The plan is nearly complete and the preparation is well under way. I've partnered with  joestrike for this odyssey.

Day 1 Thursday May 28
The first few hours will be interstate to get away from New York, then old US route 6 west across Pennsylvania to visit Kinzua Bridge State Park on the way to a free campground near the Allegheny Reservoir.

Day 2 Friday May 29
Proceed west through Cleveland Ohio and visit the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame, then on to Ft. Wayne, Indiana and stay with friends overnight.

Day 3 Saturday May 30
Have lunch with friends at the Blue Box Café in Elgin, Illinois. Continue northwest to Madison, Wisconsin and stay with friends overnight.

Day 4 Sunday May 31
Take a break from driving. Spend one more day and night in Madison.

Day 5 Monday June 1
Onward to visit friends in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Day 6 Tuesday June 2
Southwest to Vermillion, South Dakota for overnight camping.

Day 7 Wednesday June 3
West to visit Ashfall Fossil Beds, Nebraska, a prehistoric Pompeii of animal remains buried in volcanic ash 12 million years ago. Continue southwest, tacking across the grid of farmland to a campground in North Platte NE.

Day 8 Thursday June 4
Interstate west to Denver, Colorado. Overnight at a Motel in Lakewood CO. Swim in the pool.

Day 9 Friday June 5
Relax in the Denver area for a day. Have the TARDIS serviced to ensure she’s fit to cross the mountains and the desert. Overnight camp free further west near Keystone CO.

Day 10 Saturday June 6
Now we’re in the West; daily pace slows down. Drive westward through Glenwood Canyon following the Vanishing Point route: Hanging Lake Park, No Name and Rifle CO. Continue west to camp at the Colorado National Monument near Fruita CO.

Day 11 Sunday June 7
Resume following the Vanishing Point route through Cisco, Utah. Onward through Green River UT, then south to Goblin Valley. Overnight free campground at Temple Mountain.

Day 12 Monday June 8
Wind southeast to Goosenecks State Park, Utah, a free campground on the rim of a canyon.

Day 13 Tuesday June 9
Southwest through Monument Valley Utah/Arizona to Lone Rock Beach campground on the western shore of Lake Powell. Fun fact: this was the location of Lake Silencio in Doctor Who.

Day 14 Wednesday June 10
West to Las Vegas, Nevada with a detour through either Rockville or Valley of Fires State Park.

Day 15 Thursday June 11
Stay in Las Vegas until afternoon. Head northwest to the ghost town Rhyolite NV, then drive through Death Valley California to overnight at the Mesquite Spring campground.

Day 16 Friday June 12
Head north through Goldfield, Nevada to pick up the Vanishing Point route in reverse to Tonopah NV. Visit a dry lake nearby, then head west again to overnight at a hot tub campsite in Benton Hot Springs California.

Day 17 Saturday June 13
A short side trip to the ghost town of Bodie CA, then take the Tioga Pass across the Sierra Nevada range through Yosemite National Park. Camp overnight near Groveland CA.

Day 18 Sunday June 14
West to visit Oakland CA, Berkley, then northward to camp near Calistoga in the Napa Valley.

Day 19 Monday June 15
Take another break from driving too much and enjoy the San Francisco Bay Area, staying with friends in Oakland overnight.

Part 2: The Way East coming soon

Seeing a recent image of a salesperson's sample case brought back an unpleasant memory.

Anyone here who used to be a Boy Scout or a Girl Scout may remember being compelled to participate in fund raising chores. For Girl Scouts, traditionally, it's been selling cookies. Or selling orders for cookies to be shipped to the buyer. In my day (late 1970s) kids in school would sometimes be selling candy bars and M&Ms for 50 cents a pop, usually to support extra-curricular activities like the ski club or other sports. Candy bars tended to sell themselves as impulse buys from hungry kids with pocket change; pretty easy. I remember we tried to persuade our Scoutmaster that was the route we should take as well, but instead he chose Tom-Wat fundraising. This involved each of us going door-to-door with a large cardboard sample case full of useless kitschy trinkets and persuading strangers to place orders to Tom-Wat for the items they wanted. If we really lived in a Norman Rockwell painting this would have worked out okay, but in 1980 this was an undignified, time-consuming, needlessly complex way to raise a few measly dollars for scouting, and I wouldn't call the experience character-building. Dammit, we should've just sold candy bars like everyone else instead of pretending to live in Mayberry.

