LibertyCon 2023 AAR

Posted on by June 26, 2023

I’m just going to start by saying I’m not tagging folks because I KNOW I will forget a bunch of folks that deserve mention… sigh… Old man, suffering from CRS over here!

Brandy, Rich, Tish, and the rest of the crew did the usual outstanding job of putting on a great program! Many thanks to those who work behind the scenes every year to make all this happen!

Flew out Thursday since I had an ‘early’ panel on Friday and I don’t like connecting flights, especially through ATL or CLT…

Lots of folks were already there/showing up by Thursday evening, and most were saying they were leaving Monday, turning a 2 1/2 day con into 4 1/2 days… LOL

Thursday night was basically catch up with folks and catch as catch can for food, etc. City Cafe was closing on Monday morning, so many folks made the pilgrimage to get a meal there! I’m still not sure if they’re renovating or what, as we had the grumpy waiter who wasn’t talking a lot since they were packed as usual.

Friday morning was the memorial shoot, and I had to miss it due to my panel… sigh

This is, as far as I know, the only picture of me on a panel (thankfully an early one), thanks to Kelly for the pic!

Luckily, my panels were spread out over the 2 1/2 days, so I had some breaks. And I did a reading with Kal Spriggs that was fun. Sold a few books, thanks to help from the NTT contingent (Becky) for doing the sales while I tried to talk to folks and sign books!!!

I ended up moderating a couple of panels, (always a challenge), but I don’t think I screwed them up too bad. And I’d like to thank those who expressed appreciation for our attempts to inform/educate/give ideas to those in the audiences!!!

And as usual, panels ‘I’ wanted to see were almost always against the ones I was on…sigh

Just a word of warning for those who go to cons where we are, if we know you’re knowledgeable in a subject that we’re talking about, we WILL jerk you up on the panel (Thanks JY, Greg, and the others)! We’d rather get you the correct info that try to BS our way through it or give you bad gouge.

The parties got started in earnest on Friday night, and the 5 (more or less),3,1 rule went into effect. It seems that 5 hours of sleep was the most some folks got…LOL

It was BUSY, the additional 250 people seemed to make less time to talk to individuals, with more waves and nods as we passed in the various hallways. The Gaming room got a lot of use, and there were a number of younger kids there (always a pleasure to see). A lot of money was raised for charity, from what I heard, and Larry’s Gritty Cop Show raised a good bit for his game!

The only real negative, at least from my prospective, was the flat network at the hotel and 1100+ nerds, it was D…O…G…slow, so I never bothered after trying to connect Thursday night. The weather that moved in Sunday afternoon/evening wasn’t a lot of fun either, the rain that had held off showed up in spades along with a lot of wind, screwing up a bunch of supper plans!!!

Hopefully, everyone made it home okay, and has good memories of the time we shared!

Home!!!

Posted on by June 26, 2023

Survived the weekend and the trip, back home and now comes the ‘fun’ part… laundry…

If you’re REALLY bored, JR Handley put up Episode 262 of Blasters and Blades last week and Joelle Presby, Josh, JR, and I talked about writing a believable space navy for science fiction!

Link is HERE for the podcast. Warning, it’s an hour and half long. 🙂

I’ll have a post up tomorrow with a rough AAR on LibertyCon 2023. Suffice to say, it was fun, tiring, and a whirlwind of folks, panels, and parties!

LibertyCon 2023!!!

Posted on by June 21, 2023

I’m joining a lot of other folks in Chattanooga, TN for LibertyCon this weekend. If you’re there, here’s my schedule-

Feel free to catch up with me or sit in on the panels.

Regular blogging will recommence next Tuesday, so go read the folks on the sidebar!!!

TBT…

Posted on by June 21, 2023

Another throwback picture from an airshow at NAS Moffett Field… I ‘think’ this was 88…

The top of the Hangar 1 is 198 feet, and the average hot air balloon is about 70 feet.

IF I remember correctly, they were ‘flying’ them about 50-70 feet up giving the kids rides.

The white 2 story ‘building’ on the right was where FASO held training classes.

Here’s a ‘windshield tour of Moffett in 2022 by somebody. Good pics of the current status of the hangar now, and a bit of the museum. That drive in was SO familiar!!! Six years at Moffett off an on…

Book promo…

Posted on by June 20, 2023

Raconteur Press just released a new anthology, Pinup Noir

The blurb-

Everybody loves the femme fatale; the tough-as-nails dame with the smoky voice and the legs that go on forever – almost as much as they love the cynical gumshoe with the strict moral code and the tiniest soft spot in his heart.

