June’s Juffled Sausage

This post goes to Patronizers at the beginning of June and becomes public at the beginning of July. Not a Patronizer? You could be! $12 a year gets you my latest updates, occasional free tidbits, and the completely pointless MWL Footnote Fortune File.

I set some ambitious goals at the beginning of last month. How did that work out for me?

Finished first draft of the new Networking for System Administrators and get it out to technical reviewers by the end of May? A couple days late, but I’ll call it done. Huzzah! I even got the Kickstarter page up so I can point folks somewhere and even a release schedule! (Holy crap! Glory and the Saints be Praised!)

Finish an orc story for Twisted Presents by 26 May? Pffft. Nope.

In three days I leave for BSDCan. While I’m not taking books with me, I am the con chair and a sponsor. (“The RYOMS kickstarter went rabid? Sure I’ll be the BSDCan reception sponsor! Getting people drunk might improve sales! Wait, Trump did WHAT???“)

Anyway. I owe BSDCan folks a cake, and cookies, and a stern instruction to keep their damn masks on. (Sadly, the closing session video doesn’t show the bit where I enforced the policy, but I understand why; no long-term purpose is served in showing that.) If you’re wondering why BSDCan has a mask policy, I’ve got an informal statement on my blog.

In between all this, I need to cram in writing an orc Christmas story. There are folks who will back a collection just because it has a new orc story, and a collection should have some original content so it might as well be orcish. Besides, an orcish take on Christmas fits the theme.

So I’ll probably assemble the collection and send it to copyedit with a note that says INSERT ORC TALE HERE, and send the orc tale near the end of the month.

Reading last month’s post, I just realized that I put the wrong dates on the Twisted Presents Kickstarter. It should start July 25th, not end. That’ll buy me an extra 12 days. Yes, a Christmas collection Kickstarter should last 12 days. Obviously. 12 Days of “Christmas For the Rest Of Us.”

With any luck, I’ll come back from BSDCan ready to start on the next projects. Allan Jude and I are set up to start work on the new edition of the ZFS books. The two books will become one, called OpenZFS Mastery. We’ll include some Linux content. A few folks have told me that they already want to sponsor it already, but I’m hesitant to open sponsorships until I’ve fulfilled the previous sponsorships. A few people have told me that doesn’t matter, but taking even money when I haven’t delivered the last thing feels rude. Perhaps even gauche. I also plan to finish Skybreach. It’s halfway done, but I got distracted by writing an orc novel. And Laserblasted.

Oooh, right. That’s the other news. Laserblasted is the first book that’ll go through my new release windowing system.

Now that I can sell every independently published title in both print and ebook from my web site, I’ll be releasing everything exclusively on http://www.tiltedwindmillpress.com for thirty days. Afterwards it’ll go to other retailers. Big book platforms have been increasingly tightening their terms of service for years, so I feel no need to prioritize them. My sponsorship of BSDCan allows me to put a flyer in the swag bag, so I’m going to beta test book sales by offering con attendees a coupon code for 20% off retail on all print books. I’ve tested everything to the best of my abilities, but that’s not the same thing as a broad real-world test.

You know what? Now that I write that, I should also offer that coupon code to Patronizers. It works only on print books, not ebooks or bundles. (Bundles are already discounted.)

 

BSDCanTest

 

Coupon expires at the end of June, before this post goes public. Sorry, wider public.

I don’t know that anyone will actually order The Full Michael in print. I mean, look at this. Look at it.

Nobody in their right mind is gonna want all that to show up as a single lump unless we have another bathroom tissue shortage. But the fact that I can provide all that in a single lump means a lot to me.

I need to finish my BSDCan flyer and get packed. Oh, wait–packing means I need clean clothes, right? Uh… see you in Ottawa, or next month.

