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shannon_aBack in the mid '90s, I was doing consulting work for Sun Microsystems. The work I was doing was in their network customer support center, resolving problems with products like NIS, DNS, and sendmail (and a lot more, but those were my expertise). It was soul-crushing work, taking calls all day from people who were panicked, angry, ignorant, or all three — and who, as with most people calling customer support lines, were often not very nice about it. It was the ultimate no-control environment, where you couldn't control the bugs in the software, you couldn't control the resolution of those bugs, and you couldn't control the knowledge level of the customers (even though it was supposed to be high, contractually). Oh, 4 our of 5 calls were pretty easily resolvable, but constantly picking up the phone, never knowing what might be on the other side was ... unpleasant.
(And this was why they had consultants doing the work: they couldn't hold regular employees in sufficient numbers to man the call center.)
Still I more than doubled my salary when I moved from a UC Berkeley / NASA project over to Sun, and as a result my plan was to work six months, then take six months off. And so, after seven months, I ended my work for Sun, probably on October 31, 1995, if I recall my dates right. I watched Lair of the White Worm on TV that night, and celebrated my independence.
And for the only time since college, I didn't work for a few months. Well, not officially: I was putting together the post-con book for RQ-Con II that November and December.
So naturally I started thinking about visiting Australia in January 1996 for RQ-Down Under.
How serious was I? I dunno. I had the money, I had the time, and I'd just helped my friend Eric R. run RQ-Con II after attending RQ-Con I the previous year. So it would have been keeping with the pattern, collecting them all.
But I dunno if I went as far as updating my passport. (I did it in 1995 or 1996, one or the other.) I definitely didn't get any tickets. I remember one of my relatives worrying about all of the deadly creatures in Australia, so I got far enough to be talking about it.
But it wasn't as easy to get out of the contracting gig as I'd hoped. Taos Mountain Software, who was the one who'd placed me with Sun, was really eager to get me out there earning money again. And my manager at Sun was also actively courting me. He wanted to get me back in there, doing technical writing, putting together a book outlining all the various network systems at Sun.
In January.
Ultimately, I decided it was too good an opportunity to pass up: I picked the contract with Sun back up, and got to work from home four days out of five, doing technical writing. This was a big change for me both in being able to work out of my home office and getting paid for technical writing — both of which I'm still doing today. So, it was a good choice, even if it only lasted a few months, before Sun decided they shouldn't be paying so much extra money for consultants (though that left them without a way to support the support center).
But RQ-Con Down Under went by the wayside for me. And I never visited Australia.
And it's always felt like the great, lost trip to me, the place I almost went but didn't.
(Though as I said, twenty-five years on, I'm not sure how close I actually got to going to Australia: it would have been a pretty huge trip for a young-me, inexperienced at world traveling.)
Eric R. and I went to Convulsions 3D in the UK instead that summer.
There have been other lost trips.
In late 2016, Kimberly and I were talking about returning to England, but then Trump was elected and the stock market crashed, leaving us feeling that we no longer had accessible money. And by the time the market recovered, we'd nailed down our plans to move to Hawaii, and (rightfully) decided that we shouldn't spend money in the lead-up to that.
In early 2017, Rebooting the Web of Trust went to Paris, and I spent several months casually learning French, but I never really thought that RWOT would be able to afford to take me, as it was a smaller, less professional organization at the time, solely supported by Chris And, they didn't: it's the one RWOT I've missed.
And last year Kimberly and I talked about visiting her step-mom in New Hampshire, but she was slow enough in responding that we were up against the end of the year by the time we heard from her, and even though we didn't know about the health trauma to come, we decided things were getting too hectic.
But none of those felt like that trip I almost made to Australia did. Maybe nothing ever will, as that was a different time when I hadn't yet travelled on my own.
But maybe my latest lost trip will, because RWOT10 in Buenos Aires was just cancelled today.
And, I had plane tickets and AirBnB reservations, and everything. I'd looked at maps, and started familiarizing myself with the city (and the subway: always the subway!).
So, I feel a connection that I didn't with those other failed trips.
And I was supposed to be flying out in just two weeks time.
The reason for this is, of course, the COVID-19 virus. Apparently, Argentina is advising against gatherings of more than ten people that involve foreigners.
Which is just all kinds of FUD, and infuriates me no small amount. Because it's pointless.
I mean, let's be honest, the cat is out of the bag. It's going to be a pandemic within a week or two. There's no way it's containable at this point.
And, let's also be honest: it's going to kill a lot of people, but this isn't the zombie apocalypse. It's not even the Spanish Flu of 1918.
But, 11 international travelers in Argentina aren't going to transmit the virus.
My having to traipse through five airports and fly on four planes (each way) certainly would have increased my chance of catching COVID-19, but from literally nothing (for now) to some immeasurably small amount.
I think we're at the maximum hysteria point right now. Unless there's a gamechanger of Israel (or someone else) actually having a vaccine in a few weeks, it's going to go global and become part of our viral ecosystem. We're going to have to learn to live with it. (And even if there is a gamechanging vaccine, it might be too late.)
