. We decided to go take a look at how the floor was going, a decision made easier because we’d run out of cider. I wonder if that stuff’s addicting?

Conveyor belts carried the gifts to one wall where a set of machines was installed.  An elf or a gnome would grab the gift and stick it inside one of the booths, load some data from the invoice with a bar-code reader and push a button.  When he opened the door, the booth was empty.

Movement at the front door suddenly caught my eye.  A few elves were running out with packages, then re-appearing empty–handed.

He caught where I was looking.  ”Hey, you should see this!  Come on.” We followed one of the elves out the door, where I could see a sleigh was rapidly filling up with presents.  The reindeer — including Rudolph, who blinked his nose at me when I scratched him behind the ears — had already been hitched up.

Bill stifled a sniff.  ”The Boss can’t cover the entire territory any more, but he loves the traditions, so he does one city a year the old fashioned way.  This year it’s Cleveland.  It was going to be Miami, but with hurricane Tim popping up so late in the year, we had to change.”

We stood in the snow and watched the loading go on, until the sleigh was full.  Then he came out of the house, red clothes, beard, belly and all. Santa. Father Christmas. Kris Kringle. The Big Kahuna himself. I’ve never run face to face with one of my cultural icons before, so I didn’t know what to do? Do you shake hands? Bow? Collapse in a heap in the snow in a faint? I settled for standing there grinning madly and trying to keep my knees from wobbling.

Santa settled the problem for me. He strode over and grabbed me on the shoulder with one of his hands. “Thank you, Jason, for what you’ve done tonight. Thousands of children will awaken to happiness tomorrow because of you. You have my gratitude.”

With that, he hopped into the sleigh, and then double-checked the anti-gravity pads, verified the radar cloaking field, keyed in the recall alarm and finally called to the reindeers, who pulled the sleigh to a huge teleport booth to the side of the corral.  Just as they were about to close the door, he looked over to me and waved.  ”Merry Christmas, Jason! Ho! Ho! Ho!” He then put his finger aside of his nose, winked, and pushed a button on the sleigh’s console. With a pop, Santa, the sleigh, and all of the reindeer disappeared.

Bill grabbed my arm. “Thank you for everything. It’s time you got out of here and started your own Christmas.”

I realized he was crying. I realized I was crying, too.

In the lobby, the guard got a strange look on his face as I went by.  It wasn’t until I got out to the car that I realized that I had fresh snow on my shoulders.  I made a mental note to warn them.

It wasn’t until I had the key in the lock at home that I realized I’d forgotten to get the cider recipe. Damn. I opened the door just as the clock in the hall started chiming ten.  Gina was asleep so I quietly wished her a Merry Christmas and crawled into bed next to her.  As I was drifting off, I kept imagining I heard sleigh bells.

As happens every Christmas, Kevin woke us up far too early.  I couldn’t blame him this time, though, since the bicycle was gorgeous.  It was all we could do to keep him from running outside with it immediately, even before the rest of the presents were opened.  Gina smiled at me and she squeezed my hand.

It was going to be tough explaining the diamond earrings, since Gina knew the store was closed last night, and we’d both agreed to wait on them until business got better.

But I knew I was in trouble when Kevin brought over that last package, a small envelope marked as from Santa.   I started looking through my mental excuse file for something she might accept. Without opening them I knew that inside I’d find three tickets to Bermuda, and I better have a better excuse than Santa Claus for them.  Maybe if I told her my new client was a travel agent?  I couldn’t convince her that Santa brought them, could I?

But inside the envelope was nothing more than a three by five card, with a few lines of text penciled on it. I smiled, and realized I’d gotten the best Christmas present ever.

Ten thousand little miracles, and I was blessed with one. I got up to see if we had any cinnamon in the kitchen.

# END #

This work is not public domain. It is copyright 1994 by Charles Von Rospach. Please do not republish or post it anywhere else without my explicit approval.

 

A gift passed on

Some days people give you a gift without even realizing it. Here is a gift I am pleased to pass along to you.

