Kevin Standlee: Fandom Is My Way of Life

On Thursday evening, during the massive wind storm, we had the excessively delayed Amtrak train east of Fernley. We could hear the engineer through the scanner, but not the conductor on his hand-held radio, which was odd because normally we should have been able to hear both of them. Radio traffic during the storm was light, but we thought that was because there weren't many trains running due to the storm. But there was more to it than that, as Lisa discovered on Sunday.

( Wind Whipped )

With the replacement antenna in place, normal service was resumed and we soon hear the railroad radio. Indeed, the reception is a little better than usual. Besides hearing the dispatcher covering the Nevada Subdivision (former Southern Pacific) that runs in front of our house, this evening I heard the dispatcher on the Winnemucca Subdivision (former Western Pacific) telling a train crew to tie down their train at Doyle rather than continue to Reno Junction, as they had only 30 minutes of service left. She was sending a crew van to Doyle to collect them.

The loss of that antenna whip tends to confirm that this was the worst wind storm we've had since we moved here in 2011.

Lisa put up the mast and wiring for the amateur radio antenna yesterday.

( Mount Up )

After completing this work, she returned the travel trailer the 2.4 m back to where it normally sits and unhitched the Big Orange Van so that she could close the gate. We'll go looking for a new fuel transfer valve soon, but my days right now are overloaded, as one of my co-workers is on vacation and the rest of us are having to work extra hours to try and keep up.

Added: The cross-posting to LJ started working again with this post. Wonder how long it will last?

When I arrived at the office today, I had two packages: An ICOM IC-2SA radio I purchased on eBay for Lisa (the one she'd been using as a white-noise source broke last week, which is Very Bad), and a box from the John Mansfield containing the innards of one of the home versions of Match Game. The home game isn't very much like the television game, but then again, it was probably a little difficult to get enough people together to play a version equivalent to the television show.

Yesterday afternoon after lunch, I needed to run to the post office to make sure a package posted that day, and as I got in the van I turned on KNBR's The Razor & Mr. T show, where Tom Tolbert was flying solo. He started off with talk about the World Cup that raised points about the officiating to which I wanted to respond, so I called the show and got an answer right away. The show producer put me on hold, and the way Tolbert was talking, I figured I'd be the second caller he took.

( Two hours later... )

Ordinarily I wouldn't have waited that long, but since I could move around with my mobile phone while I waited and could get other things done, it wasn't so bad. It could have been embarrassing if they'd come to me at an unexpected time, however. And it was a pretty slow day at the office, too.

I have now uploaded lots more photos to my Seaside Photo Set, and I'll be calling out many of them in this post, so don't complain if you click through the cuts below. Today was a pretty good, and eventually pretty lucky day.

( Welcome to Sea-Pac )

( Kevin can't attend any event like this without thinking about conrunning )

Lisa and I made our way through the dealers and flea market tables. Lisa bought me a new belt-pouch for my mobile phone. We bought the current one from Western Case, who are here every year, but it's getting worn and I could use another one. Lisa bought electronic connectors, odd bits of electronics, and old laptop computer (original Pentium, 2 GB hard drive, Win98 OS) someone was selling for $20, and an unopened installation disk for Windows 2000, the latter being very useful on account of she has a couple of older Win2000 boxes and had no installation CD-ROM, which was worrisome if she needed to re-install the software.

Lisa says that she's not too worried about the small-capacity laptop, because she plans to run it under MS-DOS as it has a 3 1/2-inch floppy drive, and MS-DOS runs like the wind on a Pentium.

Having our hotel just over the bridge was very convenient, because we could carry our stuff back to the hotel room easily. As I mentioned in a previous message, Lisa had parked her pickup truck to show off its best assets.

( Intended to Cause Antenna Envy )

( Something Sea-Pac has in common with BayCon )

Sea-Pac has hourly prize drawings, where they post your name and/or call sign if it's drawn, and you have two hours to pick up your prize or else it's forfeited and goes back into the next draw. This is of course to make sure the attendees stick around and theoretically spend more money. Folks do wander away to have lunch and enjoy the charms of Seaside; however, things get crowded again around 2:30 for the first Special Prize Drawing, for which you must be present on the convention floor and call out quickly if your name comes up or they'll go to the next card in the draw. Prizes consist of radio-related equipment and gift certificates, but also donations from local merchants. In 2007, we won a free hotel night certificate, which I gave to one of my co-workers who lives in Vancouver WA near PDX and who let me park my van at his place for the three weeks Lisa and I were in Japan.

( Lightning Strikes Again )

After the prize drawings, we went out for lunch. We both got a big bread bowl of clam chowder. As we later were looking around Seaside, I realized that every place we've eaten lunch on Saturday of Sea-Pac for the past three years was closed the next year we were there. The latest victim was The Happy Clam located near our hotel. I said to Lisa, "Uh, oh. That means we just killed Bee Bop Burgers!'

( Going walkabout; Hardware Store; Ghost Hotel; Drizzle on the Boardwalk; Ice Cream! )

After all of our walking about, we were getting a tad footsore, and besides, it was raining harder, so we went back to the hotel by way of a final pass through the Convention Center. Things were winding down during the 4 o'clock hour. Sea-Pac is one of those events where everyone seems to think you need to be up at the crack of dawn and queued up to get in the door first thing, and the only reason to stay past noon at all is because of the 2:30 drawings.

Demand must be down here at Sea-Pac. Although both ICOM and Yeasu, major radio manufacturers, had their usual booths, a number of the dealers I've seen here each year in the past didn't come. There was one empty booth, and another had someone selling specialty food (things like gluten-free mixes and specialty dip mixes), not radios, radio-related stuff like t-shirts aimed at the radio user, or tech gadgets.

Lisa has shown great patience while I processed photos and wrote this, but we will probably go back out again. I foresee a round of miniature golf in our future, and then probably dinner. We can't stay out too late, even though it's still light out, because unfortunately things close earlier than I would like for what is supposed to be a seaside amusement resort. However, if we're really lucky, we might even get a chance to enjoy the indoor pool and hot tub, which are open until 11 but have signs that say "no children after 10 PM."

Anyone whose day normally starts, as does mine, by turning on a CBS radio affiliate has heard the CBS World News Round-Up, a morning radio news program that is a fixture of the CBS radio schedule. Yesterday, the program's regular host, Christopher Glenn, retired after 35 years with the network.

I had only just woke up yesterday when I turned the radio on to KCBS, so I may have misheard what happened, but I think what I heard on what presumably was Glenn's last broadcast was Glenn introducing a news story but instead having Charles Osgood deliver a short tribute to Glenn and wishing him a happy retirement. Glenn was apparently taken completely by surprise, and, with a catch in his voice, delivered for the last time the signature line, "Time on the Round-Up is six minutes past the hour."

Glenn's voice, but not his face, have been part of the background sound of my life going back to my childhood, as he also did In The News, a series of short news items aimed at young people and broadcast during Saturday morning cartoons when I was growing up. Mark Evanier has another take on Glenn's career on this entry on his News From ME weblog.