Loss came through tweets and emails, a drip of information at a time. First a note from a tech staffer saying that someone had died, with a pointer to more information, including the name.

I saw it at work, and I wondered who it would be, whose name had to take on a different status. Death is so final it seems that we should all be able to feel it when it happens, to know that something is missing that wasn't missing ten minutes ago. But it's not like that. We have to be told, and for me it was via email.

Hard to believe it's that time of year already. I've had my head in other things for almost a year now, and it shows. From reading the boards, I'm one of the last people to get into "con mode." Everyone else on tech seems to be frothing at the bit to get back to work, and me, I'm a bit hesitant.

There.As of a few minutes ago, the 2006 shift signup grid was just distributed to tech. Thus ends phase 1 of the Busy Season, and begins the mad rush of Phase 2. Today—the shift grid release day—is the day that I work for months toward, knowing that the moment these grids are released, I am not likely to have time to work on anything else.

"I'll have a little from Column A and a little from Column B, please."

Short, cryptic, and marginally observational snippets from life in the past week:

Someone asked me recently to define what I do for dragon*con tech staff. I thought about a lot of answers, all of which encompassed part of the job, but eventually I hit on a word that I think nails the entire thing in one: "logistics."

My job is to know tech staff, inside and out, from the moment they sign up. Their biographical and geographical info goes in the database, but the rest goes inside my head. What are they like? Who do they work well with? Who brought them on staff? What skills do they have? What other departments do they like to work with?

The hallmarks of change have been there for some time: the favicon switching to an inexplicable light blue, the folder marked 'domesticat idea' in the 'design work' folder. Those of you using feedreaders this weekend might've noticed cat.net posts appearing multiple times in your feedreader as I re-jiggered the feeds to pass through some very basic markup that I've been using for months now.Add to that the sudden uptick in posts recently, and you might begin to suspect that something's up. You'd be right.

The tickets are booked. I will disappear for a little while in late July, and I would be lying if I did not say that the nighttime pathways of my mind have taken me more than once down the thought of sand between my toes. It's peace and quiet I'm after, both for myself and for the friend who is kind enough to host me, but there is yet much work to do before I can board that plane without undone tasks.I am the sort that is good for crusades; when it comes to code I am more stolid than gifted, as Gareth and several other true coders, whom I count among my friends, can attest.

Just a quick note since I've started getting query emails:I'm alive. Just really busy. The French toast recipe is nothing short of stupendous (I believe the quote was "All other French toast recipes are dead to me now") albeit I think it needs a little bit of cinnamon and maybe some pecans … all the chicks have flown or driven back off to their respective nests, and what remains is code.

I won't even bother telling you about the chunk of code that provoked this entry, but I will tell you that it's only 14 lines long. I've known since last night that it was the source of the truly evil and cyclical timezone-related bug in the new check-in system for techops, but I didn't know how to fix it. Not without hard-coding in dates, anyway (a massive no-no since the dates for dragon*con change every year).A friend, who shall remain nameless, was a generally cheerful IM companion all through my attempts to sort out the mess.

There is light. There is the possibility of my finishing up my dragon*con 2005 duties by October 1, a possibility fraught with both excitement and trepidation.I have been playing Barenaked Ladies almost incessantly all day.

This is the part of the year that I refer to as "the slog." I have stories to tell about the past few months, but I am so wrapped up in the possibility of finally grinding through the remainder of my work that I have trouble focusing on anything but the finish line. Never mind that I really won't know what to do with myself when I get there.