BSDCan Gifts

This was my last year as BSDCan chair. The committee worked hard make the con happen. That’s not to my credit, though I am slightly proud of myself in selecting as potential members “people likely to complete tasks” and persuading them to volunteer. I am notably proud of arranging matters so that Kristof Provost felt compelled to scream my name in rage during the closing auction. I’d link to the video, but the sound of everyone else laughing drowns him out. KP is no Bob Beck.

But this post isn’t about that.

Two people gave me gifts. Gifts that I had no idea existed.

From Patrick McEvoy, assistant con chair, video lead, and next year’s con chair: a Laserblast alien figurine. If you’ve read the book, this closely resembles Bert.

Tiny? Yes. Silly? Absolutely? Surprisingly motivational? Yep! I’ve added Bert to my Inspirational Triptych, to remind myself that anything goes. (For the youthful, the others are Rosebud the basselope, Bullwinkle’s Fearless Leader, and the Big Man himself, Cthulhu.) I have no idea where my ideas come from, but these are my literary moral compass. I guess it’s a quadtych now?

The second gift was presented a little more publicly, at the very end of the closing session (video). Warner Losh commissioned my portrait from Frank Pryor. Warner didn’t merely hand him a photo of me to work from. Pryor went through my publicly available media and assembled a complete inventory of my public persona.

Beaver Tails? What do Beaver Tails have to do with anything? There’s a photo from a BSDCan maybe ten, eleven years ago where about twenty of us converged on the Ottawa Beaver Tail hut for deep-fried sweet bread covered in Nutella or peanut butter and chocolate or cinnamon sugar or any other decadence you can imagine. (It’s basically an Instant Diabetes Kit, and it’s fantastic.)

Warner liked the look so much, he even made me a one-of-a-kind T-shirt.

In keeping with BSDCan tradition of course, immediately after this unique T-shirt was presented to me, they proceeded to auction off three more just like it.

I am left with one question, though. You see, right when I was starting to write $ git commit murder Warner joked that he wished someone would write fanfiction about him. That gave me a name, although I changed it slightly to maintain plausible deniability for when in case the real Warner gets killed at a Unix con. (If you’ve ever met Warner, you’d understand this is a legitimate risk.) I am wondering how he knew about the tombstone, though? I mean, mine has an ending date on it, but still, it’s a stunningly good guess.

May’s Mandriarchal Sausage

This post went to Patronizers at the beginning of April, and to the public at the beginning of May. Yes, I know, everyone already patronizes me, but if you want me to pay attention sign up here.

As expected, the economy is in an unforced crash. Yippee! Buckle in folks, it’s gonna be a wild ride. I wish to thank all of y’all for backing me. Those folks who signed up to See the Sausage Being Made for $12 a year add up. The whole Patronizer thing often makes me feel like the founder of the world’s most useless cult, but you do keep the bank from taking the house and I am grateful.

I spent some time this month going through my bills. We’ve had the same cable company for almost twenty years and two different houses. (No TV, just a bit pipe.) Every few years, I’d get a letter that they were upgrading my plan. Fine. I gave them a call and told them to cut my bill or lose me. They cut the bill and upgraded my service again. I really need to put “negotiate with cable company” on my calendar for every two years.

Next up: the cell phone. We had Sprint because it worked here, which means we became T-Mobile, which means our bill had gone up. Probably switching to Consumer Cellular. It’s time to stretch those dollars!

Happier news: all active Tilted Windmill Press titles are in Bookvault, which means I will be able to sell them from my bookstore. Yay! I have a box of 21 proofs coming. If they are okay I’ll get them in the store.

I’m already offering the FreeBSD Storage Bundle in print at $24 off. I’m afraid to look at what I’ll have to charge for The Full Michael in print, but it’ll happen.

Okay, fine. Let me build a spreadsheet and add it up.

34 print books, $785. If I give a 20% discount that makes it $628. Call it $629.99. Nobody’s that insane, but if I don’t offer it one of you is gonna ask me why not. Plus, being able to offer it all feels correct. Like the bookstore is truly complete. You want it, I can send it!

