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.