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I left work early on Friday and followed along on-line at home and on my phone. The last-minute items were all failing to land at the Shoe Company–the upgrade work I was supposed to do on my time-off did not get final approval. No last-minute requests or upgrades. Free, well until the approval comes. Timesheets, three weeks, done. Out-of-office message in place. Work calendar blocked and non-blocking meeting showing me out to all my work colleagues done.  Handshakes and hugs, done. Out-of-there!

We are flying to Amsterdam for the holidays on Sunday. Never done Christmas in a hotel room before. Tickets, pre-purchased and allowing us to avoid the lines, are on my phone. The international Apple plugs for my computer charger found. New around the ear noise-reducing headphones, cheap, purchased for Susie and Corwin. So I think we are ready.

The Rijksmuseum on 24th. The Van Gogh Museum on Christmas. The Rembrandt House Museum on 26th. We arrive on the 23rd and leave on the 28th. So the trip is bookended with free days; a low-stress trip.

So packing is nearly done and passports found. Euros already acquired and distributed.

I received a Christmas card from the makers of my very lovely (expensive) chess computer with wooden pieces and an electronic board.

Yes, little hats, scarfs, and Christmas sweaters for my king and queen pieces. It is the best chess machine.

I have also taken the next week off and I have all these projects to do.

My 3D printer broke, don’t ask. We have new pasts to put in.

The supercapacitor charging circuit needs just a little more work. I have already acquired the buck regulator circuit to use the supercapacitor.

So much do.

So I expect I will be dreaming of boardgames, supercapacitors, 3D printing, on the plane.

 

 

 

 

I have returned to the Hollywood Theater again. It is day 2. I started with a set of short films. The Critters was cute and funny–something unique to this form of horror. The jokes are good, and then you scream! The Hidebehind was scary for me. A man lost is suddenly haunted by a tree spirit that disappears behind trees only to reappear and harry the man again. I hope I won’t get worse agoraphobia–a still night in open spaces still scares me. Too many tornados in my childhood. But all were good. I thought one a bit long, Lane 9–but still not bad. It made a bowling ally creepy. This was used in the movie Constantine too.

Then the live H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society did a live version of the story Lurking Fear. They crowd supplies some of the sound effects. It is good fun and so well done that you can’t help enjoying it.

I also picked up my Kickstarter items. I helped fund the festival and get a few items.

Here is my Shoggoth sample (not my lunch!).

I had a long and chaotic lunch next door to the theater. The tables filled as us from the festival came in. There was one waiter! I got my order in, and it came in a slow thirty minutes. The guy next to me never had his order taken and took-off. It took me thirty minutes to pay. One group started clearing tables for them.

I sat next to a friendly couple from San Fransico who popped up to attend the festival. They have been going to these horror film festivals some time. Apparently, the California one is no longer happening, so they attend the Portland one.

I then listened to Victoria Price give a very uplifting keynote after getting seated in the theater again. She apparently finds that the horror fans are the kindest fans. Ms. Price finds it a pleasure to share her father’s life with the fans and doing horror conventions and leading tours. It was an inspirational talk with a horror fan audience. She got a standing ovation.

The next movie was one I knew staring, of course, Vincent Price. I stepped out and headed home. Stopping by to thank Victoria again. I also thanked Brian, the festival director who I often support in various Kickstart campaigns.

Got home, and Susie and Corwin decided they wanted, eye-rolling allowed a movie. And Susie wanted to see Joker! Oh my!

So we got the 10PM showing. It is a fantastic ride and too dark for me–but maybe it fits the current over rev-ing times. I cringed when the soon-to-be-joker could not get his jokes off–I never even noticed when I forgot I was watching a movie. It has been a long time since I felt like a movie put me into the story as a witness. This was no super-hero comic book guy with cool powers that we just there. This was stark and painful to watch. Maybe one of the best movies for this dark type material ever. Again, not a kids’ film and very dark and painful and immersive.

