Recirculating Cheese

- The day began with getting trod on (and nearly trampled) by a bitch-mare named Chloe. My foot isn't broken, but is bruised and a bit swollen.

+ Under the malign influence of xthread, I tracked down a local source of Greylock Gin, but instead came away with their Ethereal Gin. It's Batch 4, not the Batch 5 they're currently advertising, but it's still "A wildly complex gin that you can taste from 3 feet away". Not an everyday gin, but I'm glad it exists (and that I have a bottle of it).

+ Plus lunch at a taqueria near the MSPCA that caters to the local Mexican/central American population, so it's double-plus good. (OTOH, the town where I actually live is so damn white, it doesn't even have Taco Bell.)

+ lyonesse's pwny has finished his course of doxycycline (which I've been giving the last several days, because she's home tending to her dog).

- My own mare has been leaving about half her grain (admittedly she gets an enormous 5 quarts, twice a day), but is still right around 900 pounds. Not panicking, just watching.

-+ Of my own volition, I'm getting drawn back into Arisia at a management level. I really don't care who gets which title, and I approve of the plan, so it seems to be a positive. But management isn't my strong suit, and recruiting even less so, so I'm worried about that.

- Didn't get much work done today, will have to try to make it up on the weekend.

Twenty? We've been doing this for 20 years? Oy.

I ran at-con reg for the first Arisia - a job I'd never done before, and really was supremely unqualified for. Dave Cantor from Boskone sat himself down next to me, showed me how to do it, and left like the Lone Ranger. For all the supposed bad blood between Arisia and Boskone, we got a lot of support in terms of equipment, manpower, and clues from them. There are individuals who will never set foot in Arisia, but they're throwing the sort of con they want to attend, and we're throwing the sort of con we want to attend.

I ran Reg for about 5 years total, alternating with being Ops staff, and discovered my useless superpower - the ability to remember names and faces. I could hand you your badge before you could identify yourself. If I could add some social skills and glib small talk to it, I might have a future as a politician or a bartender or something. Oh well.

I've been conchair once, assistant conchair 3 times, division head 3 times(?), board member 4 times(?), etc. Two epiphanies related to this: 1) Conchair is just another job. It's the highest profile, and shit flows uphill, but it's not even the most work - programming is the most work. 1.5) More than half of the former conchairs were present and working this weekend. 2) Management is not my strong suit. I'll do it if I have to, but I'm really more comfortable as an individual contributor. I'm more than willing to tell someone else what their timeline and task list should be, if it's something I've done before, but as an advisor rather than a manager. Maybe if there was a role for Leader-From-Behind.

I've spent the last several years in Publications, originally because it was completely different from what I'd been doing for Arisia and for work; now because it's what I do. My most immediate goal when I took over Souvenir Book was to Suck Less than my predecessor, and it's not bragging to say I succeeded. (I didn't do it this year - that was a reprise by the aforementioned predecessor, who made some choices I wouldn't have, but nonetheless mostly failed to suck.)

Likewise the pocket program, which was a total train wreck two years ago. I cobbled together some templates and data import scripts, and had a working prototype before the actual editor got his version (a combination of WordPerfect, Word, PowerPoint, and Excel) to press 3 days before the con. That skunkworks project became the foundation for last year's and this year's (and next year's) books. It's massively scripted, but it still managed to consume about 60 hours in the week before it went to press. I've got to manage that better next year, mostly by spending more time with the data further out from the con. More orderly proof-reading and tightening of the program descriptions would go a long way.

I like working at con, but I'm really enjoying having all my work done before the con, so I can relax and enjoy the con. I went to very little programming (notably made it to the con-running panel, which was ironically scheduled opposite the Arisia corporate meeting), but spent a lot of time hanging out with 2000 of my closest friends.

Late last night, zyxwvut observed that most 4-day cons have two Saturdays, while Arisia had two Sundays. To be fair, there was a lot going on Sunday, but the mood did slow down in the evening, and Monday was really all about packing up and saying goodbyes. It wasn't a design goal, but it's a (probably unavoidable) consequence of being on a minor holiday weekend - some people can't stay the whole weekend.