I won't link to it because it's obviously monetized and don't want to give him more hits. it already has 7.5 million.
The channel is QuietAssassins, a young man based in Austin TX with a microphone and an assistant working the camera who, in his own words, goes around F**king with People. Apparently harassing strangers on camera is a lucrative pastime, and allegedly funny. Who knew? He's Allen Funt's bastard grandchild or something.
I've never bothered to hit the Report button over any video until I saw this; citing him for abusive content. I encourage anyone else who stumbles across his channel to do the same.

Because I want it badly enough and still have the resources to make it happen. Why wait another year and a half, or two? I've already waited long enough. I owe it to myself. When my bad news came last week I was already planning a day-to-day itinerary. Besides, I may no longer have the same confidence in the TARDIS' roadworthiness if I wait for another year or two.

Being out of work for some time next year is something that I can turn to my advantage. I should be able to seek part-time employment in the winter and spring, and when the weather warms up in May go road tripping for as long as I like. I'll seek full-time work when it's over.

For now, anyway. I was given discouraging news this morning. My workplace is closing in three months, so the job I planned on taking a vacation from next summer won't be there come January 20. This means either taking my summer-planned trip in winter (not half as much fun, I figured on camping many nights.) Or get a new job right away if I'm lucky (I'm not that lucky) and build up a year's worth of good will at it to be allowed a 5-week trip in the following year.

Dark Horse's hardcover edition appeared in bookstores this past Wednesday. Neal Adams took an active part in translating the comic.

I didn't know until recently that European publisher Dargaud produced trailers for comic albums:

I'm planning the Great American Road Trip - and YOU can be part of it!

This is something I've wanted to do for many years but never quite found the time or resources until now. Ideally, one does this while still young, a rite of passage, a voyage of self-discovery. Im no longer so young, and I think I pretty well know who I am - a big pussy, and I'm okay with that. This is one for the bucket list, and I plan to do it before I turn 50 next year. The idea is to pilot the TARDIS across the North American continent and back - while I still have confidence in its long-range roadworthiness - and visit points of interest and friends/acquaintances between New York and California. See the West I've only seen in movies and television. Make believe I'm Kerouac or Kowalski. Get off the high-speed interstates and onto the old highways frequently for a more authentic experience.

I'm planning to take around 5 or 6 weeks off - they like me at work, and I'll still have a job when I get back - through all of June and into early July 2015, attending Anthrocon in Pittsburgh on the way back east.

There is a lot of logistical planning to do: budgeting for fuel/food/lodging/camping and other fun. Making the TARDIS comfortable enough for long hours on the road. Coming up with an itinerary of destinations that can be visited in the allotted time, avoiding the kitschier Americana and crowd-attracting tourist traps. And, of course, dropping in on you for a visit if I'm passing through your stomping grounds, and maybe picking up traveling companions for a stretch in either direction.

Feedback and planning suggestions/aids are welcome, as well as advice from those who have done this kind of thing before.

I'm plugging the latest Blacksad book, Amarillo. It's the first book in the entire series that made me give a damn about it's protagonist, and it's not John Blacksad - he's way overshadowed here by the real protagonist, Chad Lowell.

Amarillo has been out for months already but I just found it during a short trip overseas. The English translation is out next month.

I'd like to go, but last year I went alone and, despite making friends at the event, felt alone.

http://longislanddoctorwho.com/ November 7 - 9 Ronkonkoma NY
They have no forum or bulletin board and ask for communication via social media which I don't do.

Who's interested in going? Who's already going? 3 - day memberships are running out and the main hotel sold out in June.
I'm looking for someone who can share a room; I can provide transportation. Travel with me from New York and you'll arrive in a TARDIS!

Because online transactions are 1n$3cur3.

I am figuring out what steps are necessary to close every online bill payment option I have used, clear all bank account and credit card information from the online record, and go back to using paper bills, paper checks, envelopes and stamps. I'm fed up.

When we're all being advised to change all our passwords again because hackers stole thousands or a billion username/password combinations for the third time in the span of a year, I no longer trust any online bill collection system. My answer is to take as much of that stuff back offline as possible.

