Hugo Nominations Done

I managed to get my ballot done and submitted yesterday, so I made it before Deadline Day, and the Denvention Three web site does appear to have accepted it. It's hard to say for certain because it doesn't e-mail you back a confirmation including how you voted.

If you haven't nominated yet, and if you were a member of D3 as of January 31, 2008, or of Nippon 2007, you still have until midnight tonight (one minute after 23:59 hours) to submit your ballot. Go to the Hugo Nominations page and get that ballot submitted today! If you don't know your Hugo PIN, follow the directions on the web page for PIN recovery and stand over your e-mail waiting for a response from D3. I hope that whoever they have watching the PIN-recovery e-mail is sticking close to his/her mail for these last few hours and responding quickly. If my experience as Hugo Administration in 2002 is any guide, there will be people frantically trying to recover their PINs right up until the last few minutes.

Going Nowhere

There were many places I could have gone this weekend. I've been invited to parties, and Potlatch is going on, and so on. But I've declined all invitations, and I'm staying home all weekend. I've been traveling too much lately and I'm tired. And I have a lot of backed-up work that needs doing. I'm going to do my income taxes (and those of my grandfather, from whom I picked up the necessary papers while passing through Sutter on my way back from Oregon). And I'm going to finish the minutes of the last SFSFC Board of Directors meeting. I actually wrote most of them on a plane flight months ago, but since I wasn't on-line, I didn't finish them off and upload them to SFSFC's web site. However, because I'd finished the difficult part of typing up my notes, actually finishing the job went out of my head until I had to send out the meeting notices for the March SFSFC Board meeting. Oops.

My thanks to all of you who have invited me to your parties/conventions/etc. I hope y'all will understand why this is a stay-at-home weekend for me. One exception: the weather looks decent (albeit windy), so I will get out for a walk around Quarry Lakes after lunch this afternoon, I think.

Why Is This a Difficult Concept?

I just replied to this comment complaining about how you have to join Worldcon in order to vote for the Hugo Awards, which led off with "But I don't have to pay to vote for my government officials." This is not the first time that I've heard someone trot this out. I'll repeat here what I said there:

That's right, you don't. That's because "paying membership dues" is not one of the requirements for being a citizen of your country. But WSFS isn't a country. It's a club. If you want to join a club, you have to meet that club's membership requirements.

Why is the concept of having to pay membership dues to be a member of a club, and having to be a member of a club in order to vote on things that club decides, such a difficult concept for some people? Are these people who have never in their lives joined a club or society, have never had to pay membership dues, and simply assume that if the word "vote" is involved, it must be free to anyone who wants it just because voting for public officials doesn't have a direct cost associated with it?

I actually understand the "It costs too much" complaint. That can be translated as "The amount you're charging for membership is more than the value I place on the things I get from that membership." There's nothing inherently wrong with that; it's an economic value judgment like every other decision we make about what to buy or not buy. It's what sounds to me like whining that "but I want it, so it shouldn't cost me anything!" that gets on my nerves, because it's childish.

The Ballot Box is Here

The ballot box I ordered for use at Costume-Con and offered to Westercon and Worldcon for use in their elections arrived today. It looks good, and looks large enough to accommodate any election we're likely to hold.

The box came with a separate bracket for holding an 8 1/2 x 11-inch sign. To attach it, I had to uncover the two strips of adhesive and gently press the bracket to the box. I then tipped the box on its back to better secure the bracket. To my annoyance, I saw that a little speck of lint had managed to slide up under the lower of the two strips. Fortunately, the glue hadn't hardened completely, and I was able to get up in there with a knife and pick the lint out before finishing the job. With a completely clear plastic box, there's no room to hide mistakes.

I will save the packing material that came with the box. (In fact, I put it back in the packaging after checking it out and mounting the bracket.) This will almost certainly be the easiest way of transporting the box in the future, and will assure that it stays relatively safe. It is a tad bulky, although I should be able to store stuff inside the box while transporting it, which makes it less of a waste of space.