I don't put anything close to this level of effort into other people's conventions. I mostly don't go to other people's conventions, but when I do (mostly the odd worldcon these days), I feel like I ought to attend some of the programming, some of the movies, etc. I love the fact that Arisia is a 24-hour 3-ring circus, with literally 20 things going on at once, but I've earned the right to kick back and let it swirl around me.

I was intending to do individual shout-outs, but I'm exhausted, so let me just say:
You all rock my little world. Seriously.

In case you were wondering what I've been up to lately...

The Arisia Souvenir Book is now available for profreading and review at http://www.psgd.org/a08/

Anyone who submits substantive comments gets credit on the staff page, even if you're not normally Arisia staff.

The printer wants it early, and we all know that when a release schedule gets compressed, the first thing to go is the QA. I need all comments by the end of the day (whatever that means to you) on Wednesday 1/2/08.

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As an aside, one of the very few places I inject myself into the book (aside from the layout, choice of artwork, etc.) is in the title of the history page. The first year I did it, I wanted to cut some of the more superfluous data, so I titled it "The Complete History of Arisia (Abridged)", which is also a nod to The Reduced Shakespeare Company's "The Compleat Works of Wllm Shkspr (Abridged)". The next year, it was "The Illuminated Illustrated History of Arisia", which is of course derivative of Steve Goodman's song "Vegematic". Last year, it was "Arisia's Will Be That Was", which seemed to confuse some reviewers, but was an homage to a Pogo collection that I grew up with, "Pogo's Will Be That Was".

So the question is what to do this year. "Days of Arisia Past" is predictable but lame. "Arisias I Have Known and Loved" is only slightly better. "All Your Arisia Are Belong To Us" is probably too dated to be cool, but not dated enough to be retro. "All My Arisias Taste Like Snow" sounds like a reference to something, but isn't as far as I can tell.

Anyone have a better idea?

In the past three days, I've delivered to the printer the Arisia Souvenir Book and Program Guide. The PG is an insert into the book, with the long program item descriptions and participant bios. Really, it was Skip's project, but I had to take over at least the delivery, in order to ensure that it matched the style and production values of the book. So I was up all night, taking changes up until 7:30, delivered to the printer's ftp site at 7:45.

Between the two, I've gotten maybe 3 nights sleep over the last week, and I'm coming down with a sudden (but well-timed) cold right now.

Check it out.

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I wouldn't ordinarily repeat something that I've linked to (albeit indirectly), but here is the workflow for the Program Guide:

1. Jack runs a couple reports on Zambia, one for the program descriptions, one for the bios.

2. He saves them to disk, opens them in Excel, performs some manipulations to strip out the html, saves them as CSV, and mails them to Skip.

3. Skip runs the csv files through a TECO filter to convert the line breaks from naked carriage return (I'm guessing Jack's on a Mac), plus other unspecified manipulations.

4. He runs the output of that through a DCL filter for more perl-like manipulations. This creates a SQL/Access-like database on the VAX, from which he generates a pair of html files. (This database also generates the CSV files for the Pocket Program, and a (different?) CSV file for the Palm Schedule.) He posts the pair of html files on his website, and sends notification email.

5. I download the html, and hand-apply some corrections I know about. (I could have just run it through diff3|ed to merge changes. Oh well.)

6. I run the patched html through a perl filter to do further manipulations and corrections, some based on demoroniser, but many specific to the way I want the text formatted. This generates yet another pair of html files.

7. InDesign can't import html directly, so I open the html in Word and save it as doc. While I'm in there, I change all paragraph styles "Normal (Web)" to "Normal".

8. By this time, I've already set up the InDesign document, and specified how I want the styles "Normal", "Heading 3", and "Heading 4" to be formatted. The doc files are "linked" to the InDesign document, so if I update the doc, I just tell InDesign to re-link, and it re-imports the files in situ, with the InDesign formatting instead of the Word formatting.

9. Then I apply Eyeball Mark 1, and tweak the formatting of individual paragraphs as needed. When I'm reasonably satisfied, I export it as pdf, and post the pdf and the corrected html to my website.

10. For last-minute changes, I edit the "source" html (from Skip), and repeat steps 6-9. The actual time from editing the input html file to posting the pdf output is about 5 minutes.

Rube Goldberg would be proud.

It was a Sunday.