I will not return for the third day of the festival as I have much to do, and Susie misses me.

Well, I have picked up my badge, and I am in Nectar Coffee Bar, enjoying their non-pork pulled pork sandwich. Yes, spicy soy product. It is a veggy place. I also have a Cider product to go with that is not too sweet. The doors open at 6:00 PM at the Hollywood Theater here in Portland, Oregon. I will head into the line soon.

So it is time again for horror films and going for cosmic horror. No cheap scares. This stuff makes you feel like you can fall off the planet when you look up at night! When you look up, it is forever that way! Gravity feels so punny when you understand that is all that keeps you here! That is the cosmic horror these films give to me. You are scared of sharp angles and strange shadows after a few days. Anything can come from a weird angle! Did that shadow move!

The first film for me is The Colour Out of Space, which is pre-release for this version. It is one of the H.P. Lovecraft stories that still scares me.

So a few more shorts and then this film for 111 minutes I understand. Can’t wait.

But before this, I went to Dark Arbor Lodge‘s Innsmouth show. Art inspired by another H.P. Lovecraft’s story about Innsmouth. They had a lot of full-sized works. Most were for sale.

I enjoyed the small display and the fact you could buy them. I passed on the purchase of a $300 graven image of Cthulhu. I already have one!

So off to be scared out of my mind…

Breaking a rule…I have updated this blog.

The short movies were not that scary, but one of them I helped fund. The Last Incantation was a favorite of the crowd, and it was fun to see my name as a supporter! This was its premiere, and even the cast had not seen it before on a full-sized screen. The changed the demon in the story from being a snake to be crushed inside a jar–a slave of the wizard. It worked well.

Nicolas Cage starred in Color Out Of Space. This is a major horror film, and it was given a pre-release play. The director said he made it for the Portland audience and is happy to see that it is doing well for the other audiences.

I am home now, and my laundry is nearly done, I am doing the additional laundry that I found after I unloaded my suitcase and washed all of that. Soon that will be done too. I have made the coffee and had peanut butter toast. I have gone through the mail and found the check for the claim I paid for an accident in Florida–it is short $150 as the cheap-ass insurance, AIG, did not pay the handling fees for the claim from Enterprise. I backed my rented car into a parked car. I was also shocked to learn that this insurance has a maximum payout of $35,000. So if I had rolled the car in Florida, I would be out more than ten-thousand. So much for buying car coverage on Expedia. Next time I will get it through my own insurance–“Mayhem” resisting Allstate. There are always new lessons that are really the same that I already know: Don’t buy insurance from companies famous for their mistakes like AIG and not on-line from a discounting site like Expedia.

I have no plans today. Usually, I have a boardgame planned for Friday night or Saturday, but with the travel, none could be planned.

I was home about 10:30 Friday night. Airplanes and airports all worked. I did hang out in Las Vegas airport for a while watching a movie, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo (2009), and then dinner at Chili’s. I had them make me a special burger that they use to serve– chili on a cheeseburger with pickles. I flew to LAX and connected there in the former Virgin Airlines area. Delta bought Virgin, and it is going away. Nice to see a few bits of original Virgin Airlines before it disappears into Delta’s logos and processes.

Returning to Vegas, the conference ended with me see a wrapping line to get into a hands-on session. So I did not do that one but saw Peter Keller and we took in a presentation on security. Peter’s daughter is now working for SAP, daughter like father, and is specializing in security. The presentation was hard to enjoy after a short night–presenter reading all the slides in a monotone German accent, but I learned a few things. I do wonder why I am installing all some software at Nike when this presenter, a colleague of Peter’s daughter, says it is built-in and free. I see a few questions coming for Monday–maybe an email.