This gift started out as a tweet from Vonda McIntyre, noting that Ursula K. Le Guin is now blogging. That in itself was enough to make my day; back in the ancient of days when I was involved with SFWA and writing a bit I got to know many of the authors in the field, but Le Guin is one of those rare writers that changed how I viewed the field, and through her non-fiction and criticism also changed how I thought about life. She is one of those rare people that I bestow the “I will happily read your shopping lists” honor on (the others I’ve given that award to being Ray Bradbury, Gene Wolfe, Terry Carr, and Damon Knight — each of which deserves its own discussion point at some point in the future). She is also one of the most gracious and nice people you’ll ever meet.

It turns out that Le Guin is blogging at a site called “Book View Cafe“, which describes itself as an online consortium of writers; effectively, it’s a shared blog and publicity resource that somehow I hadn’t discovered before today. That’s my loss, because there are a group of really interesting people involved with that site, and the blog looks to be chock full of Interesting Stuff You Probably Want To Read. A quick glance at the authors involved with the site shows a long list of names I can recommend to you as well worth your time, including not only McIntyre and Le Guin, but Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff, Brenda Clough, Katherine Kerr, Laura Anne Gilman, Phyllis Radford, Judith Tarr (and her horse), Sarah Zettel, and Sherwood Smith.  All of which are extremely nice and interesting people to spend time with as well as writers worthy of your time.

So please consider wandering on over to the Book View Cafe blog, and attach your eyeballs to it for a while. Your eyeballs will likely thank you and ask for a return visit.

Tip Jars and Coffee Shops

Jeff Nolan: What exactly is the tip jar at the local coffee place supposed to recognize, excellent cash register operation, and at Starbucks is it for excellent button pushing? How about the car wash, am I supposed to drop a dollar in the tip box because they dried my car really well… how about when they do a crappy job, should I pluck a dollar out of the tip box as a penalty?

Maybe it’s just me, but those tip jars mostly say “hey, we know you don’t care enough about that change to want to carry it around, we’ll take it!”

And honestly — I do tend to use it for that some of the time….

Three technologies I’m hoping mature this year.

There are three technologies I hope get to the point where I’m willing to buy into them this year. They’re all things I’ve been watching and wanting to buy, but every time I look, they’re not quite where I want.

First — the eBook reality. the first Kindle intrigued me, but I’ve seen the “future of electronic books” before, and so I decided to wait and see. the Kindle actually surpassed my expectations, and now Amazon has introduced Kindle 2, and it’s much better. My primary interest here is to have a good, easy to use/read electronic library, especially of technical stuff, that I can carry around. Reading for recreation on an eReader is less insteresting to me, but couldn’t hurt.

Unfortunately, even thought the new Kindle comes closer, at its current price point, it doesn’t make the cut. I’ll keep waiting. Maybe the rumored Kindle software on mobile phones? We’ll see. but we’re nearing a tipping point where electronic books will make sense, which three years ago, I wasn’t sure we’d ever see. Kindle at half the price? I’d buy it. Today? I am staying on the sidelines.

Second — the convergence of electronics in the living room. I keep waiting for Apple to upgrade the Apple TV to be a real living room dominator. And I guess I’ll keep waiting a while. They’re doing a survey on possible features to a limited audience right now, which indicates to me that they’re now trying to figure that device out and get serious about a “non hobby” product — and I honestly expected to see that product at the last Macworld. So Apple’s product timelines and my expectatons are still in sync. The big limiter here is availability of content, still; for netflix streaming to my Xbox, only about 10% of the items in my queue are avaialble for online delivery. A quick look at iTunes shows that’s not any better. That makes this convenient — but not an option. Yet. And whatever Apple does needs to have 5.1 built in so I don’t need a separate home theater box to drive the speakers…

Something tells me this year is the year companies dive in and seriously try to own the living room. My short list: Apple, Microsoft and Nintendo. One of them will get it right in the next couple of years. If someone else wants to come in and distrupt the market, the window is closing.

