That Would Have Been Embarrassing

I realized this morning that I hadn't booked my flight to SMOFCon in Columbus yet. It would have been embarrassing (and expensive) had I not remembered until, say, the week before the con. To my relief, I found some quite-reasonable airfares, eventually settling on a $260 fare on United SFO-CMH via Denver outbound and O'Hare returning. The outbound trip is at 7:42, so if I want to take transit, I'll have to be on the first BART train of the day, the 4 AM out of Fremont. The $25 BART parking + $15 BART fare is still cheaper than driving to SFO and parking for five days, though.

And none of them are on RJs -- the smallest plane involved is a 737 from Denver to Columbus, and the largest is a 777 from ORD to SFO. All of the flights had plenty of seats, and I was thus able to book my preferred seats -- with me having an aisle to my right -- on all four legs.

Lisa still says she wants to drive back out there, but only if she can get the transmission replaced on her little pickup. That's one of the tasks on the agenda for my trip to Oregon the week of October 12-18.

More Repairs

It's ironic that the mechanic who I trust to not mislead me and generate unnecessary repairs had to call me today and tell me, "When we pulled off the pieces that we could see were worn out and replaced them, we found another problem." In this case, it looks like the intake manifold gasket is leaking, and it's going to be another $500-600 on top of what I've spent so far to repair it. Ouch! But I know he wouldn't do this to pad his bill, so if it needed it, it needed it. Indeed, from certain handling characteristics during our trip to Denver (such as lack of power in specific cases), it's probably needed this work for a while now.

It's a pity I didn't win that Rav4 at the Giants Fan Appreciation Day.

Silicon Membership Available

Lisa called this afternoon. Her tinnitus is so bad that she said she can't come to Silicon because she can't sleep and the noise is driving her mad. I have an appointment to take her for an MRI on October 13, after I drive up there the previous weekend. At this point, I hope they do find something amiss so that there's some hope of treatment.

Anyway, as Lisa is not coming, she won't be able to use her membership. Anyone need a membership to Silicon?

Update, 22:00: The membership is spoken for, assuming Silicon's Registration people can take my word on it -- there's no way I can get anything in writing from Lisa in time, and she doesn't do e-mail. But I'm the person who bought the membership in the first place, and I think Silicon's management knows me.