But for now, businesses and governments are making decisions as if they could still stop it. And I wonder how long it's going to be before they realize we're past the inflection point.
(And I should say: RWOT responded entirely correctly. With Argentina starting to advise against gatherings, there was just no way we could run it, especially not knowing what would happen in the next two weeks. We could have been barred entry to the country, been told not to hold the workshop, or been barred entry back to the US.)
I could still choose to visit Buenos Aires, of course. I mean, I have those non-refundable tickets, which were quite expensive. And I had a semi-refundable AirBnB.
But ... no way.
As Chris correctly pointed out when we talked today, I was making a pretty long trip, at 28 hours or so. Probably one of the longest. Up to LA, then back down to South America, and those trips were the absolutely best I could find: most involved two nights of red-eyes, not one.
And Kimberly's seizures have been really bad for the last month or so, making me already reluctant to leave.
And I have a lot of work to do on Skotos (and to a lesser extent RPGnet) to put them into shape before the end of March, when I go off full-time work. And I'd already been pretty worried about losing somewhere between a half and a third of March because of the trip.
So, no way.
Obviously, this is a bad thing. It's bad for RWOT's finances, it's bad for everyone who made plans, and it's bad for the momentum of the whole self-sovereign, decentralized identity movement.
We've been running semi-yearly since November 2015, and that's allowed us to really push forward: year by year the idea of self-sovereign identity, where you control things instead of corporations doing so, has slowly been gaining momentum. The ideas of 2015 turned into real demos by 2017 and maturing standards in 2019.
And this will be, if not a roadblock, at least a roadbump.
But there is a bit of relief too.
Now I don't have to leave Kimberly when she's doing so badly. And I have more time to finish out my full-time work.
And I don't have to turn right around from my move to Hawaii to rush off to South America.
So, it's not good, but at least I can see some upsides.
Meanwhile, tonight we're supposed to get the offers on our house in Berkeley.
And as all things right now, this has been touched by COVID-19. (Not literally.)
I talked with our realtor last night and expressed my concerns that the absolute crash of the stock market and the continuing coronavirus hysteria might be affecting the offers we're gettin on the house.
Because this timing feels pretty bad, and like it might have made a world of difference if we'd been able to accept offers last Friday instead of this.
She kindly talked me down, and said that she didn't think it'd make any difference, or at the last no notable difference.
(And to be honest, a week wouldn't have made a difference: even if we'd accepted an offer and gone into contract, that could have been cancelled; there's no real protection until the sale closes. So if anything, the offers we get now will be more stable, because the people will know the state of the world and their finances. But I still think there could be fewer offers or fewer good offers because some people just saw about 15% of their assets' value disappear ... but maybe they're desperately looking for somewhere to put their money other than the market. Optimism!)
So, we'll see how it goes, but it's another source of stress on what's been a pretty continuously unhappy day.
(And this was why they had consultants doing the work: they couldn't hold regular employees in sufficient numbers to man the call center.)
Still I more than doubled my salary when I moved from a UC Berkeley / NASA project over to Sun, and as a result my plan was to work six months, then take six months off. And so, after seven months, I ended my work for Sun, probably on October 31, 1995, if I recall my dates right. I watched Lair of the White Worm on TV that night, and celebrated my independence.
And for the only time since college, I didn't work for a few months. Well, not officially: I was putting together the post-con book for RQ-Con II that November and December.
So naturally I started thinking about visiting Australia in January 1996 for RQ-Down Under.
How serious was I? I dunno. I had the money, I had the time, and I'd just helped my friend Eric R. run RQ-Con II after attending RQ-Con I the previous year. So it would have been keeping with the pattern, collecting them all.
But I dunno if I went as far as updating my passport. (I did it in 1995 or 1996, one or the other.) I definitely didn't get any tickets. I remember one of my relatives worrying about all of the deadly creatures in Australia, so I got far enough to be talking about it.
But it wasn't as easy to get out of the contracting gig as I'd hoped. Taos Mountain Software, who was the one who'd placed me with Sun, was really eager to get me out there earning money again. And my manager at Sun was also actively courting me. He wanted to get me back in there, doing technical writing, putting together a book outlining all the various network systems at Sun.
In January.
Ultimately, I decided it was too good an opportunity to pass up: I picked the contract with Sun back up, and got to work from home four days out of five, doing technical writing. This was a big change for me both in being able to work out of my home office and getting paid for technical writing — both of which I'm still doing today. So, it was a good choice, even if it only lasted a few months, before Sun decided they shouldn't be paying so much extra money for consultants (though that left them without a way to support the support center).
But RQ-Con Down Under went by the wayside for me. And I never visited Australia.
And it's always felt like the great, lost trip to me, the place I almost went but didn't.
(Though as I said, twenty-five years on, I'm not sure how close I actually got to going to Australia: it would have been a pretty huge trip for a young-me, inexperienced at world traveling.)
Eric R. and I went to Convulsions 3D in the UK instead that summer.
There have been other lost trips.