Hard-boiled detective fiction – America’s gift to literature – was introduced to the world in the middle of the Roaring Twenties, allegedly reached its height in the 1950s; and if you listen to the pundits, died out with the pulp magazines.

Hogwash. Hardboiled detective fiction lives on in its offspring: the roman noir, film noir, neo-
noir, Mediterranean noir, and last – but certainly not least – cyberpunk.

Join these 8 authors as they explore the world of the hard-boiled detective and the dames they love.

And Kelly Grayson has another short up for pre-order! Scattered, Smothered and Spellbound: They Call Me Tully

The blurb-

They call me Tully, and I was the first Waffle Haus Sheriff. I’ve been policing monsters, mixing pancake batter and scrambling eggs since the whole thing began. Nowadays my job is senior recruiter for WHISSC, the Waffle Haus Internal Supernatural Security Corps.

It’s challenging work. The labor pool of folks capable of holding their own against rowdy Orcs, Elves, Dwarves, Werewolves and the odd Ghoul or Wendigo ain’t exactly deep, but I’ve got an eye for talent. A WHISSC operative has to be a formidable fighter and above all, have good diplomacy and conflict-resolution skills.

This is Waffle Haus, after all. Everybody’s welcome here.

Not good…

Posted on by June 19, 2023

Truly not good at all…

A tourist submersible has gone missing while on a diving trip to the wreck of the Titanic, sparking a massive search and rescue operation in the North Atlantic.

Driving the news: U.S. Coast Guard officials said five people were on board the submersible when it lost contact with the vessel one hour and 45 minutes into the dive on Sunday afternoon and it was reported overdue some 900 miles off Massachusetts’ Cape Cod.

Full article, HERE from Axios.

The weather is rough out there right now, with a significant seastate working up. The north Atlantic is never really smooth, and this will hamper search efforts.

The Titanic is 12,500 feet down, meaning only deep submersibles have a capability to reach it. These are NOT submarines. They are specially constructed units with a small pressure sphere surrounded by equipment and batteries than can stand that depth.

They also don’t have a lot of power, mainly thrusters to move them slowly at depth. IF, big if, they hooked a floating net or something else, it is possible the submersible got hung up and cannot surface.

There aren’t any rescue vessels that are capable of rescues at that depth, they are limited to 5,000 feet maximum. There are only a few deep submersibles in the world, and they all require a mothership to launch them. The mother ships aren’t fast, probably a maximum of 15-20 kts, so if one is available in the northeast US or Canada, they are 40+ hours minimum away.

Yes, the Coast Guard, the US Navy, Canadian Navy, and CP-140s and P-8s are out searching with buoys and visual/other sensors. But, they are also limited by the seastate, especially on visual searches, and sonobuoys barely get below the thermocline out there,  and as far as I’ve heard, no one has had any indication of an EPIRB, float, pinger or anything else that would indicate the submersible is down.

I guess what I’m saying is say a prayer for them…

A little humor to start the week…

Posted on by June 17, 2023

All Puns Intended

1. Two antennas met on a roof … fell in love and got married. The ceremony wasn’t much … but the reception was excellent.

2. A jumper cable walks into a bar. The bartender says … “I’ll serve you … but don’t start anything.”

3. Two peanuts walk into a bar … and one was a salted.

4. A dyslexic man walked into a bra.

5. A man walks into a bar with a slab of asphalt under his arm … and says: “A beer please … and one for the road.”

6. Two cannibals are eating a clown. One says to the other: “Does this taste funny to you?”

7. “Doc … I can’t stop singing The Green, Green Grass of Home.”
“That sounds like Tom Jones Syndrome.”
“Is it common?”
“Well … It’s Not Unusual.”

8. Two cows are standing next to each other in a field. Daisy says to Dolly … “I was artificially inseminated this morning.”
“I don’t believe you,” says Dolly. “It’s true; no bull!” exclaims Daisy.

9. An invisible man marries an invisible woman. The kids were nothing to look at either.

10. Deja Moo: The feeling that you’ve heard this bull before.

11. I went to buy some camouflage trousers the other day … but I couldn’t find any.

12. A man woke up in a hospital after a serious accident. He shouted … “Doctor, doctor, I can’t feel my legs! “The doctor replied, “I know … I amputated your arms!”

