wombat_socho

Saturday after I got whupped by the Yankees the power went out to the desktop, and when I'd made sure the wall wart and power strip were okay, it wouldn't power back on. As if I wasn't miserable enough on account of Good Friday. So I threw up my hands, hauled Homeko out of my backpack, and set it up with the help of the USB strip I'd been mostly ignoring for a while because I didn't need it. This is all I really need for blogging, e-mail, occasional searches and whatnot, and the lack of Office has been remedied by the Surface Go, which has Office Mobile built into Copilot, after a fashion. So I am tracking my fatness on the Surface Go, doing everything else on Homeko, and when I drop down to Las Vegas next week for my pulmonary appointment, I'll lug the box with me, and have them install an extra 1TB SSD drive while they're replacing the PSU.

Speaking of travel, I booked my flight to Dulles for next month, along with a car from Avis, and also ordered a couple of Southwest gift cards for Caitlin and Maggie. I had been thinking of skipping the trip this year, but Mark sounds like he's in a bad way, and I want to spend some time boosting his morale. 

Wednesday was mostly spent getting up at a godawful hour of the morning for the National Security Site Advisory Board chairs meeting, which was on Teams instead of in meatspace as it was originally intended. Most of it was okay; we heard from some of the senior bureaucrats at EM, and got updates on what's happening at the other sites. We got to pound our chests a bit over how we're almost done here at N2S2 and how we don't have a problem recruiting board members, which I gather has been a problem for some of the other boards. Unfortunately the last 45 minutes (or so it seemed) was taken up with painstaking editing of a welcome letter to the (as yet unconfirmed) incoming head of environmental management at Energy. I signed off as soon as I could, went out to BK and ate too much, did some Ingressing, then came home and napped for a couple of hours before getting up and doing an abbreviated link post before going back to bed. 

Today I did some research on the Coaldale Project and have a couple of calls in to the DEP and the EPA. Weirdly, the online resources for the EPA were more informative than what was on the DEP website, but now I have a much better idea of what needs to be done, if not the scope of it, and also where the funding might come from for the cleanup. (Not out of my pocket, that's for damn sure.) Also looked at a custom embroidered NNSS shirt, which at first blush is hideously expensive mostly due to setup and UPS shipping. I'll look around some more before I actually spend money on that.  

So on the first weekend of the month, things are picking up at work. Did four returns yesterday, and another two today, so I had five hours on the clock total. I think I'll wait until mid-month to peek and see what my progress toward bonus is, since it's really too early to be sweating that kind of stuff. I also need to do better at getting to bed at a decent hour so I get enough sleep before my shift starts; both days this weekend I clocked in a lot later than my shift started, and I can't imagine my new OM is going to be happy with that continuing. On the other hand, I'm getting work done in a timely fashion, so...

The Romanov Rising is good, The War in Heaven is good, and the next volume of Komi is waiting for me at the post office. I think the final volume of Larry's Son of the Black Sword is due out this month as well. Plenty of good new reading. 

The Senators got whupped by the Cubs and swept by the A's. I am really starting to hate RFK. We're 3-8 at home, but 10-11 on the road, and we're underperforming our Pythagorean by one game (we should be 14-18 instead of 13-19), so I am hoping the bats catch fire against Minnesota, which is scoring a lot more runs but also coughing up a lot more than we are. Guess we'll see. 

Weight has been lingering in the low 390s, and probably would be better were I not eating so much cereal lately. 

This week I have a video appointment tomorrow at 1430 and an wound care appointment at 0800 Thursday. I've already booked my room at the Strat for Wednesday night. Next Thursday I have an optometry appointment, and two weeks from now an NSSAB meeting on the 19th. So I should be pretty flush with two VA reimbursements and a DOE check as well before Confinement; I paid for the SWA tickets with points, so my only expenses should be food, the rental car, and the hotel. I'll be in pretty good shape since the VA disability check drops on 2/28 and I'll also have sundry Block paychecks on the 7th & 21st. 

Ran out of Ozempic a couple weeks ago and have reduced the dosage on my Novolin R from two units every 5 mg/dl over 130 to one unit every 10 mg/dl on the advice of my clinician, and so far I'm not real happy with the results...and I haven't even been eating that much in the way of carbs. Well, okay, I had pizza yesterday as part of the Post Office run, but surely not enough to push the evening BG over 300...anyway as of today I'm going back to the 2/5 dose and tomorrow I restart the Ozempic.

Not much action on the tax front. I've had a few appointments, but they've all been phone appointments; nobody has actually sent any documents in. The timekeeping software is also being difficult and not doing a good job of retaining my out punches, so I'm going to keep track manually on the side as a backup.