In late 2016, Kimberly and I were talking about returning to England, but then Trump was elected and the stock market crashed, leaving us feeling that we no longer had accessible money. And by the time the market recovered, we'd nailed down our plans to move to Hawaii, and (rightfully) decided that we shouldn't spend money in the lead-up to that.
In early 2017, Rebooting the Web of Trust went to Paris, and I spent several months casually learning French, but I never really thought that RWOT would be able to afford to take me, as it was a smaller, less professional organization at the time, solely supported by Chris And, they didn't: it's the one RWOT I've missed.
And last year Kimberly and I talked about visiting her step-mom in New Hampshire, but she was slow enough in responding that we were up against the end of the year by the time we heard from her, and even though we didn't know about the health trauma to come, we decided things were getting too hectic.
But none of those felt like that trip I almost made to Australia did. Maybe nothing ever will, as that was a different time when I hadn't yet travelled on my own.
But maybe my latest lost trip will, because RWOT10 in Buenos Aires was just cancelled today.
And, I had plane tickets and AirBnB reservations, and everything. I'd looked at maps, and started familiarizing myself with the city (and the subway: always the subway!).
So, I feel a connection that I didn't with those other failed trips.
And I was supposed to be flying out in just two weeks time.
The reason for this is, of course, the COVID-19 virus. Apparently, Argentina is advising against gatherings of more than ten people that involve foreigners.
Which is just all kinds of FUD, and infuriates me no small amount. Because it's pointless.
I mean, let's be honest, the cat is out of the bag. It's going to be a pandemic within a week or two. There's no way it's containable at this point.
And, let's also be honest: it's going to kill a lot of people, but this isn't the zombie apocalypse. It's not even the Spanish Flu of 1918.
But, 11 international travelers in Argentina aren't going to transmit the virus.
My having to traipse through five airports and fly on four planes (each way) certainly would have increased my chance of catching COVID-19, but from literally nothing (for now) to some immeasurably small amount.
I think we're at the maximum hysteria point right now. Unless there's a gamechanger of Israel (or someone else) actually having a vaccine in a few weeks, it's going to go global and become part of our viral ecosystem. We're going to have to learn to live with it. (And even if there is a gamechanging vaccine, it might be too late.)
But for now, businesses and governments are making decisions as if they could still stop it. And I wonder how long it's going to be before they realize we're past the inflection point.
(And I should say: RWOT responded entirely correctly. With Argentina starting to advise against gatherings, there was just no way we could run it, especially not knowing what would happen in the next two weeks. We could have been barred entry to the country, been told not to hold the workshop, or been barred entry back to the US.)
I could still choose to visit Buenos Aires, of course. I mean, I have those non-refundable tickets, which were quite expensive. And I had a semi-refundable AirBnB.
But ... no way.
As Chris correctly pointed out when we talked today, I was making a pretty long trip, at 28 hours or so. Probably one of the longest. Up to LA, then back down to South America, and those trips were the absolutely best I could find: most involved two nights of red-eyes, not one.
And Kimberly's seizures have been really bad for the last month or so, making me already reluctant to leave.
And I have a lot of work to do on Skotos (and to a lesser extent RPGnet) to put them into shape before the end of March, when I go off full-time work. And I'd already been pretty worried about losing somewhere between a half and a third of March because of the trip.
So, no way.
Obviously, this is a bad thing. It's bad for RWOT's finances, it's bad for everyone who made plans, and it's bad for the momentum of the whole self-sovereign, decentralized identity movement.
We've been running semi-yearly since November 2015, and that's allowed us to really push forward: year by year the idea of self-sovereign identity, where you control things instead of corporations doing so, has slowly been gaining momentum. The ideas of 2015 turned into real demos by 2017 and maturing standards in 2019.
And this will be, if not a roadblock, at least a roadbump.
But there is a bit of relief too.
Now I don't have to leave Kimberly when she's doing so badly. And I have more time to finish out my full-time work.
And I don't have to turn right around from my move to Hawaii to rush off to South America.
So, it's not good, but at least I can see some upsides.
Meanwhile, tonight we're supposed to get the offers on our house in Berkeley.
And as all things right now, this has been touched by COVID-19. (Not literally.)
I talked with our realtor last night and expressed my concerns that the absolute crash of the stock market and the continuing coronavirus hysteria might be affecting the offers we're gettin on the house.
Because this timing feels pretty bad, and like it might have made a world of difference if we'd been able to accept offers last Friday instead of this.
She kindly talked me down, and said that she didn't think it'd make any difference, or at the last no notable difference.
(And to be honest, a week wouldn't have made a difference: even if we'd accepted an offer and gone into contract, that could have been cancelled; there's no real protection until the sale closes. So if anything, the offers we get now will be more stable, because the people will know the state of the world and their finances. But I still think there could be fewer offers or fewer good offers because some people just saw about 15% of their assets' value disappear ... but maybe they're desperately looking for somewhere to put their money other than the market. Optimism!)
So, we'll see how it goes, but it's another source of stress on what's been a pretty continuously unhappy day.
no subject
Date: 2020-03-05 03:43 am (UTC)We have to fix that somehow.
no subject
Date: 2020-03-05 05:48 am (UTC)