Why do a 20% discount? When you buy direct from me, I don’t have to pay a bookstore or a distributor. 20% splits the difference with the reader, which seems fair. I do have paperwork and financial overhead on direct sales, though, so I’m compromising by offering the split on larger orders. Larger orders also save on shipping. Eventually I want to say “buy 4 or more get 20% off” but I implement only one headache at a time.

Sadly no, I can’t include No Starch titles. They are not print-on-demand. I would have to touch them and compute shipping. Not happening.

The question I’m still struggling with is the default format. I have to choose either “print/epub bundle” or “just epub.” Yes, people can change it with the “Format” drop-down. But defaults do impact people. Is it more ethical to set it to the less expensive option? How many people won’t see the “Format” option?

Clearly I need to pivot to “just give me all your money and I’ll decide what you get,” sigh.

I discovered a complication on direct print sales to Europe, though. The printer does not include commercial invoices. Bookvault does not know how much I charged you, or if I charged VAT. You can download an invoice with your order. I had one European customer who had trouble with this, but other Europeans say that’s fairly standard. I need to go through the print store and add that warning to every print version.

The good news is, I have the hard part of the networking book done. Sort of. I sent the TLS chapter to Bob Beck for review, and it went horribly wrong. The good news is, I get to do some new sysadmin stuff and set up QUIC on my web site. Then I get to do some netflow analysis and see how much of the traffic is QUIC versus everything else. Good fun times, for a strange value of good and stranger value of fun.

The good news is, the second half of the rest of N4SA2e requires very little in the way of updates. Some of the warnings need to be louder, but traceroute hasn’t changed, nor netcat.

Laserblasted is due back from copyedit on 15 May, and I’m wondering: if I can crank hard for two weeks, can I finish this draft and get it to tech review by then? I don’t know, but it’s a worthy goal. If nothing else, I’ll have two weeks of cramming on it.

Speaking of Laserblasted: as an experiment, it’ll be exclusive to my store for a few weeks before I release it on other bookstores. It’s a weird book so it’s not a real test of windowing, but I’ve heard from a few folks who missed the Kickstarter and maybe I’ll scoop them up that way.

Laserblasted also taught me a lesson. I had so much fun ranting about the film that I forgot to describe what the book is. Or: I spent so much time saying what it isn’t that I forgot to say what it is.

Meaning that I broke my own rule, and didn’t write the jacket copy before writing the book.

I still am struggling with the jacket copy. I might just steal my pal ZZ Claybourne’s description:

“What would happen if Gomer Pyle got turned into a scathing indictment of the military patriarchal industrial complex but with way more aliens and laser-inflicted explosions than the sitcom managed to achieve? Starring Brad Pitt as Gomer, directed by Sam Raimi.”

I’m scathing? When did this happen?

Er, uh–yeah. I meant to write that. What that says. I planned that. Yep.

Now to get back cover text that means that.

Maybe I’ll just put that on the back.

I really do need to get a Prohibition Orcs Christmas story written for my Christmas collection. Ideally I’ll launch the Twisted Presents Kickstarter on 25 July and be ready to fulfill immediately upon payment, so I can do the N4SA2e Kickstarter right after. Wait–does that work? Let’s sketch this out.

Let’s be pessimistic and say I finish end of May. I want a month for tech review, which means end of June.

I’ll have Laserblasted proofs ready and hard copies ordered before BSDCan, and order the books for delivery when I get home. Fulfill that by the end of June, no problem.

The copyeditor will have N4SA2e in July. She’s usually about six weeks on a tech book. I haven’t checked with her, of course, and she might blow up my entire schedule.

So if I launch Twisted Presents on 21 July and let it run for two weeks, it ends 4 August. I order books 5 August. Yes, I don’t have the money yet, but I’m assuming Kickstarter coughs up the dough on 18 August, like they do. I can ship them that week. It’s only a handful of copies, it’ll only take a day.