Third — For the last few years, we’ve had internet in the house via DSL. This is our third generation of network in the house, going back to 1998 or so when that means leased lines and expensive routers, so it’s amazing how far it’s come. But now, I’m starting to look at what comes next. And what I want is a home network based on EVDO or 3G, a dongle I can carry iwth me when I travel and plug into a device at home to drive the wireless network, with real broadband speeds and reliability. This would allow me to finally dump the landline/DSL (and their monthly payments), and carry my network with me, since when we’re not home, do we really need the netowrk there? Not really. Unfortunately, I’m just not convinced this is ready for prime time — the dongles are there, but the home network interfaces aren’t yet. Unless you know something I don’t know, of course.. I mean, seriously. We use (and are really happy with) DirecTV. The idea of installing cable just to get a modem and fast cable modem speeds instead of DSL irritates me — but that my mom’s home network is faster than mine annoys me. Even though, in reality, I rarely notice my network’s speed, which implies it really isn’t “slow” as much as I’m realizing it’s been a few years since I upgraded….But isn’t that part of being a geek? Oh, and I’d love to do the portable dongle, but I just don’t want to add one more monthly charge to my budget. Unless I can remove one I don’t need, and the logical one seems to be the DSL line, no?

Honestly, I’ve been waiting for Wimax for a while, but the rollout is — problematic, painful and slow. So maybe I’ll stop waiting.

put down the computer and go watch a movie!

I’ve been shirking my blogging duties again, a bit. Lots going on and it seemed like a good time to just quiet down a bit and relax. Laurie and I have our PVR subscriptions up to date — a bit of a quiet period, other than Battlestar Galatica — so we’ve been working our way through the Netflix queue a bit.

Tonight’s gem was Hellboy II with Ronald Perlman with a suntan. Very well done, good humor, don’t think about the plot too damn hard. Extra credit for the sheer steampunkiness of the movie. I can give it no greater honor than to say that I liked it as much as the original. Sequels rarely do that for me.

A few others we’ve seen recently that I liked include Tropic Thunder, which was just wonderfully gonzo, Groundhog Day with Bill Murray showing an ability to handle a surprisingly complex character long before anyone really believed he could act, and Wall-E — how did it NOT win best picture? Just a stunning piece of work.

We’ve started experimenting with the live Netflix streaming to the Xbox. It seems to work great; the only two complaints are (surprise surprise) the relatively limited selection, and that if a work is episodic (like TV shows), you can’t currently see them on Xbox even if they’re available for instant watch on other platforms. Which means I need to get my Billie Piper fix elsewhere for now.

Chuqui-bob says “check ‘em out”

Olompali State Historic Park is fantastic

Bay Area Bird Blog » Olompali State Historic Park is fantastic:

Over the sixteen years I’ve lived in the Bay Area, I have driven past Olompali State Historic Park — on US 101 about fifteen miles north of the Richmond Bridge — over 150 times. At least thirty of those times, my wife and I have agreed that “we really have to stop by this place sometime.” Yesterday, we finally did…and I’m sure we’ll be back a few times every year from now on. There are some historic buildings ranging from 80 to 150 years old, with several interesting stories attached…that alone would be enough to make a single visit worthwhile; for example, there are some remains of the adobe house of the last Miwok Indian leader, dating from the mid-1800s.

This one is now on my “must visit” list.

Airports almost empty day before Thanksgiving

Airports almost empty day before Thanksgiving | Venture Chronicles:

Case in point, we are talking about taking a family vacation to San Diego early next year (look out Kedrosky!) and decided that renting a minivan and driving down would be cheaper than flying and less hassle to boot. It’s a lot of time behind the wheel but no worse than trudging through an airport pissed off about having to pay $150 to check bags.

Whenever Laurie and I do our driving vacations — which we’ve done since before they made airports so damn painful — friends and co-workers have always wondered if we were insane. Now that airports have become so insane, people are starting to realize that plopping on a plane isn’t the only option, and in many cases, not the best.

We almost always drive vacations (and we never, ever fly to SoCal) for a few reasons: first, we tend to carry a lot of gear, including the computer stuff and cameras and etc. So under most circumstances, flying generates compromises we can avoid by driving. Second, driving is almost invariably cheaper. Third, in many cases, especially these days of three hour waits for connections and flight delays, TSA delays, baggage delays and rental car delays, it’s not significantly slower to drive. And finally, not only does it give us a chance to just sit and talk and be with each other, there’s a whole bunch of stuff between here and there worth seeing and looking at you won’t see at 30,000 feet. The journey CAN be the reward; hell, sometimes the destination is the excuse, not the reason.