Red Hook NY, July 26.

There's no one to actually complain to, so here's a short rant (cut me some slack, I've never made a pointless journal rant like this before and don't expect to again):

I bought the TARDIS car two years ago and, just for fun, sprang extra for personalized registration plates. In my state the fee is $60. Not cheap but not exorbitant, and understandable to some extent since they are a custom order and not just dealt like a random card off the top of the deck like the regular alphabet soup registration plates are.

Here's the ripoff though: Time to renew registration, and $62.50 has been added to the bill as a "2 year Special Plate Fee". This is about as rippy as ripoffs get since the plates are already made, not being custom ordered again. I checked the DMV website and the renewal fee is listed there as well. Fuck you very much, Commissioner of Motor Vehicles.

Anybody have a knack for scratch-building a small circuit board?

My TARDIS car is being upgraded. I mean to build a roof light that flashes at about the same rate as the TARDIS roof light seen on the show. I work in a lighting shop and will have no trouble scratch-building a lamp & lens housing that contains a bulb and socket atop a very squat base that will house the electronics and a DC battery pack, the bottom magnetically secured to the roof.

I'm imagining a bayonet-mount automotive bulb & socket - could be an LED bulb - and a 6v, 9v 0r 12v power requirement. No corded power supply, possibly a wireless remote on/off switch. Base about 5.5 inches in diameter.

http://tardisbuilders.com/index.php?topic=616.90

There is a forum where people have shared their Tardis-building efforts. There is a wiring diagram that is built around a 555 timer chip, but scratch-building that is a bit beyond me. I could assemble it if it was in kit form.

It doesn't have to keep perfect synch with the sound effect, so no sound-actuated effect is desired in the circuit.

EDIT 2 days later: after looking around on ebay I think I've found the electronics needed.

If you have a fondness for the original Star Trek TV series you may remember 1966 as the year it premiered. Gene Roddenberry showed it at the World Science Fiction Convention shortly before it aired on television. Star Trek's anniversaries have always been marked from that year onward.

But the spring of '64 was fifty years ago, when Roddenberry began pitching his series concept to the networks. Through the summer into early fall, the pilot episode script was developed from outline to teleplay, by which time a cast, crew and shooting sets were being assembled. The pilot episode was shot in two and one-half weeks following Thanksgiving that year, and the special effects models of the Enterprise were built and delivered in December.

The network rejected the pilot but not the series, and a new pilot episode was shot in 1965 starring William Shatner. The rest is history.

In its current state, the "new" Star Trek has told two very adversarial stories - there's a powerful bad guy our heroes have to defeat. I challenge the current franchise to do something truly daring and retell a story like The Cage, if they have it in them.

...favorites you got...

Would you still use it?

Those things shouldn't matter, and I wouldn't miss 'em if they stopped keeping count. I'd like to have the option to be able to turn that display off. That shouldn't be the reason why you're here, and if it is, you might not belong here in the first place. Sharing furry content online isn't a contest to see who's the biggest attention whore, and if it is to you, you're probably missing the point.

The last journal off my page, been there long enough.

A long time ago I thought of the fantasy of turning back the clock to an earlier time in my life, and then moving forward again armed with some foreknowledge. I think it may be a common fantasy, but it's not often dwelt upon because there's no point to it. But it can be a deeply felt fantasy, one that stays with you, as it has with me. Not a week goes by that some thought of it doesn't enter my mind. For most of my life I've been dreaming of a replay where I'm wiser than I was before. Sometimes, I wish for this impossible dream very strongly.

My fantasy has an exact date in mind: Christmas Eve, 1972. Exactly forty years ago. I'm seven years old, a little boy with glasses moving with the family from public housing in Brooklyn to a newly bought suburban house, forty miles away in Spring Valley. Leaving home and school to a place where everything is new, it's the best place to re-insert myself into my own life - there's nothing immediate to remember, just pay attention and become re-introduced to the new neighborhood and school. Because that's where, I feel, something went wrong for me, and when I started picking up what would become lifelong asocial habits.