So I get the N4SA2e copyedits about 15 August and spend about a week doing corrections and laying out the print and indexing, all that crap. Launch that Kickstarter early September, let it run for three weeks. (Tech book campaigns should run longer than fiction ones.)

Now to work backwards.

Launching Twisted Presents on 21 July means I must have a print proof in hand by that date. I’ll need everything finalized by 7 July. I need the final manuscript end of June. Most of this book was previously published, but the orc tale needs copyediting and everything needs a final proofreading. I might have to use an alternate editor for that, someone less expensive at speed. That’ll take a couple weeks at best, which brings us up to the end of BSDCan. I’m not working on books during BSDCan. The book must go to copyedit by 9 June.

I need a few first readers to read the orc story. That takes two weeks.

I must have a completed orc story by 26 May. Achievable.

Except I’m cramming to finish N4SA2e by then.

Have I ever mentioned that I’m terrible at scheduling?

All of this is built on the very slender reed of finishing N4SA2e by the end of May. Which means I get QUIC on my web server.

I think I better go get to work.

BSDCan Travel Fund Auction in honor of Mike Karels

Mike Karels has been around the BSD community since the last century, and was integral to our projects. How integral? If your name is on the definitive book on the topic, you’re integral.

On his way home from BSDCan 2024, Mike passed away.

I could go on and on about what a humble guy he was, and how he helped many folks. Or I can tell you that he backed Run Your Own Mail Server. He had no need for my book, but thought it was worthwhile? I was stunned. And appreciative.

With his family’s permission, I am auctioning off his reward in his honor. And something extra.

Here’s a copy of the backers-only edition of RYOMS, Ruin Your Mail By Running It Yourself, with a sponsors-only challenge coin. After fulfilling sponsor gifts, I have a scant handful of coins left. I don’t sell them, despite repeated requests, the occasional threat, and one ham-fisted blackmail attempt. The only way to get one today is by winning this auction.

Bid on the set by leaving a comment on this page.

The auction runs from now until 5PM EDT 12 May. If the bidding goes nuts in the last few minutes, I’ll leave it open until it settles down. There’s no sniping this auction at the last moment, as I want bids to escalate beyond all sensible limits.

Mike was a cool dude. Honor him by giving the next generation a chance to join us.

April’s Abjurational Sausage

This post went to Patronizers at the beginning of April, and to the public at the beginning of May. Not a Patronizer? You could be. It’s a terrible deal, but you could be.

I’ve considered myself well-prepared for personal financial disaster, but we’re not headed into personal financial disaster. We’re headed into a global one. I would say that I’m conservative–I save money, look after my family, mind my own business–but the reactionaries have stolen that term from me. Plus, I’m not conservative enough to cope with this economy. Nobody could be.

Last year was an all-time writing income peak, thanks to the Run Your Own Mail Server Kickstarter.

This year? Well, the Laserblasted Kickstarter is concerning. Yes, this is something of a gag book–but it’s a real novel. Folks who would normally take a $200 leather-cased book are backing for $6 ebooks. Several folks wrote me to say that they wanted to support the book, but simply couldn’t right now. I’ve also lost Patronizers.

I don’t blame them. But the upshot is, I’m expecting this year to be ugly.

Plus, this month I’m writing checks for taxes and retirement fund. Because of RYOMS, those checks are large. While I understand the logic of “feed the IRA while the stock market is low,” it definitely feels like I should just set the money on fire instead. The IRS would let me record that as a business loss.

From the latest happenings, I think it’s clear that I need to start increasing my overseas business. I need my books to become more accessible to European and Asian markets. That means dealing with VAT. Even with the RYOMS Kickstarter, I didn’t quite make enough in Europe to qualify for IOSS. I suspect that if I can include VAT in my book prices more Europeans will buy them. If I get an IOSS number I can have my books printed inside the EU, which would make them still more accessible. To get there, I need to sell more.

