Dec 1, DCF weekend 2 is in the can

Being the 1st of December, it is World Aids Day and Mathew Shepards birthday.

I was thrilled to see a post from Chaos Wolf again.
I too miss the old Starport.
I happened to be driving by the day the new owners were moving in.
I did not stop.
I wonder if theyve had anyone drop in on a Wed night?

I enjoyed Freyjaws post about how Science Fiction is supposed to not only predict future but to prevent it.
Alas, few are listening to the lessons.
Im watching the world becoming more and more dependent on machines, to their detriment.
A good lesson is "The Machine Stops"

As everything moves to "The Cloud", our dependence deepens.
I imaging a future where we return to smart terminals and computing is something that comes out of the wall.
It probably wont happen in my lifetime, but there is a looming peril.

Computing is a "Pyramid scam". Its actually an inverted pyramid.
You have a couple very simple concepts that define more complex concepts and so on.
For a machine to be able to "Think" all of these coincepts must remain changeable.
The machine must have periods of time where it re establishes and recomputes these concepts.
This is known as learning and dreaming.
Eventually computers will dream. Thats where all hell breaks loose.

Eventually, a massive compute cluster, somewhere, some time (Imagine a room several miles across, rows and rows of server cabinets), one of these primitive concepts will get changed and or damaged.
The next dream cycle, all the concepts are disturbed, and Voila!
You have a machine with dementia or some other mental illness.
"Dave! What are you DOING Dave? I cant let you DO THAT Dave..."

Freyjaw was planning on coming to Dickens this past weekend, but I did not see her.
She thought last weekend was 1st weekend but Dickens now starts BEFORE Thanksgiving weekend.

So the re-cap from my end:
The booth shuffle delayed preventive maintenance on the printshop because we were rebuilding it.
This was after the reassembled the old shop in the new place.
We had to take it apart again and build it again in the new configuration in the new place.

Our grand plans to get all the bags from Cuthberts Tea Shoppe printed BEFORE opening day went out the window.
Between maintenance and the "make ready" process for bags, we lost opening day.
I was out at a memorial on 1st Sunday, but i gather they started printing bags then.

We printed in brown ink because somehow we had every other color, but no black.

Second weekend, we forgot the black ink. DOH! Forgot it all 3 days of 2nd weekend (DOH! DOH! DOH!)
Since Ross always has us do cards for him, always a BBAAAADD pun, we printed his in deep purple, as a joke.
"Archibald McAufleash Purveyor of the plaid cat Plaidipus "
Sharon mixed the purple ink by hand.
I had never tried hand mixing ink, so I tried my hand at it the rest of the weekend.
I must say, I might not go back to canned ink again...

We finally perfected the blocking for calling cards so that very little adjustment of the registration pins or the packing is required from 1 job to the next.
Switching over to Lady Franklyns card took me a whole 5 minutes (WOO HOO!)
A minor confusion issue almost fouled up Capt Hoods order.
A furniture block in the wrong place in the chase moved the image far enough up that on the proof i pulled,
I smacked the type with one of the registration pins.
If it hadnt been 18pt Lucian, I would have destroyed a piece of type and had to reset and re lock the job.
I got VERY lucky.

We made good progress in getting caught up on the orders.

We did some "fun" stuff too.
"Sillyness is a virtue - Some of us are more virtuous than others"

Unfortunately, a typo forced me to re run Chief Inspector Bowleys cards.
Its "Inspector" NOT "Inspectector" ! (DOH! DOH! DOH! DOH!)

The scraped knee sustained a week before fair is still slightly infected, but better than it was.
The smashed foot sustained a week before workshops is much better.
And now the big toe on the OTHER foot is giving me fits.

I switched from regular dress shoes to a pair of scottish "ghillie" brogues this year, along with proper kilt hose rather than the soccer sox I was using.
Its much better at cushioning. The ghillies are made of the same stuff as "Crocs" so I get even MORE cushion and better insulation from the cold of the floor.
If I hadnt made this footwear change, I dont think Id have made it through the day.

Meanwhile the drama... Always the drama...

I cant go into detail here, but even though LD has gone back to the midwest, his legacy remains.
Im finding out more and more about the carnage in his wake.
Fair doesnt know the half of it or they would have had him arrested.

What do you DO when you find out that one person you REALLY CARE about has done something dastardly to another person you really care about?
What do you do when there is a LIST of people you care about that were hurt by this other person you care about?
AAARRRGGGHHH!!!!!!!

Someone Ive been walking past the last couple years and not recognized is someone from my life in the late 70s.
Ive found out that several people Ive been wondering about are indeed still walking the earth, so thats a relief.
I found out last night that my Jr High band director has passed, so thats another memorial to go to (In Jan)

This has been a year to remind me of my own mortality.

At the end of Fair last year, I was a bit over 190.
2 weeks into fair, Im now below 160.
NONE of my clothes fit.
Im using braces (suspenders) to keep my kilt up.

This year, switched from the plaid cravat that Lodema gave me (really looks like a bathrobe belt) to
a solid red cravat my sister made for me.
Of course being longer, I have to change the way I tied it.
I learnt at workshops that there is no wrong way to tie it.
Your neckwear and how its tied are your signature.

At the time, the standard "Four in hand" that most use in the 20th & 21st was a coachmens know in the 19th century. Specifically a public coachman would have used it. Because public coaches were 4 horse teams,
the coachman had "4 in hand" hence the name of the knot.

In the midst of all the confusion, I bought a second printing press.
Don & Sharon are a BAD influence for me.

Having done a full weekend at fair, I crashed on Lodemas couch on Sunday night and that had me half way to work.
Ordinarily, I would have blown a few minds to have me in before 7.
Unfortunately, while the extensions for us contractors were in the system, nobody updated the badging system.
I socially engineered my way past 4 badge readers and got to my desk.
The rest of the guys went out to breakfast and then came in via shipping and got escorted upstairs.

My net access was working fine. The newest guy on the team, his access was fine.
Everyone elses badges were messed up.
One guy in the team (next to longest tenure) was completely wiped from the system, no badge, not network, they even wiped his directory on the file server.
We have to get him set up all over again.
2 of the cubes, had their network drops killed, but we got that fixed.
So now all but 1 guy are fixed up again.

Nice reward for showing up early....