On the last novel of the Spiral Arm series, which means I'll be getting into Maggie Hogarth's Shieldmatron novel this week.

I am being cheap and staying just one night in Pahrump at the Best Western, because my credit cards have become strained. So I'll have to pack everything but the nose hose Tuesday night so I can just pack the nose hose, grab my pack and my insulin, and get out the door so I can be in Pahrump by 3 PM for the intergovernment meeting before the regular meeting. Zoom. 

Originally I only had two appointments yesterday, one with lymphedema and another with wound care (in that order) but Wednesday I returned a call from Scheduling and found that Dermatology could get me in at 1430 Thursday, which would have made for a busy afternoon, but Wednesday right before I left for the Stratosphere Dr. Lal called and asked me if I was willing to come in at 0840 Thursday since they'd had some cancellations, and of course I agreed. 

This meant getting up at an awful hour of the morning on Thursday, driving up to the VA, getting my wounds dressed, and getting my glasses fixed before I headed over to the nearby McDs for breakfast and the Sonic on Craig for fluids. Back at the Stratosphere, I bashed out some bloggage and lit out for my lymphedema appointment. That went well, and I had some lunch at the canteen (chicken salad and mediocre sushi) before getting my claws clipped & calluses sanded. Feet felt very weird after that, but no matter; I went back to the hotel and did not stop at the NSSAB orientation's last two hours because I was feeling very tired. It was probably the sushi, or maybe the tacos and egg rolls I grabbed for a snack. Maybe both. Anyway, I fell asleep around 1800 and slept through until 0700 this morning...so I got up, pounded out another blog post, cleared the room, and hit McD's on Paradise and Dunkin' on Lake Mead before topping off the tank at Maverik.

Originally I'd planned to do some shopping at Walmart on the way home, but instead I just went to Sam's Club for Claritin-D and a large box of fig bars which are usually about $6 for half a dozen up here but the large box was about $13 for 36 bars, which was a lot better deal. Then it was over to CFA for some hate chikuns and fluids before the long drive home. I did stop in Beatty to get some wild game jerky for Rob, but the post office was closed so I guess I'll mail it tomorrow, because once I got home and unloaded the car I didn't want to go anywhere, and I didn't. Tomorrow I'll hit the post office and mail some things, go to Raley's for stuff I'm out of (eggs, tea, & yogurt, mostly) and maybe Family Dollar for water additives. 
That's the plan, we'll see how it works out in reality. 

I'm back home in Tonopah after an uneventful night in Las Vegas, and after a couple good nights sleep (at the Stratosphere and here at home) I feel 2000% better. Weight is up, unsurprisingly, but BG and BP are both okay. 

Had breakfast/brunch from the drive-through at Jack in the Box north of the Stratosphere on my way to Dunkin; the sausage scrambler sandwich was good, but I really would have rather had it on a croissant. Got iced coffee and sinkers at Dunkin, and then headed out of town without stopping at the Maverik on Lake Mead Boulevard, since it looked like I had enough gas to get home. As I passed though Indian Springs, though, I had second thoughts, and when the turnoff to Pahrump came along, I took it, and stopped at the Maverik there for fuel and fluids. (You cannot have too many fluids while driving through rural Nevada.) A brief stop in Goldfield to dispose of fluids followed, and I eventually got home around 1630. Unloaded the car, did the FMJRA, and spent some time on Civicrack to relax before going to bed shortly after midnight. 

As for the conference in Oak Ridge, well, it was very interesting to hear from other Board chairs about how things were going in their particular bailiwicks. Compared to Hanford and Oak Ridge, we here in Nevada don't have much to worry about, but the former two sites have a LOT of cleanup remaining to be done, and during the tour on Tuesday we saw a few reactors that have basically been isolated and monitored since they'll be lethally "hot" for the next 300 years unless somebody develops technology to let us decontaminate or reprocess the contents. I imagine when the Board chairs meet again at Hanford in February we'll see more of the same. In comparison, the former Nevada Test Site doesn't have anything remotely that nasty, though due to ongoing Defense and Energy work we won't be seeing tourists trooping in to see the Sedan Crater and other sights of interest any time soon. It was also very encouraging to hear that work at WIPP in New Mexico continues, because every year of safe operation there means the arguments against opening Yucca Mountain get weaker. 

Wasted three hours yesterday at the Social Security office on Buffalo waiting to see someone so I could pick up the form to tell SSA that I don't want their damn Medicare or the deduction from my SSDI to pay for it. At least I played a bunch of Azur Lane so I wasn't bored to the point of craziness. I left at 1400 so I'd have time to do lunch at CFA (I did) and hit the Sonic for fluids (I didn't.)