1. I only ride on Sundays, so I finally got a chance to try out the bridle I bought on Tuesday. I don't know who State Line designs this stuff for, but the bit was hanging down to his front teeth on the shortest setting. I ran home for my soldering iron, and put 5 new holes on each side just to get it to fit. (Nylon webbing - foop foop foop - but the soldering iron may be trash afterwards.)

We started out 4th in a group of 5 riders, then we split off with another horse. Even though Cheyenne and Shower are Jerk-boy #1 and Jerk-boy #2, they're both better without a lot of other horses ahead of them - solo or in small groups. Shower used to be a race horse. Cheyenne - I don't know what his problem is; he came from Bobby's Ranch, so he was presumably used as a trail horse.

Anyway, with just the two of us, Jerk-boy was better behaved. He managed the slow working trot and slow working canter that I'd been working on in the ring. And he was less lathered than Shower when we got back.

2. By the time I was done at the barn, I was way late for the Arisia Debriefing. Checked the agenda - of my two jobs, one was roughly at 3:25, and I'd already missed it; the other was at roughly 4:00, and I wasn't going to get there on time. So I blew it off. There were a few people it would have been nice to see, but oh well.

3. We took out the Christmas tree. I know, I know, it's only 7 weeks after Christmas, but a few of the branches had started to get a little dry. Still better than most parking-lot trees on the day after Christmas. Tossed it on the brush pile at the back of the property, on top of the rise overlooking the swamp where they want to build 7 new McMansions. Bleh. But it was a good Christmas tree.

Arisia unemployment doesn't last long. I've agreed to be stunt double for the poor sod who agreed to take on Sign Shop at the last minute (in addition to Logistics). I have approximately no time at all to absorb miss_chance's brain, figure out what signs we have (I've got the inventory from last year, and I'll be able to take physical inventory on Thursday), and prognosticate and generate whatever we need, before Friday morning. I mean, I know it's do-able, and I know I can do it, but... I dunno, it's the Legion Of Ex-Conchairs to the rescue, again, or something.

It's over, it's done, it's finished. Mostly.

If you want to know what I've been doing for the last month instead of reading or writing LJ, have a look at this. The Arisia Souvenir Book (aka the program book) is my biggest design project to date. The first project where I've had to deal with a real printer, instead of Kinko's. The first non-class project to involve full-color full-page bleeds. Hell, it's the first thing I've done for Arisia that hasn't been in Microsoft Word. (If you want to see what it's possible to do in Word, see this.)

klingonlandlady is right - clients suck. Even when they're your friends. They change the requirements, and don't tell you when they've changed the requirements. They don't give you what you need, or give you pictures that look like ass. To be fair, I've been on concom long enough, and in enough positions, to know that most people (present company included) are doing yeoman's work; they just don't have spare cycles for extranea.

And the changing requirements are often with good reason. During the initial planning, the conchair and Publications decided that it wasn't important to have the program participant bios as part of the permanent written record of the con, but could just go on the website. It turns out that Programming, when finally consulted, felt differently, to the extent that they wanted to print their own document. I like to keep the documents focused, but I'm also opposed to proliferating documents unnecessarily, and the program book seemed like the least bad place to put the bios (not to mention the "traditional" place for them). So the...lengthy...Word doc has become 4½ pages of small and close (but not unreadable) text.

Bitching and long hours aside, I've really enjoyed this job. My minimal goals were to do a better job than the fellow who did the souvenir books for the last 4 years, and to do it on time and within budget. For 4 year running, we've been paying overtime and rush fees because D. couldn't deliver the book to the printers on time. (I'm over budget by 10%, but the only way I could have made it would have been by printing a black & white cover for the first time since '96 or so.) My real goal was to push myself, sweat the little stuff, and do as good a job as I could within the limits of my tools and talents.

So I just finished uploading to the printers' ftp server. It took 2½ hours to move 207M, so I read all of Coraline as I watched the hash marks tick by. I picked it up at Worldcon, but it fell into the new-books-to-be-read heap.

Oh yes, I almost forgot about the commas. I spent an entire afternoon proof-reading the program participant bios, mostly adding commas, occasionally removing commas. I want to put a large dish of commas in the Green Room, because these people need them (present company excepted, of course).

And another final addendum. Aside from signing off on the proofs, and receiving the books at the con, my job is finished. I have no at-con responsiblities. I don't think this will last, but it's an odd flavor, and I'm going to savor it briefly.