Entering in the middle of a second grade class, I no longer memorized the names of every classmate, nor got to know most of them. This didn't improve with third of fourth grade. I had childhood friends on my street, but not really ever in school. When that school closed and students were assigned to other local schools, the re-adjustment there went no better. I was allowed to be shy and naive, and not encouraged to be assertive, so by the end of elementary school I was an easy mark for teasing and petty bullying - rarely the physically threatening kind, but that cropped up a few times in junior high. I wasn't encouraged to defend myself - a very serious mistake, I think. Cub Scout and Boy Scout involvement helped some, but I was too easily picked on in that environment as well. I didn't play with other kids at recess. Public school experience taught me to find peace in solitude, and to prefer it. That's when this fantasy first came to me.

As a result, I missed out on a lot of things. Hanging out and partying. Going to live music shows - who wants to go alone? Never dating - there was one fling in high school, but only one, and I remained a virgin. No prom for me. This asocial pattern continued through art college, which I commuted to from home every day like a job - economically convenient at the time, but another mistake not to get out on my own. And the pattern remains throughout adult life.

Art college did get me involved in fandom, which I'm grateful for, otherwise I'd have had no social life at all. Even then, I find it very hard to mingle with strangers at conventions and feel alone without people I already know. I dislike "networking" and taking a genuine interest in other people doesn't come easily.

Tomorrow is Christmas Eve. It's important to me not to mistake illusions for reality, but it's strange how I cling to this one.

How do you measure your age? How old do you think you are? I think it's not just by counting years alone. Young and old are relative terms.

I measure my age better in comparison to other people I've seen, older, younger or close to my own age. An interesting measure that works for me is to observe the age of fictional characters on television: over time I grow older, but through perpetual re-runs the characters on T.V. always stay the same.

It was easy when I was a child. Most everybody on T.V. was a grownup, except for the kids on The Partridge Family and The Brady Bunch and Zoom. When I was ten years old, Star Trek re-runs still showed a thirty-five year old Captain Kirk. I wouldn't be thirty-five years old until 2000 (or rather, "The Year 2000" as it was always phrased, like some magical place that would someday exist) only after a quarter century had passed. When M*A*S*H went into syndicated re-runs I was fourteen and every cast member was a grown-up much older than myself, even Radar, a nineteen year old character being played by a balding actor in his mid-thirties by the time he quit.

Eventually I had to grow as old or older than many of the familiar characters I knew. Middle age? I'd always heard it spoken of, but it never felt like it would be me next. I didn't gain weight. I stayed fairly young-looking, and dressed in young men's styles. But I still became older than Captain Kirk. I found lots of gray hair on the floor after visiting the barber shop, and a bald spot inexorably revealed itself. Most recently, it became too tough to read small type without the aid of glasses. It dawned on me that I was growing older than many of the familiar characters on M*A*S*H. I had reached the same stated age as Colonel Blake, so I was even older than Frank Burns.

How the hell did I become older than Frank Burns!?

The most recent comparison to observe is Doctor Who. I've made a hobby of cosplaying the centuries-old character as portayed by David Tennant. By now the players on T.V. start out younger than me. I already am and always will be six years older than David, and by now I'm twelve years older than when he began the role. So how old am I now?

I don't feel old yet, but I'm starting to feel too old to feel young.

The nearby Gowanus canal overflowed last night; the end of my block disappeared under the water. We can expect more of this in the coming years.
The neighborhood is fighting developers plans to turn two nearby blocks facing the canal from low-rise industrial structures into rental housing with buildings up to 12 stories tall, bringing an additional 1000 residents into those two blocks.

Help! I can't find the control panel for that.

I am trying.

After more than a year.
I'd run out of prepared materials back then and focused on other things for awhile, but there's a lot more coming.

Yay! After being delayed for six weeks over the summer (I wanted to rid my computer of a rootkit virus before continuing any large file sized projects) I finally got this PMV done and uploaded last week. I was afraid someone else would have beaten me to it by now.




If you don't understand what Daicon is, the video is modeled after the Daicon IV Opening Animation short film from 1983. It's a fan-produced film for a science fiction convention and a lot of fun to watch.




I wanted to duplicate some of the visual cues and accents that fans of the original would notice.

Definitely one of the hilights of my visit to the con!

Time to laugh at the other guys for a change.