The meeting went okay. People found my reports on the LLW forum and the visual observation last month acceptable, we prioritized work plan items for next year, and I was elected vice-chairman by acclamation. Lisa will be covering all the LLW forums next year in my place since I'll have extra work as vice chair. Part of that work will involve a pilgrimage to the holy city of Hanford for an SSAB chairs meeting in February. Brr. 

Next time I come to the Strat I'm going to insist on waiting in line to check in, since the robots gave me a room in the ass end of the North Tower; it had a fridge, but the desk lamp didn't work and the bedside outlet plugs were iffy. I managed. 

Screwed up my order at Wendy's last night and wound up with two chicken sandwiches, two doubles, and two chilis. One of the chilis is coming home in the cooler bag, but I devoured the rest last night, and while my BG was up this morning, it wasn't out of the normal range. Probably packed on a couple of pounds, though.

The agenda for today is to pick up a late breakfast at Dunkin on Lake Mead, refuel at the Maverik on the other side of the '15, and maybe hit up a Sonic on the way to pick up some groceries at the Walmart on Tropical. I found about $75 worth of stuff that's less expensive there than it is at Raley's, so I'll stuff the meat and dairy products in the insulated bags with the ice and just push straight through to home. 

Did blogging this morning instead of last night (because I was too tired by the time I got back from Wendy's and finished eating) and will blog again when I get home. So I'll be all caught up by tomorrow. 

Lost two out of three to the A's Tuesday night. The A's were on autopilot and kept using Duke Sims, who was out of at-bats against RHP, which irritated the fuck out of me but probably didn't make that much of a difference. 

I suppose I could also describe this as a report on the state of my fandoms, and it will probably wind up on the Substack in somewhat altered form... 

"In the beginning, there was the Word." So it is with me; I have always been an avid reader, preferring SF, historical fiction, military & naval history, and biographies to other genres, though I did go through a stretch where I was reading a lot of mainstream fiction. Gave up on it because most of it was depressing and/or tales of awful people doing awful things or living awful lives. (See Bright Lights, Big City or The First Deadly Sin.) I still do a lot of reading and have the Kindle and physical libraries to prove it.

Reading SF eventually (inevitably?) drew me into science fiction fandom. I attended conventions in the Baltimore/DC area and elsewhere from 1974 (Discon II, the Worldcon in DC) until 1983 when I got married and moved to Minnesota. There I became more active in traditional fanac: I pubbed a perszine, joined and dropped out and rejoined Stipple-APA, became involved in media fandom thanks to Space: Above & Beyond and the 59th Ready Reserve Squadron, went to a few Minicons, more Convergences and Diversicons and Arcanas, volunteered and served on staff for some of those, and eventually became heavily involved with anime fandom at Anime Iowa, so much so that I was one of the founders and chairmen of Anime Detour, which I remained on staff with until I left Minnesota for Virginia in 2007. I returned to Anime Detour (and continued to volunteer there) after moving to Virginia and Las Vegas, but eventually the staff there did my son dirty, and I severed all connections with them. I'll be going to Anime Fusion in Minnesota this year for my son's 40th birthday, but purely as a spectator. I dropped out of Stipple-APA after descending into abject poverty in Virginia, but after moving to Las Vegas in 2015 I became involved with the National Fantasy Fan Federation (N3F), sporadically contributed to N'APA, and eventually became treasurer along with wearing a few other fezzes. I am currently the chairman of Son of Silvercon, a small relaxicon in Las Vegas that aspires to become a mid-sized regional convention. 

Fandom led me into historical boardgaming/wargaming, which was a big thing in the 1970s and 1980s before TSR bought SPI at bankruptcy and gutted the hobby. I was a D&D dungeonmaster and a Traveller referee; I was also interested in several other RPG (Twilight:2000, Call of Cthulhu, Delta Green) but never actually played them. Wargames are still around, but it's a lot harder to find opponents, and games, like everything else, have become a lot more expensive thanks to inflation and the fact that it's a niche hobby now. Mostly I play video games like Civilization and Hearts of Iron IV, which have some of the flavor of the old monstergames. I used to be involved with EVE-Online as part of Goonfleet, and was there when we broke Band of Brothers, lost Delve and fled to a new home, reorganized under Commissar Mittens and grew to be a great power in the game again, but I don't remember clearly when I stopped playing. Probably in 2018, when I got horribly sick and was homeless for a couple of months. Everyone I used to know in GF is out of the game now, and I don't feel any strong urge to go back. Aside from the aforementioned strategic video games, I also play Fate/Grand Order and Azur Lane on my phone, the former more than the latter because Azur Lane's story is confusing and silly by turns. Played Cookie Run for a while but it wound up being more grindy than cute, and Girls Frontline just didn't hold my interest. I should probably get out and play more Ingress because the walking would be good for me. 