I had started Friday morning at 5:30, which was very early considering I did not reach my bed until after Friday has started! Friday morning, I did the usual things and then packed up and dragged my roller bags after me. Checked out. Stored bags. Off to hands-on class, registered, at 8:00 with Boris, a software product owner as SAP, on how to set-up software change process (transports in SAP Cloud Platform for those who know this stuff). The class was mostly a system admin class, and lucky for me a talented system admin (SAP BASIS for you SAP experts) sat down with me, and we were mostly able to finish the work with only one mistake–mine. I was laughing with my new friend (I have forgotten his name, maybe Venkat) as I commented on how familiar I was with the screens. We at Nike had spent weeks trying to figure them out by trial and error. My new friend watched me copy and paste and never type. He said he would start doing that too as he saw how likely a mistake was without copy and paste. I just smiled at him and reminded him I have been involved in waiting weeks for Nike and SAP to figure out the newest typo in the set-up for SAP Cloud Platform connections!

After that, I saw the line and then saw Peter walking, and he suggested we take in the security lecture. We then went for lunch at the speaker ready room, both being speakers. We meet some more SAP folks there and chatted about various random topics. Peter headed out.

Before Friday started was, of course, Thursday and it ended with a concert at Brooklyn Bowl. I and many of my friends are used to more standard concerts at SAP TechEd like a great on by Train a few years ago. Headed to a Vega styled bowling ally to hear a somewhat unknown country band was a bit of a step-down. But, John Garr Band played for almost three hours without a break and was exceptional. Most of the music was fast and played very well. It is hard to imagine for some of an Austin Texas-based country band with a full keyboard, three back-up singers who took the lead for half-a-dozen songs, three horns, and the normal drummer and base. It was a full sound and done with skill! We stayed for the full set.

SAP had the Brooklyn Bowl for just the SAP crowd. Booze and snacks all free. Of course, free bowling–I never left the bar.

After the show and as folks were leaving, people stopped me and told me how much they liked my Python presentation on Wednesday. That made it a grand night, indeed.

Brooklyn Bowl is in the Linq complex in Las Vegas. I have been there with my family. Susie’s family used to live in Vegas–they moved to New Hampshire. I had forgotten about the locally priced (that is not priced-for-expense-reports food) and had great pizza here and bought a cute wool hat for Susie and its required hatbox. Michael and I looked at the prices for Gordon Ramsey’s Fish and Chips and only wished we had checked this out sooner–better and vastly cheaper.

Which all is moot as the next SAP Teched will be in November and in Austin, Texas. That was announced and explained the choice of John Garr Band. Next year in Texas!

On Thursday morning I got started a bit later than Friday but started to pack a bit already. I also had a presentation. Peter and I held the ASUG Influence Council meeting at 9:30 and had about eight people–all shared their needs for test data. Peter and I went over how we can influence SAP, thus the name of the meeting, to develop a new solution for test data. I got their emails and will meet off-line next month or so. Excellent!

After that lunch and meeting more folks on the floor. Folks again stopped me and thanked me for getting them to look at Python and Machine Learning!

Returning to classes, I am working with master data governance and thought it good to try out a class. So I walked into another hands-on, and these folks work with our SAP folks at Nike for data governance. It was fun to try out all their new stuff. I learned about the ability to automatically have some data in the SAP Cloud Platform instead of building it myself, which I even have stories for in the current workload for developers. I see a proof-of-concept (POC) in my near future at Nike!

I walked into another hands-on after that. I invited Michael G to join me. We took a tour of using SAP Data Hub for data governance and what I call data purification. The software allows you to make changes to the data to make it better and to automate this. The example is to normalize the country code of ‘USA’ to ‘US’, for example. Michael and I had not considered this option before. It presents us with some exciting choices. More POC!

From there, instead of going to Linq and having good food and locally priced food–only if we had known–we went to SugarCane at the hotel. The food was small plates and very tasty. It was not inexpensive.

And that brings me to the end of the trip. Here in Reedville, Oregon finishing up the laundry and dishes. It is good to be home.

And I have all those games to get too…