When we did our Yellowstone trip this fall, I kept notes on costs and timing. Yellowstone is about the limit of what I’d consider reasonable for a “normal” vacation. Two days driving each way, with rational driving times each way. Silicon Valley is about 16 hours driving from Silicon valley; I prefer to keep each leg about 8-10 hours. That takes you through a lot of territory, though: from silicon valley, it’ll get you to Vancouver, Yellowstone, Salt Lake, Denver, Taos, and all points east. By limiting driving to 8-10 hours, you don’t have to play the “crack of dawn” patrol, you can stop and explore places of interest, eat without a drive-through window, and get into a hotel at a rational hour for a rational sleep. You’re not stressed or harried or exhausted when you get there.

(hint: it’s even MORE interesting to find spots along the way and make the entire journey part of the trip, but we wanted to maximize our time in the park, so we hustled out way each way; I did, however, flag four or five places as future photography locales… But for us, a typical trip to Victoria or Vancouver would involve a day or two in Portland and a couple of stops up and down the Oregon Coast, rather than putting all of our time into one place. Once you get into this “along the way” type of travel, lots of things open up, especially areas you’d have real issues getting to via an airport…)

Here’s a comparison of what it’d take to drive to Yellowstone, versus flying. In many ways, this is the extreme case: Yellowstone is about as far as I’d want to drive on a ten day trip (week off plus two weekends), so you’re spending the maximum amount of time in the car, which you’d think would benefit the airplane. Not necessarily.

For the driving, we left Saturday mid-morning, and arrived in Yellowstone around dinner time on Sunday, stopping overnight in Winnemucca, roughly half way. At the time, gas was headed down but we still paid an average right around $3.70 a gallon. The drive to Yellowstone is almost exactly 1,000 miles.

We drove 1,000 miles getting there, 1,000 miles around the park in the days there, and 1,000 miles coming back, spending a total of $400 for 107 gallons of gas. 2/3 of that gas was used in transit, so the fuel cost for travelling was around $250. Factor in car maintenance to be fair: $70 for the 3,000 mile lube, and some percentage of the 60,000 mile service and tire costs; practically speaking, that’s probably another $70, and I’m probably being generous (my last major service plus 2 new tires ran a grand. factor that cost into 30,000 miles, and you get about $70 for 2,000 miles).

So, the total cost of driving to and from Yellowstone is about $400.

Flying? I did some checks on flight costs at the same time we travelled. For Yellowstone, that’s either West Yellowstone or Bozeman. A typical flight to Bozeman at the same time would have cost you about $500 per person round trip and take 8 hours, flying through Denver or Salt Lake. I just checked, and today it’s about $400ish in December, but next June, we’re back at $450-$500 for a time when a rational person would take that trip. West Yellowstone is slower and more expensive, with only a couple of flights (totalling 90 seats) a day, and it’s seasonal. Then add in a rental car, which when I checked in September was averaging $130/week out of those cities.

So your travel costs end up running you at best about $1,000-$1,100. And if you fly to Yellowstone, you’ll arrive just in time for dinner Saturday — in Bozeman. It’s late enough you won’t actually get into the park until Sunday morning. Leaving? you either get the crack of dawn patrol for a flight out around 7AM, or a late flight out and get home at midnight on Sunday.

Net result? If you fly, you get a Sunday in the park coming in, and a Saturday in the park going out that you don’t get driving. And for the privilege, your cost goes from about $400 to $1,100, over 2X. I’m not counting hotel or food costs here because the same meals get eaten (only in different places) and hotel rooms get used — although most likely, the room on the road while driving will likely be cheaper (ours were about half the cost or more).

As to the hassle factor of driving? you can’t tell me that the joys of the TSA, of flight delays, of 3 hour connecting flight waits, of checking and retrieving luggage and renting cars — and airport food — is any great shakes. It’s all in the attitude; getting into the mindset that the trip is part of the journey and not just a way to the destination opens up many options. And, well, having time to unplug and just talk to the people you’re with? Or heading off a side road and exploring? (well, laurie calls it “getting lost again”, but I prefer to see it as adventuring into the unknown). Massive fun.