Chicken, meet egg.

I need to ask folks who run businesses in the EU for their thoughts. Fortunately, there’ll be a bunch at BSDCan.

Anyway. Money sucks.

The good news is, my readers seem to like ordering print books through my store! Each week there’s a handful of print sales from my bookstore. While I still have no idea what my best-selling titles are, I used a couple months of Amazon print sales as a proxy and have started working my way down that list. I’ve set up PAM Mastery, the two versions of TLS Mastery, and FreeBSD Mastery: Jails with the new printer and ordered the proofs. If they come out okay, I’ll have them on the store as print/ebook bundles straight away.

When converting books to the new printer, my titles are either simple or disastrous. I plan to focus on the simple ones first, but ideally I want to offer “The Full Michael” in print. I don’t know that anyone will actually buy that stack, but being able to offer that makes me as independent as possible.

The other good news about direct print sales? Bookvault recently added printers in Australia and Canada. Cracking Canada has long been a goal. Yes, I can ship from the States, but for two countries right next to each other, shipping to Canada sure is expensive and annoying. Printing and shipping from Canada also lets me skip the annoyance of customs.

The funny thing about this exercise is: chapbooks. When Amazon shifted their prices, I stopped putting short stories in print. I might bring short stories into print again, but make them exclusive to my store. If I was smart, I’d put them in a series like William Meikle did. Number them. Make them seem collectible. Brand them like a unit. See if I can trigger that completist urge in collectors.

Oh, wait. My hardcore collectors are mostly Patronizers. I’d just have to ship them copies. Huh. Well, I might do it anyway just for the laughs.

On the writing front: Project IDGAF, aka Laserblasted, survived first readers. People like the stupid thing. Many Patronizers will get a copy as part of their benefits, but if you’re not one of them you might take a look at the first chapter as see if it interests you. First reader reaction was universally positive, which was quite a shock. I wanted to write something that I had no stakes in, that people were not expecting or demanding, so I’d be free to stretch myself and be a little daft. (More daft. Whatever.) It seems to have worked, which is nice.

Which leaves me grinding on the new Networking for Systems Administrators. Writing a cross-platform book is weird. We pretend that TCP/IP is a universal standard, but everybody made different decisions regarding that standard. Sigh. Still, it’s starting to coalesce into something resembling a book.

Hopefully I’ll get N4SA2e to Kickstarter this summer, along with the Twisted Presents Christmas story collection. Most of the stories exist for that one. I still need to write an exclusive Prohibition Orcs tale for it, but I’m hoping that doesn’t go horribly wrong. Last thing I need to do is accidentally write a Christmas novel about a cranky little old lady orc (no matter how much JG would like that).

Anyway, I better get back to these edits. Thank you for your support. I appreciate every one of you, especially in these troubled times.

New book launches on Kickstarter tomorrow, but no title yet?

My new book launches on Kickstarter on April Fools’ Day. This is not a coincidence. It absolutely follows in the footsteps of Ed Mastery, the Networknomicon, and the Savaged by Systemd audiobook.

What is it? Not telling. I do have hopes for it, though.

I also have a blurb for it, from a famous author. Well, more famous than me at least.

I don’t know what more you could ask for. Oh no, wait, I do! I have been informed that people who follow this blog do so because they want my updates. Updates on the Kickstarter’s progress will appear here as well as on the campaign page.

The big small-to-medium reveal is tomorrow. Watch this space, or the Kickstarter page.

February’s Fervid Sausage

This See the Sausage Being Made post went to my esteemed Patronizers at the beginning of February, and will go to the public in March. Not a Patronizer? You could be.

One of the advantages of being a self-employed writer is that my schedule is infinitely flexible. I can work any hours I want, so long as I work them. The down side is that everybody knows my hours are endlessly flexible, and when there’s a family emergency I get elected to cope. A sane society would have supports for medical emergencies, but this is the United States and everything is terrible.

