Kevin Standlee: Fandom Is My Way of Life

It was a close-run thing, but I got my personal computer (with the video editing software) back in time to put together the October Railway Legends, Myths, and Stories. Our original plan had been for me to edit it while we were traveling, but the problem with the computer that turned out to be caused by the swollen battery put paid to that and I had to wait until I got home and got the machine repaired. Here's a story about our visit to the North Dakota Railroad Museum in Mandan, North Dakota, with a bit at the end about stopping by the park in Bismark where the state's Merci Car is on display.



Those of you who follow me regularly here may remember me writing about this while we were on our way to Winnipeg for NASFiC.

As some of you may recall, my computer started making unhappy fan noises during the Worldcon trip (starting in Iceland) and then would not boot at all. Dell tech support got it so it would boot again, but several days later, and agreed that they would repair it under the extended-warranty plan for which I'm paying, but that I'd have to send it back to them from within the USA. So I struggled along for a few more days, but at one point the computer seemed to quit completely. This means I couldn't do the edits to take the raw Business Meeting video from the final day, stitch the large files together, then compile it down to a single smaller file. I gave up and didn't try to start the computer again until after I got home.

It's a good thing that we already had a finished episode of Railway Legends, Myths, and Stories complete and uploaded for posting at the start of September, because I would not have been able to edit and upload one in August. Even if I had a finished episode, I wouldn't have been able to upload it from my work computer, because while I can watch YouTube videos on it, I can neither see or make comments, nor can I upload videos, as part of the company's policies. It's their machine and their rules, and I'm not complaining. Oddly enough, they don't prohibit me posting photos (or video) to my Flickr account, which is good because I uploaded more than a thousand photos during the trip, and shared some of them with my co-workers (who didn't complain, other than to express envy) while I was working remotely during the trip.

A few days ago, I contacted Dell, who re-opened the case about my computer. We did managed to get the machine to boot, which was a relief because it seems I didn't fry the processor after all. However, the fan is still giving trouble. There's a separate issue about the touchpad I'd forgotten to raise with them, but we went through the tests and they agreed that something was wrong there. Since I have to send it for repair anyway, it's another thing than they can check.

Dell support sent me a prepaid FedEx Priority Overnight shipping box, which I received yesterday on my way back from the Urgent Care center. I packaged up the computer and power supply and took it over to the office-supply store that is the FedEx shipping point in Fernley. As it happens, I had to go back over to that shopping center, which includes Renown Urgent Care, because I'd left my reusable mug in the examination room. To my relief, the mug was sitting at the front desk. I then dropped off the computer. It was before the FedEx pickup time, so it should be in Dell's hand's by Monday. It should take around a week for them to work on it and return it to me. With luck, it will be back in time for me to edit the October RLMS. I also plan to edit together a single, smaller file of the final day of the 2024 WSFS Business Meeting.

While I have one episode of Railway Legends, Myths, and Stories in the can, I am trying to see if I can get another one finished before we leave on Thursday so that I can get it uploaded by then, and it will then post without me having to worry about finishing the editing while on the road.

Meanwhile, I'm sure glad I've got enough miles to buy my flight home from the UK, because a one-way ticket from LHR to RNO is looking like around $3200. I have enough miles to bring that down to about $200 in fees. That is, if United's website actually lets me buy the ticket, which it did not do today. Maybe it's still suffering from a case of CloudStrike. We'll try again tomorrow.

Taking advantage of two odd-looking maintenance-of-way vehicles that were parked at Hazen (east of Fernley) and Thisbe (west of Fernley), Lisa and I did some research and some field work, and she wrote an episode that posted yesterday about a thing that looks like a locomotive but officially is not.



It's a good thing that I uploaded this a while ago with a July 1 release date, because, despite Spectrum Internet's reassurances, our internet continued to go up and down (mostly down) all day yesterday, so I would have had a hard time uploading the episode.

This month's Railway Legends, Myths, and Stories is about why trains are such a good form of transportation; indeed, the most efficient form of land transportation. This ends up including a lot of information about wheel bearings, which lets us use some of our field-work looking at railroad equipment. One thing we've never seen in person is an overheated bearing (hotbox), which is probably just as well, because hotboxes (such as the one pictures in the video preview) are a Bad Thing and can lead to derailments and worse.

As I mentioned, we shot the studio portion of an episode of Railway Legends, Myths, and Stories yesterday. Today I spent most of the afternoon doing the editing, which included finding photos to fill in places where we didn't already have pictures. Also, I had to do some audio editing. There was a place where I appear to have burped between two words. As long as I had a picture under which the narration ran, I was able to cut out the space in the audio track and carefully put the track back together so you couldn't hear the pause. Even though I knew where it was, it was hart to point it out to Lisa. She certainly didn't hear it when we were going through the final cut. If I hadn't been able to fix it, I might have needed to re-record the narration.

Editing is hard, and because these videos are a hobby, not my job, the most that I currently think I can get done averages one per month. Those people whose Day Jobbe is making videos can both spend more time on it and also are sufficiently experienced that they're not as slow as I am about it.

Our goal is to get enough episodes done that we are at least one or two episodes ahead and that we can start publishing monthly again at the beginning of next month. If we get far enough ahead, we can consider publishing more often. For example, we do want to do two or three episodes about the trip to Churchill last summer, and that might be a case where we can get three done at once and release them all relatively close to each other.

Yesterday, we recorded the "studio" portions of three episodes of Railway Legends, Myths, and Stories. One of these will come out soon, as it was the result of our encounter with a stuck grade crossing when we went to Yerrington to retrieve the Astro and we think it should go first. The others will come out sooner, or later; however, one of our goals is to try and build up a back-stock of episodes for periods when we're not able to make new ones, just as this summer when we're traveling.

I initially had hoped to work on at least one future episode of Railway Legends, Myths, and Stories this weekend, but two different non-profit groups on which I sit are holding meetings this weekend, one on Saturday and one on Sunday, and I have a feeling that I'm going to be sufficiently busy from that to keep me away from the railroad. On the bright side, the groups didn't schedule their meetings simultaneously, but on consecutive days.

Travel in November-December blew an entire episode of Railway Legends, Myths, and Stories, but we did manage to put together this year's Holiday Special.



This episode is model trains around the base of the tree, steam trains around the grounds of the Nevada State Railroad Museum, and pictures of Kuma Bear. Getting the steam train footage was why we went to the NSRM last weekend.

We're back on schedule with Railway Legends, Myths, and Stories, and that means a new episode. This month, we're looking back a hundred years to take a look at Buster Keaton's movie Our Hospitality, which itself hearkens back around a hundred years earlier, and includes lots of (recreated) vintage railroad action. I didn't know until researching some of the material upon which we were commenting that the railroad scenes were mostly shot around Truckee, California. While watching the movie in preparation for commenting on it, I thought a lot of the scenery looked familiar.



I reviewed the script for next month's episode yesterday. There will be challenges because I'm going to be in China for around ten days in the middle of the month, but it should be possible to get it done by the end of October.