Kevin Standlee: Fandom Is My Way of Life

I woke up around 0530 this morning, having slept around seven hours. I did not have to check out until 1100, so I could have gone back to sleep for a while, but I decided that it was in my best interest to get back on my normal work schedule. While I was in the UK, I was sleeping in each morning, starting mid-morning or sometimes as late as Noon, but tomorrow I'm back on "normal" hours.

Not being in any rush, I finally got the WiFi in the room working (I couldn't actually connect last night) and wrote yesterday's entry, backdating it to last night before I went to bed. I had a couple of cups of coffee, got showered, packed up my bags, and checked out of the hotel.

As I was packing, I realized that my initial plan to take a taxi to the Amtrak station to collect the minivan (which I'd made before booking into the SureStay) was a waste of money and energy. There is a Reno Transit District bus that runs past the airport and goes to the Central Bus Terminal, which is a block from the train station and from where the Astro was parked. So I stored my luggage with the hotel and walked to the bus stop.

( Slowing Working my Way Homeward )

Initially everything went fine on the home network. Unfortunately, after a short time the network went down. Investigating things, I found the lights were off on the cable modem. All of them, even the power light. I tried plugging the modem into another known good power outlet, and nothing happened. So I concluded that the modem was dead.

Having a dead modem was not really something I wanted to have to deal with after a seven-week vacation, especially given that I need to go back to work (online) tomorrow morning. I got the computers running somewhat by bridging my smartphone, but that's not ideal and it's slow. The cable modem was out of warranty, so I ordered a new one (the old model isn't made anymore) from Best Buy and went back to Reno. Again, this is not something I wanted to have to do.

Returning home, I set to work trying to get the new cable modem to work. Unfortunately, now it looks like tonight that Spectrum Internet has a website outage and all of the support options come down to something along the lines of "not tonight, I have a headache." Also the manufacturer's installation instructions seem to assume that of course everyone has a wi-fi-enabled home network, which we do not (and that Lisa does not want). So at least for tomorrow I'll be stuck with the slow bridge over the phone until I can (I hope) work with Spectrum to figure out how to make the Arris modem (which says on the label that it's compatible with Spectrum) to work.

Tonight, however, I am home. This is the final installment of my 2024 Worldcon travel story. Lisa is still in Europe, though (she went to see the Wuppertal suspended monorail today), so there will be different travel tales (and stories of my doing my travel agent act) to come.

This afternoon after lunch, I saw that a fleet of buses had taken up residence across the street.

( Burning Buses Ahead )

As I walked back from the post office, the fleet, now back under way, passed me heading east on Main Street, and I could see (but was not quick enough to photograph) the Black Rock City Transit sign on the buses. I speculate that the drivers had parked where they did so they could go have lunch.