I came very late to baseball. As a kid, I was a fan of the Washington Senators, who moved to Texas in 1972 and took my interest in baseball with it. My now ex-wife was a Twins fan, though, and between her interest and Rotisserie baseball, I got back into it. For a few years I scored games at home for STATS, Inc. and published a newsletter on the independent minor leagues (which caused some road trips to towns like Aberdeen, Austin, Duluth, Fargo, and Madison) but that fell victim to Anime Detour, which pretty much ate my life from 2003-2007. I played fantasy baseball on Yahoo for a few years but dropped out of that; I was also involved in a Pursue the Pennant league until it fell apart in 1992. Nowadays, I casually follow the Nationals, Twins, and Red Sox, and am managing the Senators in a Dynasty League Baseball league run by fellow blogger Pete (Da Tech Guy), but Major League Baseball's current commissioner has alienated me with his woke stupidity, and I'm not much interested in seeing the A's when they move from Oakland to Las Vegas in a couple of years. 

I don't watch a lot of TV or movies. Used to watch a lot when I was married, but that went by the wayside in favor of watching anime, and these days I watch very little because Hollywood isn't making a lot of stuff that interests me, and I find video games more rewarding. Someday I'll probably finish watching Fallout, because it's on Amazon Prime and the first five episodes, which I saw while visiting Stacy McCain this spring, seemed pretty decent. People tell me I should watch The Expanse, and maybe one of these days I will. Webcomics fall under this heading; I was really really interested in Girl Genius, Megatokyo, Erfworld, and a couple of other webcomics, but I fell out of the habit of following them (probably around the same time I stopped playing EVE-Online, for some of the same reasons) and I can't think of any webcomics I follow at all, with the exception of Terminal Lance, Clinic of Horrors, and occasional postings by Merryweather Media. 

Not sure where this really fits in, but thanks to my Dad's final assignment with the JCS, I acquired an interest in nuclear weapons and power, which has led me to a seat on the board of the Nevada Security Site Advisory Board, a group of citizens who provide oversight to the Department of Energy's ongoing cleanup and monitoring work at the former Nevada Test Site. I don't get paid for it, but they do reimburse me for my travel expenses, which is nice, and the work is interesting, with a lot of callbacks to some weird history. For example, they're currently demolishing & cleaning up Test Cell C, which is where testing of NERVA rockets and Project Pluto went on during the early 1960s. Coincidentally, there's some discussion of nuclear rockets again in connection with Elon Musk's ambition of going to Mars. 

 The printer set up well enough but even though the desktop could see it, they wouldn't talk to each other. So I took the badge stock down to the print shop along with the other stuff that needed printing, and they came out okay. So did the registration forms. I wish I could say the same for the program book, which I didn't set up properly...so the covers are 8.5x11 portrait while the inner pages are 8.5x11 landscape folded. LOL. 

What with having left the packing until Tuesday afternoon, and stops at the Family Dollar in Beatty (for munchies and water additives), Amargosa Springs (for urination & trash disposal), and the CFA at Sahara & I-15, I wound up getting into the Stratosphere around 2100 or so and being assigned a room in the Select Tower that was supposed to have two beds and no fridge but in fact had only one bed and a fridge, I slept very well but only until 0400, at which point I woke up ravenously hungry, so I made use of the McD's app and got a super cheap breakfast, after which I hammered out a catchup link dump...and shortly thereafter went back to bed for a three-hour nap before hauling ass up the 15 to the VA.

Dr. Lal was very happy with my wounds, and afterward I hit up Jack in the Box for food and Sonic for (more) food and fluids before heading down for the NSSAB meeting...which went on and on interminably. On the other hand, they're going to send me to Oak Ridge in September for a week, so I can't complain too much. 

Tomorrow it's off to the Plaza, where I'll hang out with the sales people until check-in time and probably dip out to Sam's Club to pick up fluids after dinner. And then Friday, we see how it goes. 

Tuesday turned out to be not such a big deal. I clocked in for about four hours, did two fulfillment returns, cleaned up a couple of WIP returns, and clocked out in time to take two out of three from the Cubs. 

