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.

Me: coding fast, hard, and heavy for techops & security. Realizing that I now de facto answer to three dragon*con directors. Amused I got myself into this mess.Jeff: still in San Francisco. What was supposed to be a three-day trip morphed to a Sunday-Friday trip, culminating in today's flight home … and today's phone call telling me he must be back out there on Monday for next week, with about a 50-50 shot of having to be out there for a third week.

Since you wondered (or, maybe, you didn't) about what life is like the month before 'con, here's a slightly-explained description of what's on my 'con-related to-do list right now: