Live! from Penguicon

[kinzel]

Comes a quick note before we dash off to breakfast...

Yesterday was a half-day for us. We lazed about in bed until almost 7:30 a.m., then wandered downstairs to partake of breakfast, and across three parking lots, first to find out what was this Sweet Lorraine's advertised outside the Marriott, and thence to Max and Erma's, so that kinzel might know where this useful emporium was located. We took a stroll around the attached mall, where we were almost mowed over by the power walkers.

Back at the hotel, I did some outlining on the Book Without a Name, and then we met friends for lunch at -- wait for it -- Max and Erma's. Much good food and better conversation ensued, then back to the hotel to collect our packets, nap (lj user="kinzel"> and write rolanni until it was time to go downstairs to our first panel of the con, in which the four captive writers -- Matthew Keaton, Diane Firkin, Sharon Lee and Steve Miller -- talked about their process to a packed roomful of very attentive scholars.

After that, a brief sojourn to the Green Room under the wing of [Unknown site tag], who knows everybody, and back downstairs for Opening Ceremonies, which I am pleased to report was conducted with appropriate Pomp and Seriousness.

Uplifted, we talked our way up and down a couple halls, marveled at the precision team of matched insect green robots performing on the putt-putt course, and so to bed.

Catch you on the flip side.

Comments

[magda-vogelsang.livejournal.com]

...back downstairs for Opening Ceremonies, which I am pleased to report was conducted with appropriate Pomp and Seriousness.

With 'appropriate' being the key word here.

You know, I don't think I've even been to a con before where the GoHs were comparing the speeds of their first modems during Opening Ceremonies.

[star-gazersusan.livejournal.com]

Yeah, you could only have this particular topic at someplace like Penguicon. I must say though, that *all* our GOH's had somethiing to say regading this, and it was soooo funny!

[mbarker.livejournal.com]

Hey, quit teasing. What did they say? What was soooo funny?

My first modem? It was a square wooden box with foam cups for the handset. And it was FAST! 300 baud, way faster than those folks who had to put up with that weird 120 baud stuff. Of course, carrying an eight-inch floppy to the other end of the lab got more data there correctly, but still, being able to type over the telephone lines was a major step forward. Even if it was uphill both ways, with a toll booth in the middle (which is why we invented relays, to sneak computer messages around the telephone tolls).

But that stuff is back in the B.I. days, isn't it? Before Internet. And everyone knows that before the Internet, they just pounded rocks together and sent smoke signals, right?

So what did the GoHs have to say about their first modems?

[serge-lj.livejournal.com]

Going even further back in Time... Remember punched cards?

[mbarker.livejournal.com]

Sure. I even remember the trick where you took the end job card off the pack from the student in front of you so that your job got run on his time.

Remember cross-checking? Have two people punch the same set of cards, then run them through the comparator. If the cards matched, there was a chance it was punched correctly.

I have a friend who still uses blank cards for memos, because his school had boxes and boxes left over, and he hates to waste anything. Most people are a bit surprised when they figure out what he is using for memo paper, but they do fit in a shirt pocket pretty well. I don't know what he will do when he runs out, that's almost his trademark now.