Tara and I were in London from August 9, through August 23 in part to attend Loncon 3, the 73rd World Science Fiction Convention (Worldcon).

We actually left on August 8th.  Having found that the least expensive option when we booked our flights was the British Airways flight non-stop from San Diego to Heathrow, we had an evening red-eye departure.
( Read more... )

Last Tuesday, July 1, 2014, I left for Salt Lake City and Westercon 67 after an after-work doctor’s appointment.  This got me on the road from Del Mar (Carmel Valley Road at I-5).  My plan was to go as far as Las Vegas that night.

Traffic through San Diego county, by way of CA-56 and I-15 was fairly light for a rush hour, as was the traffic in the ( Read more... )

Back when I was in college, starting in 1984 or 1985, my regular gaming group started working our way through the Dragonlance modules for Advanced Dungeons and Dragons.

In conjunction, I read the original three Dragonlance Chronicles novels by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman, and enjoyed them enough to read the followup trilogy Dragonlance Legends, ( Read more... )

San Diego has now launched a bid for the 2024 Olympics and Paralympics.  (Read that again - Olympics and Paralympics, not Worldcon.  Got that!)

They have their website up at http://www.sd2024ec.org/.

There are a few comments I’ll make about this site at the time of bid announcement.  Many of ( Read more... )

I just got back from SMOFCon - the annual gathering of SF Convention runners, which has a bit of a Worldcon bias, for better and for worse.

One of the highlight events is the “Fannish Inquisition” (as in “No one expects the Fannish Inquisition” - but more on that later).  This goes through the bids for two traveling conventions: SMOFCon itself, and ( Read more... )

The main action sequence of the episode of NCIS: Los Angles that first aired on November 5, 2013 featured a train - one engine and two cars each containing two tanks of chlorine gas.  As a moderate rail-fan with an incomplete knowledge of rail details, I think I spotted at least three major flaws - two of which might have (ahem.) derailed the plot ( Read more... )

As of 2013/2014, San Diego has:

• Two general interest/literary conventions: Condor and Conjecture.
• A Steampunk: Gaslight Gathering.
• Two gaming conventions: Kingdom Con (board gaming focus) and Gam3rcon (video game focus).
• An “Old School” Comic Book convention: Comic Fest.
• An Anime Convention: Anime Conji.

Earlier this summer, Tara and I made plans to not go to LoneStarCon 3 so that we could save our money and my vacation for Loncon 3 next year.  Admittedly over the last month or so, I’ve regretted that decision, even though the financial and vacation issue is still valid.  So, with bouts of boredom, and feeling sorry for myself, I’ve been attending ( Read more... )

This weekend, Tara and I headed up to visit The Kid, who is still up in Reno - and may be for an indefinite time.  We spent a lot of time on the road for what amounted to a visit of less than an hour - but it was a pretty good visit.

Since we needed to visit during the day on Saturday, our plan was to drive as far as Bishop on Friday night.  Both ( Read more... )

After tweeting in reference to this idea, I was encouraged to go a bit further.  So, here is a semi-serious piece of business for the WSFS business meeting at LoneStarCon 3.  As I (almost certainly) won’t be able to be there, if anyone wants to run with this, feel free.  You may even include me as one of the makers of the motion:

Short Title: A few ( Read more... )