Still, words are being made. I hope to have Project IDGAF finished by the end of February, and the new Networking for Systems Administrators done by the end of March. As Douglas Adams said, “deadlines are wonderful: I love to hear the whooshing noise they make as they shoot past.” Still gonna try to make them. The Windows examples in N4SA2e are pure PowerShell, which has been an education. PowerShell has an interesting and design that makes many things possible in managing Windows. Unfortunately, it’s burdened by managing Windows. Want to look at a network interface? Great! There’s several different commands for doing that, each slightly different! It has a built-in select command for grabbing columns out of the output, rather like the bastard child of SQL and awk. You have to have that, because the output of any one of these commands might be hundreds of characters wide. If you can remember which of the several similar commands you need to look at, that is.

Anyway. Windows admins need network competence too.

Once that’s done, I’ll be working on a new ZFS book with Allan and finishing Skybreach. After ZFS, I’m planning a core DNS book.

And now, for some tedious business neepery.

People have been asking me about this new author web site tool, Fourthwall.com. It promises to be all things an author would need: web site, store, monthly patronage, and so on. It pretty well replicates what I built on tiltedwindmillpress.com. They only charge 3% of all sales, plus transaction fees. It seems like a great deal, doesn’t it?

Rather than give an opinion, I’m going to discuss how I decide to use an outside service.

The core postulate of service selection: The Internet’s business model is betrayal. Amazon was willing to lose millions of dollars a year until they achieved market domination. Once they crushed the competition, they promptly raised prices. Uber spent millions to destroy taxis. It’s not just the Internet, of course; look at the devastation Walmart inflicts on community businesses. Short of malice, there’s also inexperience and incompetence. When my first business back in the 90s, I sat down and figured out my cash flow and decided the company would work. My inexperience showed itself through expenses that far outstripped my predictions. I failed. It happens. From my customers’ perspective, I’m certain it felt like betrayal. So: The Internet’s business model is betrayal.

Before using a service provider, ask yourself: if they betray me, what is the cost of no longer doing business with them?

I use BookFunnel to deliver books. They provide ebook delivery, track who has what books, and let buyers re-download their books months or years later. The service costs me $100 a year. I switched to BF because I was spending 20-30 hours a year dealing with delivery and redelivery issues. My time isn’t worth a lot, but is more than $4/hour.

If BookFunnel betrays me, I have to switch back to delivering books myself. I would probably hire a contractor to set up something, or persuade a WordPress developer to write a book delivery system suited not only for my customers but for the customers of every other affected author. In the grand scheme of things, the impact is vexing but minimal.

Mind you, I don’t really expect BF to betray us in the foreseeable future. Why? Because of profitability.

Consider what Bookfunnel does for me? They run a database, a web front end, and provide file downloads. That’s it. The web site doesn’t offer news updates or anything that would lure the Hacker News crowd, so it’s not likely to experience massive traffic and load spikes. Running such a site as a business requires a meticulous attention to detail, but it’s not technically hard. Tens of thousands of authors pay BF $100/year or more for work that can be done on a single rack-mount server. That’s a nice business. They also support author stores, charging fees that are better than Amazon but reasonably profitable for them.

Suppliers need to feed their pet rats. (Or children, whatever.) If a supplier’s business model doesn’t generate enough cash for the supplier to meet their bills, it’s a good sign that the supplier intends to capture and then betray their market.

Just as important as profitability is the path to profitability. I have no idea how BF started, so I’m going to assume it’s the success story I hear over and over.

Some programmer hears their author friend griping about the problems of indie book delivery and thinks, “I could solve that!” They hack together some PHP and Postgres, rent a VM, and pitch it to their author friend. That friend helps them discover the most vexing bugs. Once the thing basically works, that author tells their other author friends how this site solved all their problems.

One hundred dollars a month times one user? Your VM bills are paid and you made a few bucks helping a friend, cool.