13. I went to a seafood disco last week… and pulled a mussel..

14. What do you call a fish with no eyes? A fsh.

15. Two fish swim into a concrete wall. The one turns to the other and says … “Dam!”

16. Two Eskimos sitting in a kayak were chilly … so they lit a fire in the craft. Not surprisingly it sank … proving once again that you can’t have your kayak and heat it too.

17. A group of chess enthusiasts checked into a hotel … and were standing in the lobby discussing their recent tournament victories. After about an hour … the manager came out of the office … and asked them to disperse. “But why,” they asked … as they moved off.
“Because,” he said. “I can’t stand chess-nuts boasting in an open foyer.”

18. A woman has twins … and gives them up for adoption. One of them goes to a family in Egypt … and is named ‘Ahmal.’ The other goes to a family in Spain … they name him ‘Juan.’ Years later …
Juan sends a picture of himself to his birth mother. Upon receiving the picture … she tells her husband that she wishes she also had a picture of Ahmal. Her husband responds … “They’re twins! If you’ve seen Juan … you’ve seen Ahmal.”

19. Mahatma Gandhi … as you know … walked barefoot most of the time … which produced an impressive set of calluses on his feet. He also ate very little … which made him rather frail and with his odd diet … he suffered from bad breath. This made him (oh … man … this is so bad … it’s good) … a super-calloused fragile mystic hexed by halitosis.

20. A dwarf … who was a mystic … escaped from jail. The call went out that there was a small medium at large.

A win!!!

Posted on by June 17, 2023

For the little guys!!!

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ruled Friday that the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) had no legal basis to rely on pessimistic statistical models to justify imposing costly federal regulations onto fisheries and lobstermen.

The court held in its decision that the NMFS “was egregiously wrong” in its interpretation of the Endangered Species Act (ESA) which would have enabled the agency to impose costly regulations on lobstermen in order to protect endangered whales.

Full article, HERE, from Daily Caller.

This is a serious loss for the econazis, as they’ve been trying for years to put the lobstermen out of business, and this would have done it. Now, that’s gone. What has been ‘alleged’ is that Right Whales were getting ‘trapped’ in lobster trap lines, but there hasn’t been an actual proven occurrence of a whale dying due to being ‘trapped’ in lobster gear.

The one incident being bandied about by the left is Argo, a Right Whale that made it to Florida with a couple of lobster traps from off Nova Scotia around its tail. He was freed, and swam off.

The Maine Lobster Association has been working for years to make their gear safer, allowing whales to safely pass through their fisheries. HERE is a link to WHOI’s design of a new retrieval system currently being used.

Of note- Strict federal and state laws prohibit lobster fishing in Atlantic waters when a right whale is sighted in the vicinity, normally knocking three months off the fishing season every year.

Sigh…

Posted on by June 16, 2023

Don’t pet the fluffy yeet cows!!!

Actual handouts by the NPS and the idjits STILL try it…

Oh well, Darwin needs more ‘contestants’…

Y’all have a good weekend!!!

YGTBSM!!!

Posted on by June 15, 2023

Welp, the ‘View’ is at it again…

This writer regrets to inform you that the co-hosts of ABC’s “The View” are back to their armchair governing, this time proposing a new amendment to the United States Constitution to remedy what they see as a threat to the country.

“What really is starting to freak me out is the idea that we’re not even discussing changing the Constitution to make it say you cannot be in jail and be the president,” Whoopi Goldberg said, referring to the federal indictment of former President Donald Trump who continues to lead the field of 2024 Republican presidential candidates, ignoring the presumption of innocence and assuming both that Trump will be convicted and sentenced to serve time and win the 2024 election.

Full article, HERE from PJ Media.

I have to wonder if they have ANY understand of anything outside their cloistered little world…

They obviously don’t live outside the hard left enclave that slavishly supports the hard left/Dem/woke world view. And they sure as hell don’t ever travel to flyover country. The problem is, they have a platform and megaphone to espouse exactly what their handlers want them to say.

I just hope the folks are actually stopping and thinking about what is going on, and the split that is getting worse and worse every day.

I REALLY don’t want to do interesting times again.

Sigh…