Minutes of Meeting #1483 Monday, January 14, 2019 Trey Haddad, President Ken Patterson, Vice President Dave Gallaher, Treasurer Galen Tripp & Laser Pistol Packin’ Mama, Sergeants at Arms Barbara Johnson-Haddad, Secretary held at the Black Bear Diner, Milpitas
Called to order at 20:00 with 21.5 people in attendance. A party jar was established The Minutes of meeting #1482 were posted online prior to the meeting and were accepted as: Zef in the house The meeting numbers in the minutes of the previous meeting were incorrect. The meeting number for January 7 was #1482, and the minutes accepted that night were for #1481 (December 17) Treasurer Report #1482 Regular $8.50 Party $17.50 Total Regular $15,435.60 ++ Party $11.74 ++ The Vice President had nothing fannish to report, but relayed that Black Bear will be closing at 7pm on December 24. So we won’t be having a meeting next week. Normal hours on December 31, but previous polls indicate that there may not be any members present. The President was MIA with the Secretary Announcements Carole Dynasty Seafood in Cupertino, at Vallco, has closed. Gerald Space Access (not SpaceX) 2019, a conference about how to get into orbit, will be April 18-21 at the Fremont Marriott. sa2019.erps.org <http://sa2019.erps.org/> Gayle Hugo nominations are now open. Worldcon 76 & Dublin members can nominate. Check your email for your unique link (no PIN). eKevin: Worldcon 76 members who did not give permission to share your info were not included because of GDPR (unless you independently registered for Dublin). Plus, there are still rooms available in the Dublin hotel room block. Andy There’s a convention coming up. Starting this Thursday - FurtherConfusion. Mostly not like the CSI episode. Lots of fun. (they’re not hosting a party). furtherconfusion.org <http://furtherconfusion.org/> Lisa: Even good science on the science track. BASFA is having a party on Friday & Saturday nights. Lisa SETI is giving a talk on Wednesday. Antarctica as a Time Machine. It will be at SRI in Menlo Park. Free, but requires Eventbrite registration. https://www.seti.org/event/antarctica-time-machine-our-portal-snowball-earth-and-faraway-worlds <https://www.seti.org/event/antarctica-time-machine-our-portal-snowball-earth-and-faraway-worlds> Carole: Train is the best way to get there (if you don’t have mobility issues). Reviews JC Saw The Upside this weekend. Kevin Hart & Bryan Cranston. Liked premise. Hart was not playing himself but the character. Deep. Based on true story. Full price. Alex The Orville. 3 episodes into season 2. Watch it! Looking like it’ll be better than season 1. Not completely episodic, but no overall arc. JC: Primal Urges episode looked like it could be crass, but became deep. Ric: The script slowly revealed the layers. JohnO: Aliens on the ship, while humanoid, have their alien things. eKevin: Incidental music is brilliant and driving. The costumes (non-uniform) have been well done. Bill: There’s plenty of Star Trek (TOS) fan-service, and some Next Generation as well… Carole: Very enjoyable and quality show for what it’s doing. Ken: Still the best Star Trek series in quite some time… Reviewing the Orville discussion just now: Everyone’s comments have been wonderful. Seth’s got heart in the series. Star Trek in space with realistic humanity. JohnO: Book: C.J. Cherryh & Jane S. Fancher’s "Alliance Rising: The Hinder Stars I" a prequel to the series. Highly recommend. Read it in a weekend (he gets sucked in to Cherryh’s books). Was on sale for Kindle last week. Mythbusters Jr. on the Science Channel. The only thing junior about it is the 12-16 year old hosts. Adam Savage is the main host. Adult size myths, no dumbing down. Recommend. Little more time-compression (less build and small scale stuff, but that may be changing) Tuesdays and Wednesdays on Science Channel, then repeats on Discovery. Lisa: Obvious that the kids and Adam are having a fun time. The kids know their science (serious credentials listed for all of them.) Gayle Bought Hillary Benford’s books: "Sister of the Lionheart" and "Joanna Crusader" (in the Joanna Plantagenet book series.) Historical novels. Sister so far is engaging (a few chapters in). Kindle $6 Andy Milo Murphy’s Law second season. Possibly best time travel show on TV. Fans of Doctor Who should watch. Animated. No continuity threads are dropped. Weird Al is the main voice. By the creators of Phineas and Ferb. Friday watched 3 Idiots (Hindi film) Difficult to summarize without spoiling. Surprisingly complicated. Highest international grossing Indian film ever. Comedy with dark points. Highly recommend. It’s a commentary on engineering education in India. Ken: It was also the highest grossing Hindi language film for four years. Remade twice, including a Mexican version. Fred Wednesday he was at the King library in San Jose. Spent an hour looking at the Lowrider exhibit. Incredible photographs, and memorabilia. Historical artifacts. 3rd & 5th floors. Recommend. Took his phone to uBreakiFix to install a new battery. Google certified repair, which means they have to sell certified parts, but if you bring your own parts in they will still do the job. Installed battery for $70. Took less than the estimated two hours, which was spent at the library. Recommend. Off Monterey road. eKevin Worked the IBM booth at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. Managed to get a room at Circus Circus, which was a 20 minute walk to the convention center (faster than other methods). One of his roles at work is as an IBM-Q Ambassador. They were launching the first commercial Quantum Computing system. The keynote is available on both the CES and IBM sites. It was hard work, but he enjoyed it. Explained lots of science. Was worth the blisters and lots of talking. Had the largest audience on the IBM stage. Didn’t get to see much of anything else at CES, though he did get to see the flexible OLED screen. Ric History Channel’s new series Project Blue Book (another version) Aidan Gillen and Neal McDonough are in it. Watched 3/4 of it before he discovered it to be boring. Season 6 of Gotham. Hadn’t watched it since season 2. New season seems to be based on the Batman comic No Man’s Land storyline. First episode was good. Star Trek Discovery Short Treks. Even the worst is as good as many of the good ones. Birdbox (Netflix) Science Fiction film with Sandra Bullock as an apocalypse survivor. Other survivors have been going crazy with what they see outside, so they go around blindfold to survive. Was originally supposed to be big screen release. Low budget. Interesting, but doesn’t come together. JC: Blind version of Quiet Place? DaveC Went back to the Chapel to see the Red Room Orchestra play the music of Twin Peeks. Fun to listen to, but left before the end. Second night was Music from the Big Lebowski, with Kevin McDonald. Second night worth full price. There was an auction. Meeting adjourned at: 21:32 and the rumor was: Due to the ongoing government shutdown, there is no rumor this week.
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