Ten users? It’s staring to look like real money.

Fifty users and more signing up every day? Quit the day job and ride this cash cow as far as you can!

Best of all, their customers are technical enough to configure WordPress payment gateways and have enough traffic to consider that $100/month a worthwhile investment over managing files themselves. They’re not complete newbies, and support responses like “update your plugin” require no further explanation.

The path to profitability is obvious and predictable. So is the path to failure.

Let’s consider Fourthwall in those terms, and assume I set up shop there. This example uses novels, because most writers running their own stores are novelists.

The path to profitability? You’re offering every author in the world a free web site and free store! They’re gonna flood in. While file storage is almost free, it’s expensive at scale. Many of those customers will have never set up a real web store before, and are going to have questions.

Writing books is one of the hardest ways to make a living. Selling books as an indie author is even harder. Most authors sell nothing. Three percent of sales? I charge $5 for my novels. That gives Fourthwall $0.15 per sale. Many novelists sell their books for $1 (a terrible practice for anything but loss leaders, but that’s a separate argument). Fourthwall gets $0.03 per sale.

How many three-cent purchases will it take to cover monthly server rental?

The numbers on my tech book sales are slightly higher, but still depressing.

If I ran my site, my store, and my Patronizer program through Fourthwall and they took three percent? They’ll eventually either go out of business and leave me hanging, or be compelled to raise their prices. When either happens, I must drop everything and scramble to replace those services elsewhere.

Again, none of this requires malice. But authors are so prone to falling for scams that entire web sites exist exposing scammers. After thirty-two years kicking around publishing, an honest business is an extraordinary claim that requires extraordinary proof.

And I might be wrong! I have made claims and been proven wrong before. (Performative Buzzword Compliance is very real, but the specifics of Kickstarter’s case made me wrong. Oh well.)

Being independent is not easy. I opened my bookstore eleven years ago. Getting it to its current state has been long and slow, and I’m still working on integrating print sales into it. I’m hoping that my outside contractor figures out the final shipping problem. I’m a tiny customer so I’ve told them to fit me in wherever.

For the curious, why did I outsource a silly WordPress problem? Because I’ve been fighting this problem for over a year. In the immortal words of ZZ Claybourne, “my job is book.” I don’t want to delve sufficiently deep into WordPress to solve this problem. I’d prefer writing “More SNMP Mastery” or “[ Mastery.”

In other business-related stuff: the new US presidential administration is just as bad for business as I expected. We’ve flipped our spending to Yellow. Business thrives on predictability, and predictability is now in the same narrow niche as the Ford Edsel and the mechanical calculator. While I am always grateful to my Patronizers, my thanks are especially fervid now.

But if I’m gonna get this book done, I better go make some words.

BSDCan 2025 Chair’s Entirely Personal Comments on the Con Mask Policy

Yes, we discussed this in the organizing committee. Nothing has changed since last year. And yes, some of the new covid treatments give hope for a better future.

Degreed scientists have performed large amounts of actual research. Their data shows over and over again, that masks work. Multiple sorts of studies have shown this.

YouTube is not science. Neither is Twitter, nor Substack, Facebook, any social media, blog, or influencer web page. Fox News certainly is not.

The BSD community has quite a few people with above-average respiratory risks. They include a few members of the BSDCan organizing committee. The world needs one conference they can safely attend. At BSDCan 2024, many attendees with marginal health personally thanked me for requiring masks so they could attend.

Are we serious? At BSDCan 2024 I told more than one person that if they wouldn’t wear a mask, we would remove them from the event. I expect I’ll have to do the same this year. If you are adamantly opposed to consistently wearing a mask, I suggest that you save me the trouble and choose another conference.

We also have people with hearing problems. I am investigating buying transparent N95 masks in bulk, either for just the speakers or for all attendees. Because people who need to read lips should also have their needs met.

All this falls under “I don’t know how to explain that you should care about other people.”