Daily Doings at the Line of Death Bar & Grill

I had a good time.

Oh, more than that?

I was responsible for running Events again this year and as nearly as I can tell, things generally went well, aided and abetted by Dave Ifversen and the rest of the tech crew, who spent a *lot* of time in there keeping the sound running. Logistics stepped up to help with some of the set changes for the stage (which I tried to minimize) and I'm also thankful for that, because Dave does not have enough people to manage moving all of the things that need to be moved.

We have learned things about the space we were in this year which will help inform decisions for next year, which is good. Got to keep learning!

And thanks to our Chair, Austin, for trusting me to keep things running.

Little bits and pieces: we had a *lot* of music on the Main Stage this year. I ended up doing a concert with Amy McNally to cover for a late cancellation and that was a *lot* of fun. I always enjoy getting a chance to play with Amy and it looked like the folks there had a fine time as well. The last time we played a concert together at Windycon was in 2021 when we had another late cancellation.

(I note that the only concerts that I have had in some time are ones that I schedule myself for. I hope to break this string some time soon. :) )

Thanks to the efforts of our Special Guest Spinneret, we had the Cosplay Runway back this year. This makes me happy, because it's a good way to start getting Windycon back in the habit of having a costume event.

We had Music GoH Mary Crowell doing so *many* things, including her own concert, and then a concert with the Three Weird Sisters, and providing music for SpaceTime Theater's run at "Whose Line Is It Anyway?" And there was the Klingon Pop Warrior, and Moebius Theatre's 50th Anniversary Show, and Bill Higgins' presentation on the Whirlibirds of Titan, and Cheshire Moon, and Observations, and Bed and Breakfast, and Tom Smith...

And K put together another video for Opening Ceremonies, so we have now done that two years in a row, which makes it a Tradition. If we can manage this a third time, it will be a Sacred Tradition, or so I recall. And we had a good bunch of guests, who acquitted themselves well at Opening and Closing Ceremonies.

We were busy. :)

The Art Auction was relatively short, but everyone seemed to have fun. I bounced in and out, because we had a surplus of auctioneers, including K who was again part of Dr. Bob's crew. And I had Three Weird Sisters across the hall to check in on.

I am sure that there were other panels going on around the convention. I just never got *near* any of them. :) This is one of the hazards of having a table in the Dealers' Room, although Gretchen and K spent a *lot* of time handling that. I am thinking of buying Gretchen a new phone, because her older model is not getting along perfectly with Square, but that is a problem for another day.

Maybe tomorrow, given our proximity to OVFF.

Sales were *meh*. Although attendance was up a bit from last year, our sales were down a good bit and not *all* of that was falloff from not having a new album available this time around. I have heard from other dealers (both first and second-hand) that their sales were also in the *meh* zone. So we ended up losing some money on the con, but *most* of the cons that we go to are at least mildly in the red. If it weren't for OVFF, we would lose money regularly and the IRS would start looking at us funny, which I would not enjoy.

But we're not there yet. :)

Anyway, it was the first con on a new weekend in a new hotel. Things did not run perfectly, but they ran. I did not hear of any major disasters, but I am no longer on the voting board for the con, so there may have been disasters that I am unaware of...

Next year, we will be partnering with The Royal Manticoran Navy who will be running a Manticon event inside of Windycon. This will be a lot of nice energy and I am looking forward to it, as well as figuring out what needs to be up on the Main Stage, assuming that I'm still running Events next year.

New adventures! Yay!

The concom banquet was tonight, setup is underway, the ISFiC Board meeting is over, and Windycon will be rolling ahead at full steam tomorrow.

This means that I should get some sleep at full steam tonight. :)

I now have a concert at Windycon on Saturday afternoon with the lovely and talented Amy McNally.

I am looking forward to this, because I am expecting to have a lot of fun!

The one advantage of having been laid off earlier this year is that I can write Windycon-related emails all day and not feel like I am shirking my day job.

I wrote a *lot* of emails today.

I will write a lot *more* tomorrow, but I have an appointment with the retina specialist for a routine check up on last December's eye bleed, so I want to get as much done as I can before he dilates my eyes. After that, it will be a lot of "touch type and hope you get it right" when I get home to the computer. :)

All of the data files have been copied back from the backup drive to the studio computer.

Now I just need to reinstall all of the software. I've gotten started on this, as the Universal Audio and the Steinberg software are in, but there are *all* of the other plugins that need to be restored.

This will take a while.

The studio computer had to have Windows 11 completely reinstalled on it and that's what I did this afternoon. I then installed just the Universal Audio software which proceeded to fail in *exactly* the same way that it had before the system croaked, hanging the system hard when I tried to move the new Apollo Twin X Gen 2 to the top of the list in the UA Console application. This was with a fresh install of Windows 11, updated BIOS for the motherboard, and updated drivers elsewhere, so there's a real shortage of things to blame at this point other than the UA software. At some point, I will explain this to the tech who says "this is working everywhere in the world", because I am pretty sure that it doesn't work depending on the exact vintage of the various Apollo units in the chain.

(I found someone with a similar Windows problem two years ago and the tech dismissed it as "old drivers, different OS", although the differences between Windows 11 and Windows 10 are really vanishingly small other than cosmetics.)

I can still use this setup -- I just have to monitor through the Apollo 8. That's not terrible, just annoying.

I am now copying all of the files back from the backup on the NAS. This has eight or so hours to go, which means that I should be able to start reinstalling the rest of the software in the morning.

And then I should have a studio again...

Last week, a Windows update showed up on the studio computer and brought along with it a new form of the Blue Screen of Death -- which is not *blue* any more, but which has all of the same miserable effects. In this case, I am getting a message that there is a driver problem. There's no telling *what* driver is the problem, of course, because that would be too simple. Anyway, I managed to revert the Windows update and get things working again.

Meanwhile, I've been dealing with support at Universal Audio, as they are convinced (unlike my studio computer, which crashes every time that I try it) that I should be able to put my new Apollo Twin X as the first unit in the UA Console and do my monitoring through it. I am currently trying all of the things that the tech suggested, including updating my BIOS.

It was about this time that the Windows update showed up again and took out the studio computer the same way that it had failed before. This lovely error is DRIVER_VERIFIER_DMA_VIOLATION. All attempts to fix it have failed.

In an effort to increase the joy in my life, each time that the computer fails to boot, Microsoft requires to enter a *48* digit recovery value for Bitlocker which *I am not even using on this machine*. I have now saved a copy of this on my phone so that I can stop having to look it up. It is just a *bit* too long to memorize.

I messed around with this for several hours this afternoon and into the early evening before giving up. It is likely that the only way around this is going to be to reinstall Windows 11.

Oh, joy. Time to make a new USB stick...

In better news, the White Sox beat the Astros and are advancing to the ALDS.

We are not currently talking about the Cubs. The game is not over yet.