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Steve Jobs is dead. We knew it was going to happen, when you have pancreatic cancer, you don’t makea 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 atmaking 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 solidunderstanding of what he worked with, especially the Macintosh back in the mid-1980s, but he could make youbelieve, no, make you KNOW you needed whatever he was introducing. It was an amazing talent, and the singlebest 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, madeappearances 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 theirpreference. 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 asignificance to the Macintosh that has managed to stick with it even after Windows machines have caught up inmost 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 thoserealms. Go figure.And TAFF has started! The race this time is between Jacq Moynahan out of Vegas, Kim Kofmel fromTexas (by way of Canada?) and the guy I nominated - Warren Buff! I would hope that all our gentle readerswould hop on and become members of The Warren Commission and get Buff to Eastercon next year! He’s agood guy, and a damn fine wit. He’s also just evil enough to be entertaining! TAFF.org.uk has the ballot so thatyou, 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 JohnThe 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 stillgot to write the bios and such, and do the index. Indexes are hard. It takes time. It should be ready right aboutthe 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 serenetranquility of our motel (Super 8, not to be confused with Motel 6 or Lucky 7 or National 9 or whatever all theothers 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, whilstsitting in a Starbucks in Peterborough (hey, it’s the closest to the US you can get over here!). I blame this, roundlyspeaking, on Worldcon, for reasons which I will attempt to detail in my con report. However, since it’s officially10am on the first day of Renovation, and since I am still not at the convention yet, I don’t know anything aboutthat, and so I shall stop ruining the journalistic (and structural!) integrity of this TAFF report and start writingabout things that I would know about at this point.I flew out from Seattle onthe Monday morning at some un-godly hour (10am counts as ungodly,right?). Janice Murray, who took mearound the Museum of Flight, hadvery kindly offered to give me a liftto SeaTac airport, and so she pickedme up around 8am, for which I wasvery glad. The reason I was very gladwas that we had originally arrangedfor 8:30, but I had had a nightmarethat I’d miss the flight, and had awo-ken early as a result. Her spontane-ous offer of arriving half an hourearly did a great deal to placate mysleepy brain, so that was very mucha boon! We drove to the airportand then she very kindly bought mea coffee from Starbucks beforeI went through security to board my flight, along with my ridiculously heavy rucksack (I put all my books andfanzines 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 Seattleas Heathrow is from Zone 1 London, although the fact you can catch the Tube to Heathrow from King’s Crosskinda obscures that). It claims to have free Wi-Fi but I’ve been twice now and I’ve never managed to get any outof them, despite the multiple unsecured networks that my iPhone told me were present. This is always a bit of apain, 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 meto rant about Americans and their mobile networks‚ sorry, cellphone networks‚ elsewhere in the report...), andI was just about able to call on it. The lag was about five seconds, which made protracted conversation almostimpossible and shouting at each other the order of the day, but I was able to communicate my desire to wish hera 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 emptyseat, like I was on the two flights between Toronto and Seattle, but my seatmates were quiet and the dude next tothe aisle let me go to the john without much complaining, so I had no grumbling to do. I believe I finished Cryo-
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