Flying options options; I wouldn’t want to drive to chicago or tampa, not unless it was part of a longer, extended trip. OTOH, a two day drive from where you live opens up many places — from silicon valley, pretty much everything west of and into the rockies.

And if you stop and think about it a bit, there is basically no way you can do an airport run from northern california to southern california faster than driving these days, not once you factor in the time getting to and from airports, TSA lines, renting cars, etc. etc. At best, it’s a wash. and driving’s much cheaper. I can’t see why anyone flies back and forth on that shuttle, honestly.

so for me, it’s car first. We’ve done flying trips to Vancouver and Victoria in the past (flying into Victoria directly, into Vancouver, and into Seattle and crossing the border), and you know what? Have fun in the plane (hah). I’ll just hop in the car. You may get there a bit sooner, but I’ll be relaxed and happy when I get there, and I’ll have all of my stuff. What did you decide not to bring to fit into the overhead and checkin restrictions, anyway?

What I don’t understand is why when airlines decided on what business model they were going to follow, they chose “greyhound bus” as what they wanted to be when they grew up….

Update: One of the commenters made an important comment:

It’s hard to argue with most of what you wrote, but flying does allow me to take do a trip like a 4-day weekend in Vancouver from time to time.

And that’s an important thing to keep in mind: the trade-off between time and money. If your time is short, then spending money to minimize travel time, but when you do, it’s knowing that you’re taking a more expensive option for speed. That’s fine; I certainly wouldn’t drive a 4-5 day trip to Vancouver.

Ditto a day trip to SoCal; if I had to go to SoCal and return same day for a meeting (first, I’d try NOT to, but that’s a different issue), then I might fly, because otherwise it’d be a really long day; in that case, sitting in a plane or airport might be preferable to driving. But if I could schedule it to drive down, take in the meeting, overnight, and drive back while stopping at, say, Morro Beach on a Saturday, well, sign me up…

So ultimately, NONE of this is absolute. And if your idea of a perfect vacation is to sit on a beach in Cancun drinking margaritas — that’s great, too. But heck, you could sit on a beach near San Diego and drink for a lot less, I bet, and have pretty darn good weather, too. Or Phoenix, for that matter.

Musings From Yellowstone National Park

Laurie and I did a week in Yellowstone — which is obvious if you’ve seen what’s being posted to Flickr.

One little amusement was that I read this piece in the hotel room in West Yellowstone, before we moved into grant’s village for a few days and completely off the net. It really echoed what we saw in many ways.

Musings From Yellowstone National Park | National Parks Traveler:

Despite all the issues that constantly swirl around the National Park System — funding constraints, staffing woes, rising fees — there’s still more to be proud about than disappointed.

For instance, after 136 years you can still find more than enough room in Yellowstone National Park that feels raw, wild, and untrampled by humans. True, the front country can feel over-run, particularly if you’re there in July or August. But during my week-long trip earlier this month the crowds were not suffocating, the bison jams not too plentiful — although, we did wonder about the folks parking partway on and off the road to view a single mule deer — and the insects wonderfully vanquished by the frosty overnights.

Definitely. We had a herd of bison around fishing bridge for a few days that made traffic really interesting, but they finally moved a bit off the road. there was also a small herd of mountain goats that decided that the road was a LOT less work than the back country, and was wandering around the Tower area — we saw them one day just walking up the grand loop, smiling at cars, and the next day, in a pullout attempting to weed it for the rangers. The rangers weren’t amused.

Ditto lone bison, who we saw frequently using the grand loop to get from here to there — slowly — with that “and what the hell are you going to DO about it?” attitude.

More on Yellowstone as I get it written up, but I had to point out this piece:

* Never underestimate a raven. In the parking lot at Norris some travelers in a Toyota Tacoma had left their soft-shell cooler in the bed of their truck. It didn’t take long for a pair of ravens to find it, open it, and settle down to lunch. Even after someone placed a case of water bottles atop the cooler the birds found a way in. Note: Ravens don’t like cold cuts; they pulled out and dropped to the side both ham and turkey.

* Some Americans can be truly baffling. One drove up to us in the Norris parking lot and asked whether there was anything interesting to see.

