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Steve Jobs is dead. We knew it was going to happen, when you have pancreatic cancer, you don’t make a lot of five year plans. He managed 7. Good for him. The world of MacUsers went nuts, and it’s kinda under- standable, he was the symbol of Apple and especially of things like the iPod, iPad and iMac. He was amazing at making himself a part of a technology he didn’t invent. That’s not a knock, though I know it sounds like one. Jobs was one of the great evangelists of the Computer Age. He didn’t invent much, though he did have a solid understanding of what he worked with, especially the Macintosh back in the mid-1980s, but he could make you believe, no, make you KNOW you needed whatever he was introducing. It was an amazing talent, and the single best other example would have to be Adm. Grace Murray Hopper. Grace Hopper worked on a number of committees and worked on a couple of very early electrome- chanical computers. She discovered a moth in a relay and joked that it was the first actual example of a com- puter bug. But she wasn’t a great inventor. She is often noted as the Mother of COBOL, and she was on the com- mittee to define the standard, but she wasn’t the inventor. She did, however, speak about COBOL a lot, made appearances around the world talking about the nanosecond and the like, and would talk about the use of computers. She was an amazing evangelist, and many have attached significance to her that doesn’t really be- long, but her role as the one who got computers into the minds of people. Jobs did that for the PC. He got the Apple ][ into schools, which led people to kids growing up with the Apple brand as their preference. He brought out the Macintosh and using brilliant marketing and one of the smartest give-away pro- grams ever, made it into the choice for designers and artists. He made it cool to own a computer, he attached a significance to the Macintosh that has managed to stick with it even after Windows machines have caught up in most of the areas that Macs were first pushed in. There are many great arts and design programs for windows, some of them more powerful and easier to use than the ones for Macs, yet still Macs have the hold over those realms. Go figure. And TAFF has started! The race this time is between Jacq Moynahan out of Vegas, Kim Kofmel from Texas (by way of Canada?) and the guy I nominated - Warren Buff! I would hope that all our gentle readers would hop on and become members of The Warren Commission and get Buff to Eastercon next year! He’s a good guy, and a damn fine wit. He’s also just evil enough to be entertaining! TAFF.org.uk has the ballot so that you, yes YOU!, can go and vote for him! OK, so what’s this issue of The Drink Tank about? Solaris is the 52 Weeks film, we’ve got a piece of John The Rock Coxon’s TAFF report, and the conclusion of Taral’s article from last issue. And there’s this, of course. I’m working on issue 300, which is a tough one. I’m about 1⁄2 way through with the layout, but I’ve still got to write the bios and such, and do the index. Indexes are hard. It takes time. It should be ready right about the time when issue 299 is complete. So much to do!!!!! John Coxon’s TAFF Trip Report Chapter This One 10:00, 17/08/11 ‚ South Lake Tahoe, California So, I could pretend I’m writing this in South Lake Tahoe, with the sun shining down on me and the serene tranquility of our motel (Super 8, not to be confused with Motel 6 or Lucky 7 or National 9 or whatever all the others are‚ seriously, why are there so many motel chains with numbers in the name, and why are all of them dif- ferent?!). Unfortunately, I’m not. I’m writing this, in fact, almost a full month after the events I’m describing, whilst sitting in a Starbucks in Peterborough (hey, it’s the closest to the US you can get over here!). I blame this, roundly speaking, on Worldcon, for reasons which I will attempt to detail in my con report. However, since it’s officially 10am on the first day of Renovation, and since I am still not at the convention yet, I don’t know anything about that, and so I shall stop ruining the journalistic (and structural!) integrity of this TAFF report and start writing about things that I would know about at this point. I flew out from Seattle on the Monday morning at some un- godly hour (10am counts as ungodly, right?). Janice Murray, who took me around the Museum of Flight, had very kindly offered to give me a lift to SeaTac airport, and so she picked me up around 8am, for which I was very glad. The reason I was very glad was that we had originally arranged for 8:30, but I had had a nightmare that I’d miss the flight, and had awo- ken early as a result. Her spontane- ous offer of arriving half an hour early did a great deal to placate my sleepy brain, so that was very much a boon! We drove to the airport and then she very kindly bought me a coffee from Starbucks before I went through security to board my flight, along with my ridiculously heavy rucksack (I put all my books and fanzines in it, as my suitcase had nearly been over the limit flying Toronto to Seattle). SeaTac airport is a bit odd (and, according to the Museum of Flight, about as far from downtown Seattle as Heathrow is from Zone 1 London, although the fact you can catch the Tube to Heathrow from King’s Cross kinda obscures that). It claims to have free Wi-Fi but I’ve been twice now and I’ve never managed to get any out of them, despite the multiple unsecured networks that my iPhone told me were present. This is always a bit of a pain, since airports are not naturally thrilling places and having the Internet would be great. However, on the Mon- day, it was even more of a pain than usual, since it was my mother’s birthday and I wanted to call her via Skype, like I had done in the city earlier in the week. Fortunately, the 3G signal from AT&T was fairly strong (remind me to rant about Americans and their mobile networks‚ sorry, cellphone networks‚ elsewhere in the report...), and I was just about able to call on it. The lag was about five seconds, which made protracted conversation almost impossible and shouting at each other the order of the day, but I was able to communicate my desire to wish her a happy birthday successfully, which was the main thing. The flight from Seattle to Sacramento was alright. I wasn’t lucky enough to be sitting next to an empty seat, like I was on the two flights between Toronto and Seattle, but my seatmates were quiet and the dude next to the aisle let me go to the john without much complaining, so I had no grumbling to do. I believe I finished Cryo- burn on that flight, which marked the second Hugo nominee to crumble before my reading skillz. I enjoyed it a great deal, actually, although if I’d known it was part of an ongoing series I probably would have tried to locate the first book, rather than starting at the end, as it were. But, more on the Hugo nominees elsewhere in the report, I think. The best part of arriving in Sacramento airport was seeing the one, the only, Christopher J. Garcia. I know, I know‚ you’d think baggage claim would be the highlight, but you’d be totally wrong! He got my suitcase wedged into his car (I have no idea how, since there was no room whatsoever for massive suitcases anywhere in said car) and we rode into the historic part of Sacramento. They have buildings that are really, really old there. Like, thirty- six years old, or something! Arrival in Sacramento heralded us walking in a massive circle. Chris swore blind he knew exactly where we were going and where we were meeting Linda, but the massive circle kind of undermined his authority on the matter, and so eventually we resorted to the miracle of the mobile telephone, but not before we got vouchers for saltwater taffy. So, I should explain something about the old part of Sacramento at this point. The important thing to note is that 98% of the world’s total number of sweet shops are in the town. Seriously. Chris and I counted them, and it’s definitely 98%. Well, even if I am lying, there are many, many sweet shops. After rendezvousing with Linda suc- cessfully, we went into one, and purchased two bottles of a delightful beverage called Leninade, which is a must for any thirsty communist. As a Briton, I count as a Communist in the USA (my father works for the NHS, I’m practi- cally a member of the Communist Party), and so I enjoyed it greatly.

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