Wednesday I packed up and headed down to Love's to tank up before heading down to Beatty. Gas was $4.05 after the $0.10 app discount; I also picked up a big cup of Diet Coke, a liter bottle of the same, and a couple of corndogs and headed down 95. It was an uneventful drive, and I checked into the Exchange Club with plenty of time to have a half-rack of ribs at Smokin' J's. The NSSAB meeting was somewhat interesting and dwelt more than usual with the sort of thing Arsen Darnay occasionally considered in his stories: how to safeguard future generations from the highly radioactive wastes generated by nuclear reactors and weapons? I'm not sure the NNSS really has that problem - most of the highly radioactive wastes have a short half-life, and the stuff that has both long half-lives and high radioactivity tends to be buried far beneath the surface. I spent part of the lunch break indirectly discussing the Coaldale Project with tribal liaison Richard Arnold, who suggested that the Duckwater, Timbisha, and Yomba Shoshone might be most interested - especially the Yomba, who are stuck out in the middle of nowhere with roads so bad that they had to use horses to bring in the votes. 

After the meeting, I went to the Rebel for Diet Sprite and a couple of Bad Things, which predictably made it hard to get to sleep, but nonetheless I got up at 0900, did drugs, shot up my insulin, got dressed, and headed over to Denny's for breakfast. The Lumberjack Slam was probably more than I should have eaten, but at least I had the sugar-free syrup on the pancakes and an extra egg. Then it was off to Goldfield, where I wound up in the Clerk's office researching their brothel ordinance, which is a poor fit for Coaldale, but I suspect it won't be hard to get it modified to be more like Nye County regarding distances from other things and less like Nye regarding other restrictions on the staff. 

I probably should have spent more time Thursday blogging, but I didn't. I did manage a post on Thursday and two on Friday despite taking time out to take two games from the A's, who are surprisingly weak despite having Reggie Jackson, Boog Powell, and a couple other sluggers and speedy guys in the lineup. 

Tomorrow I think I'll get up fairly early, have pizza for lunch, and get my stuff from the post office. Thanks to some screwup, a couple of CDs and Komi Can't Communicate #29 got sent back because Amazon insisted on sending them to my street address, which is verboten. So when my H&R Block paycheck arrived (all ~$900 of it) I put $600 into my Savor card and spent about $50 to re-order the returned items. 

Next week should be pretty leisurely, except for having to head down to the VA on Wednesday for a Thursday wound care appointment. This is good, because there's less than 90 days until Son of Silvercon and it's time to start hustling. Dan and I and maybe Jolie (plus a couple of new chums) will be getting together Wednesday night for a staff meeting, out of which I expect great things. 

So things are picking up a little with work. Had two phone appointments, a dropoff (which weirdly didn't have any documents attached) and a fulfillment return that was missing a few things. One of the phone returns closed out, but the other one has 1098T and related expenses to upload, but at least that one will be done tomorrow. I wound up putting in about 3.5 hours on the clock, which brings me up to a little over ten hours, which is what I did for the entire last pay period. A lot of the additional work is coming from some office in Carson City that I never heard of before, on the other end of 395 from where I was staying.  Apparently one of their two tax pros is in the hospital, so I get to ride to the (virtual) rescue. 

I was busy enough with work that I forgot I had a series against the Red Sox. Robot Ted Williams dropped 2 out of three; the only win went to Reggie Cleveland in relief in game 2. 

Finally pulled the plug on the latest e-thot attempting to scam me out of money after she had an online meltdown over a $100 gift card. Too much weird evasive shit, and the capper was some GChat from her "aunt". It finally occurred to me to run some of the pics through Google's image search, and sure enough the images were of porn star Gia Paige, who I'm sure is not living in Bishop or interested in having my kids...or in need of a $300 gift card. So far the card has been unusable at Raley's or Amazon, but I'm going to try a couple places tomorrow and hope for the best. If it still doesn't work, I'll call them to replace the card and see how that goes. 

It snowed a little today, which was weird because it was in the high 50s yesterday. I went out to Raley's and spent about $70 on various things but managed to forget baking powder. With the exception of a Diet Coke and some Liquid Death ice tea, everything I got was on sale or had a coupon, or it would have been worse. 

Finally won an Ice Age scenario in Civicrack, with the Germans, but it was close and Gandhi nearly beat me on points. Am now trying to win with Haile Selassie, and am about to push the Huns' shit in by way of revenge for their futile attempt to take Adwa. 

Barb reassured me that I would get reimbursed for a hotel room in Beatty for the April 17 meeting, so I hopped on Priceline and booked a room at the Exchange Club next to Smokin' Js, where I plan to feast on barbecue after checking in but before the meeting. On the way back, I'll stop in Goldfield and see what I can find that's pertinent to the Coaldale Project. I have a Five W's document written up about that, but I want to flesh it out with more details before I send it off to Doug.