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Still not out the door on this getaway. That’s part of relaxation, the
not being under the gun, I suppose.

A week ago I posted about Usenet, rec.arts.sf.written in
particular. This morning I went ahead and killfiled Del Cotter (to
name names), the same guy who was accused George Alec Effinger of
being a fake years ago. He actually has things to say that are valuable
from time to time, but I just can’t take him any more. I hate the self
appointed gate keepers in this group and I find his efforts to be a
significant reduction in signal-to-noise ratio. He bothers me more
than the things he tries to keep out. In the same way that I dislike
the people in convention security that do it because they obviously
enjoy telling people what to do, I dislike the rasf* hairshirt purity
crowd. As Robert Plant once said, lighten up baby I’m in love with you.

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Dave Slusher is a blogger, podcaster, computer programmer, author, science fiction fan and father.

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Shirts seen at Dragon*Con yesterday, in and around the EFF area:

No I will not fix your computer

If you lick it they will come (several instances)

I read your e-mail

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Dave Slusher is a blogger, podcaster, computer programmer, author, science fiction fan and father.

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I can’t say that I would have ever predicted that I’d be vacationing
in Dawsonville, GA but I
will be. Life is funny. I’m going to be taking my printouts of the
Michael Moorcock interview to do the first
pass of a copy edit on it (Storm Constantine is already done). Next
week, I’ll be e-mailing the texts to
both him and Storm Constantine and writing intros to the interviews
and the whole volume. To do’s include getting a lawyer to vette my
simple contract with the interviewees (basically the same contract as
for an anthology), doing a preliminary assembly of the volume and
getting a word count, and contacting Literacy Volunteers. I
am going to donate 10% of my proceeds to them (which might be 10% of
squat, but should be more than 10% of nothing) and the contracts have
a check box that the authors can check to have their nominal fees
included in the pool that goes to LVA. I might up the percentages
higher, but that’s what I’m committing to at first. I just need to
find out what parameters they put on things. If they don’t want me
using their name, I’ll just quietly send them a check periodically. I
would like to put on the webpage and perhaps in the endmatter some
information about their organization and links to web pages but I’ll
abide by their rules.

We have new cellphones as we switch from Verizon to Voicestream. It
feels kind of like the move from a frying pan to another frying pan,
but We Shall See. Our Verizon plan wasn’t good, having no roaming or
long distance in it. The one month we really used roaming when Darlene was
in San Francisco, the overages ran close to $150. We could have
paid $10 a month for something we only used once and still come out
ahead. The downside is you are supposed to charge the phones for 24
hours before use, but not much more than 24 hours. With the
spontaneous trip upon us, we have to wait until we get back to fool
with them. As a geek, it bugs me some to have new electronic toys that
I have to wait to play with. Oh well. Plus, these new Nokias have much
better games than the old 6100 did!

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Dave Slusher is a blogger, podcaster, computer programmer, author, science fiction fan and father.

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A few weeks ago I posted about how my wife got me wrestling tights and
beautiful boots for my birthday. I thought they are awesome , but that
I don’t really have much use for them. Well, I’m going to wear them to
the con on Sunday. Why the hell not? Where else can I act the fool
like this? I’ve never in my many years as a dork worn
a costume to a convention. This year, I’ll be doing it. I’ll put on
the mask as well and make a big show of it. I had some issues about
the guest ribbon on my badge giving me away while I was in the
getup. Darlene pointed out that “who cares if I’m both a guest and in
costume?” The more I think about that, the less I can find a
disagreement. So, come Sunday I’ll be wearing the Senor Muerte (my
name for the mask) outfit to the con.

We’re taking a bye on tomorrow, and driving up to Dawsonville for a
one day getaway. We just came up with this plan in the last half
hour. Dawsonville is mainly known as the home of NASCAR driver Bill
Elliot, but also has water falls, attractions, and best for us, outlet
malls. With luck, we’ll be back in time to see Diana Obscura on
Sunday. Some years Darlene goes to some or all of the con with
me. This year, she has decided she couldn’t care less.

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Dave Slusher is a blogger, podcaster, computer programmer, author, science fiction fan and father.

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So the first afternoon of Dragon*Con was OK. I left work around 3:30
(an hour after I wanted to leave because of course my boss didn’t
spring to life on this problem we have until I want to walk out the
door) and ran by Kinko’s where I printed up some flyers. These are
both for my eBook and for Fictionwise. I scattered them
around liberally and watched people taking both, so that was cool.

I attened one panel, on the Electronic track of events. The speaker
was Lee Tien, lead counsel for EFF,
talking about the various issues EFF is involved and some discussions
of how they decide what cases to take. It was a good talk, although
more like a presentation at a professional conference than a typical
SF convention panel. This is not bad, just different. He didn’t
actually take questions until 58 minutes into the hour
presentation. All in all, it was a pretty good use of time.

Other than that, I just milled around. I had completely forgotten that
Linda Blair was going to be there, so I think I’m going to pay
whatever outrageous fee it costs to buy one of her pictures just to
have it and to talk to her for a while. I might be the only person the
whole weekend who mainly wants to talk to her about the movie Ruckus. That was on the
first summer we had HBO in Kansas and I must have watched it 20
times. “What’s on TV?” “It’s Ruckus again.” “Cool! Let’s watch it
one more time.”

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Dave Slusher is a blogger, podcaster, computer programmer, author, science fiction fan and father.