More Secrets of the SMOFS Revealed on Video!

I turned in the minutes of the Westercon Business Meeting (and the latest version of the Westercon Bylaws) about ten days ago, but the site administrator has not gotten around to posting them, despite e-mails and telephone calls. In any event, if you want to see exactly what happened, you can now watch the video of the Westercon Business Meeting that Lisa did for us.

The Need for Steam

Some of you will recall me saying that I was at the Great Oregon Steam Up at the Powerland Museum in Brooks, Oregon (north of Salem) last weekend. Among the various things working at the museums that make up Powerland was the SPMW 7020 Bucyrus steam crane. Here's a video of the crane in operation lifting a set of railroad trucks and setting them on the rails.

A couple of things to bear in mind while watching this: 1. The massive racket you hear when the crane is lifting the trucks is not the crane, but is from a parade of ancient farm equipment that was going on behind us. 2. Using the "big hook" for a load like this barely puts tension on the lifting chains. This crane can lift a whole lot more than they're lifting here; however, one of the the crew operating it told us that they really didn't have anything big, heavy, and handy with which to demonstrate. This crane is something you would use to lift entire locomotives that had derailed, so lifting a set of trucks is a minor accomplishment. Still, the crane is pretty impressive when it gets to puffing away.

NASFiC Masquerade

There haven't been that many reviews of NASFiC that I've seen yet, but here is one unhappy with the Masquerade. For all that I was a Worldcon division manager over a Masquerade, I don't feel that confident about replying except to correct a specific error of fact.