Worldcon

Worldcon is in Philly this year, and Jim and Laurie Mann are in charge of programming for it. (Jim is a former co-worker of mine, and Dani and I are friends with both of them.) So it's not too surprising that Dani and I both ended up being asked to be on program.

I have an odd set of panels: two music-related (which sound like fun), one costume-related (makes me wonder why I'm on it, but it's an SCA-fandom crossover panel so I guess that makes sense), and one about the link between the SCA and fandom. There are two problems with this last one that I'm not sure how to handle: (1) I really wasn't *there* -- yes, I've been in the SCA for 20 years and I've been going to cons for almost as long (a couple a year, though, not a lot), and there are other people who do both, but I'm not sure there's much I can actually *say* about any of this. And (2), the original collection of panelists has dwindled to two people; the other person is one of the founders of the East Kingdom but hasn't been playing in the SCA for years. (I don't know how active he is in fandom.) I'm trying to figure out what on earth the two of us can do with this topic. I'm kind of hoping that they decide to drop this panel (unless they can add a couple people to it at the last minute), but I'm not sure I should try to initiate that. I did tell Laurie that I'm uncomfortable with its current make-up, but I don't know what she'll do about it.

The music panels should be interesting. One is called "performing with other people", and I can certainly bring experience from On the Mark to bear on that. (They actually made me the moderator of this one, so I have to think about topics before the con. I'm on another item right before it, so we can't just huddle right before the panel. I sent out email to the other participants; I hope they have time to respond before heading out to the con this week.) The other one is called something like "connecting with the audience"; the three of us who are on this have interpreted this to mean mostly performance technique (eye contact, gesture, emotion, that sort of thing). I'm not sure exactly what we'll do with this yet. It's actually listed as a "workshop" in the program, so I suppose we can try for some audience participation. (I suggested to the other people that we have one of us do a "bad" performance and have the audience identify what specifically we're doing wrong.)

Dani and I are driving out there Thursday after work. Worldcons tend to be huge, so I have no idea if I'll actually be able to meet up with any of my co-panelists before we show up for our panels. We'll see, I guess. I'm new to this...

it's probably Bill's fault

I'm trying to debug a problem with my (home) file server. (Why do I have a file server other than my desktop machine? Because the machine was downgraded from its job of network hub after a failure that led us to just go buy a Linksys box, and Dani and I are geeks. Well, we actually do have a pile of shared data there, and this saves us from sharing drives on the "real" machines.)

So anyway, a while ago the monitor, or maybe graphics card, started to flake out. But it was only a file server, and the company that sold me the thing has since gone out of business (yes, the monitor was still under warranty, on paper), so I didn't work too hard to fix it. Then this past spring we got a power surge or one too many of those on-again-off-again power bounces, or something, and the machine became very ill. (My real machine has a UPS, but this one doesn't.) We brought in a better geek than either of us to try to revive it, and the eventual conclusion was that it was time to reinstall the OS. Ok, fine, it's a nuisance but it wouldn't be the first time.

Our geek suggested that as long as we were doing this anyway, we should upgrade the box from Win95 to Win98. This went against my gut instinct (you debug by changing exactly one thing at a time), but I talked myself into it. This was probably a mistake.

So we brought the machine back to life, though the monitor or graphics card is still funky. Fine, I said, I'll just install VNC, turn the monitor off or remove it entirely, and be done with it.

Now I have a mysterious behavior that I've never seen before. The VNC server starts automatically at boot; that's fine. I can use it remotely without problems. If, however, I turn the monitor off, then (1) VNC freezes (no further contact) and (2) turning it back on does not get me an image on said monitor. Once I turn the monitor off, in other words, the machine thinks it no longer has any video and it's not interested in getting it back.

I've never heard of a peripheral being able to affect the OS in this way, so I'm leaning toward it being the card's fault. But first, there are settings in Bill98 to explore.

I had already explicitly set the "power saver" options for the monitor to "always on", so that's not it. The display settings think it's a generic monitor; that sounds right. I tested the monitor theory by disconnecting and reconnecting the cable; everything is fine if I do that. (So it's tied to the monitor losing power, not losing connectivity.)

While I was writing this I was also conducting another experiment. I shut the machine down, turned the monitor off, and booted. When I was sure it was back up, I turned the monitor on. Voila, I have video. I turned the monitor off and back on. I still have video. (I also have a message reporting that "new hardware" was found, and it proceeds to "install" my "default monitor". I am not making this up.) I started a VNC client and cycled the monitor again; I still have VNC.

So, if I turn the monitor off and never turn it on again, except to directly talk to an already-running machine, everything will be fine. But if I boot the machine from the console and the monitor happens to be on (which is likely, if I'm at the console), then things are hosed.

Is that weird or what?