I kid you not. I read this post, and then the next day, we went exploring Norris Geyser Basin. When we got there, we heard the cawing of a raven, and there it was, sitting on the back of a pickup truck which was full of stuff and covered with a tarp:

we saw and watched it for a good five minutes as it explored the back of the truck. It finally located the cooler, and made a concerted attempt to uncover it, including pulling at the ropes and working on the knots to see if it could get anything loose. Every so often, it’d stop and stare at us watching it as if wondering if we were going to try to stop it (nope, we were too amused). We finally decided it wasn’t going to succeed and went off for our hike around the basis, but as we were leaving, it let out a series of vocalizations, which were answered from another part of the parking lot. As we headed towards the boardwalks, we passed a second raven walking up the parking lot asphalt in the direction of the pickup truck.

Evidently he called in some help.

No, we don’t know if they got in — probably not — because the truck was gone when we got back.

And got help us, this was ALSO true. After our walk through the basis and along the upper edges of Porcelain basin, I huffed my way up to the museum area and was standing there catching my breath (the altititude KICKED MY BUTT, but we’ll talk of that later), someone walked up to another person in the museum and said “hey, is there anything to see here?”

Um, no, not really…

It’d been over 15 years since we’d made our first visit to Yellowstone, and damn, was it a wonderful week — but I’m not going back until I lose 100 pounds, because at 8,000 feet and trying to get some serious walking in, it fought back. But it was worth it…

A web comic you should read…

if you don’t read xkcd, you really should. Well written, funny, sometimes poignant, and one of those that understands that all this tech stuff really doesn’t replace people, much as we sometimes want to convince ourselves.

Recalling Yellowstone National Park’s Historic 1988 Fire Season | National Parks Traveler

Recalling Yellowstone National Park’s Historic 1988 Fire Season | National Parks Traveler:

No one realized it at the time, but when a lightning strike ignited a single tree in Yellowstone National Park’s Lamar Valley 20 years ago, it was a dire harbinger of what would become a historic fire season in the park.
The resulting fire, baptized the “Rose Fire” in honor of a nearby creek, went out on its own after flickering briefly in June. Though it burned just that one tree, the fire was ominous nonetheless.
You could say that the 1988 fire season in Yellowstone was surprising in that it followed a spring that saw precipitation levels range 150-200 percent above normal. The problem, though, was that when May turned to June the precipitation abruptly left — it was almost as if Mom Nature twisted the garden spigot closed — leaving behind lush vegetation that quickly dried out and would soon serve as incredible kindling when the high, dry heat of summer in the Rocky Mountain West set in.

We visited Yellowstone a few years after the fires and were stunned by the damage. It’s been on our list for a couple of years to get back, but life hasn’t cooperated (yet).
But what struck me reading this is that this explains — almost exactly — what’s going on in California this year. Early wet winter, and then it stopped. And now the fires, which have been scary in their number and intensity. I remember watching the foothills around the bay area go golden, weeks earlier than usual, and thinking to myself “this is not good”.
Unfortunately, I was right. And it looks to me to be something that’ll get worse before it gets better this year.

Arthur C. Clarke, dead at 90.

And so we lose another one. Sad.

I got to know Clarke a little back when I was involved in SFWA, to the point where we exchanged christmas cards for a while, and a letter or two, and he was an occasional commenter on the zine I was publishing back then. He was one of those pros that was always accessible and friendly and willing to stop and talk to people (and trust me, not all pros are like that). Fascinating writer and interesting person, one of the key writers who got me involved with science fiction as a kid, so getting to know him later on was a real trip.

I don’t think we can under-estimate the impact he’s had on our lives and society. Not necessarily for the things the obit writers are going to talk about — yes, he wrote about things we take for granted today, like geosynchronous communication satellites, but others had those ideas, too. it’s that he inspired a generation of people to actually go out and figure out how to build them and make them happen.

In many ways, Jack Kennedy got us to the moon, but it was Arthur Clarke who got the bodies on the ground who could build the rocket when it was time to build it. There are very few bigger names in the field and in society in general. And now he’s moved on to whatever’s next.

Knowing him, he did it smiling.