Something Else

Truck convo should happen here
<https://something-else-fun.slack.com/archives/C01RHAW44VD/p1625775691013600>

Screen Shot 2021-07-21 at 10.38.06 AM.png

Truck rental confirmation info. Wed before event to Tues after event. I booked it so I return Tues at 1130am for one price. If we go over to Tues PM we pay another $70, which seems fine. But we can wander into that if needed.

Also that’s gonna need insurance, which is prob gonna add $4-500 to the whole thing 

1. you offered a while ago to drive. still game?
2. ok what should i do to add insurance? go back to budget?

1. Maybe, although my time is kinda crunched these days. I’d also prefer to drive a 16’ truck, not a 26. Let’s see how much crap we end up with and what trucks are avail 
2. Nothing. It’ll be added at pickup, just noticed that for moneydollar estimating purposes 

*Parking*
We need volunteers for this and a lead and a parking fairy hangout zone. Maybe we can combine this with Gate if we pick a spot (basically in the parking lot) where the volunteers can hang out.
We can probably park the last few cars back where we have had gate volunteers hang out before. There better be plenty of shade, but it sounds like 3 ez-ups to me.

This is also a potential hire-from-Mack’s-talent-pool position 

<https://something-else-fun.slack.com/archives/C01RHAW44VD/p1626499060000900>

<https://drive.google.com/drive/u/2/folders/1BeXI3Cu4rbqMjA57SWK30veYwh-6oigB>

Do you have any email trail on this? Not sure how we get in touch again

<mailto:talani@crimsoninsurance.com|talani@crimsoninsurance.com>

yes. I think Dave has a good relationship with these ppl so they get that kind of thing. address is carberry

We have a 26' box truck reserved. The more I think about this, the more I have concerns. Here they are:
1. I’m one of the few people who can drive this thing. As much as the little boy in me likes BIG TRUCKS, driving something this big for 3 hours on twisty roads is stressful.
2. Driving it around town is stressful too
3. Fuel cost $$$
4. It will be completely useless at MM. I keep forgetting to look at tree clearances, but it likely won’t make it past the lanai. 
5. It’ll be largely empty
I’d like to propose that we, over the next few days, compose a list of what this thing is carrying and if it’ll all fit in a 16' truck, we should attempt to call to downgrade our reservation to one of those.

we should go through all the reg form submissions and see who or what needs transport

Okay. So far this is the Big Shit™ I know about:
• 
```Erin Wolpert  [9:45 PM]
Tea house easily has carpets, squish and tea tables. We don't have an overhead structure easily accessible but as Chuk said, serving will be at night so it's not a problem if we have no shade.  All of our equipment will fit in a 9 ft truck (using about 3/4 of the space)```
• <@UKPQW7H5X>’s subs (update on size?)

• Jae Starfox said tea house has enough squish to fill a 26' truck completely. Erin is describing the subset of that squish requisite to produce a “very small version” of the tea house (ie what they are doing for our party). So she is ignoring squish we can take for cuddle dome / other purposes

• I’ve been thinking about some 8' tall tetrahedra that I’d love to transport fully built. They would serve as light, beacons, tables, and a place to stash your bag. I’d maybe do 4 of them.

FWIW I don’t think any of these concerns are particularly worrisome: we don’t need lots of people to be able to drive this truck, we don’t need to be able to drive this truck all over town or around the property, and being able to offer truck space to projects is a Good Thing:tm:

Started a list of “what goes in the truck” in Trello (new board, “SoEl 2021 lists”; feel free to rename) <https://trello.com/invite/b/12zIFuzp/aaedc4f4271dab1c8ab83090a4cfb6c0/soel-2021-lists>

*Early*
Let’s arrive and start setup on thursday, right? We should clear this with Mack. Last time we just kinda showed up and it was awkward.

also Radu wants to come early. I bet more ppl will be game for thurs. Idk his skill set but I’ve seen his contributions left right and center

Michael Whelpley wants Thursday too. Would prep kitchen stuff. Sounds good to me.

Alice will be onsite from Tues and Manda is counting on her to get Gate going, so that means we’ll also get parking started with Alice not manda

<https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/13mc2UOq0mETcReK2_vYWmefm5z5fh_PDkHTbFl1oFnc/edit#gid=0|Early arrival sheet>

Parking rehash
<https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ZRHjPTERWXioPeVXVLyCGrqSBSlpdtRvLOKep7b7-Ts/edit#|Notes from mtg with Manda>
<@ULJ0AQ40K> said parking was no problem last year, so odds are good it'll be easy this year too.
Added items to trello board

One thing that doesn’t mention is the spray painted lines Tipsy did to delineate aisles and parking. I think we should do this too and then park our early arriver cars all along the frontage that starts each row of cars to show which are the parking zones and which are the aisles 

I imagine you mean “two years ago”, seeing as it’s quite obvious parking wasn’t an issue last year :wink:

Screen Shot 2021-08-19 at 8.02.35 PM.png

COVID policy update
<@UHJDNGSBF> - u de boss on dis one. I think it's right.
<https://sites.google.com/d/1ygh6YuYBeiUuBfuVLwlhzpAz9u6Shz1X/p/1WBs9IltwpgYNLdEytevGfDU1m-oyADu6/edit|survival guy>

I think the policy is fine. I do think we should send out a newsletter to the tune of “we’ve been paying attention to similar vax+outdoor events and while they all had 1 or 2 cases, there was no spread at the event. So our policy stands as is”

I can write the copy in the next few days 

*Lights*
we should list out what we're planning to bring
and how we plan to power it in different approx areas

Radu will be early and I've asked him to help us with lights.

• 1 XL milk crate of working LED string lights from the zoo. <@UHFP8UVT2> do you know approx number of strings and lengths?

• 8x DMX floods
• 2x DMX swivel pointy lights 
• DMX controller (low grade beginner stuff)
• Wireless DMX receivers (experimental, were cheaper than this much cable)
• 8x 50’ extension cable to wire this together 
• 6x RGB floods 

Yet-to-be-purchased RGB solar path lights for camping area—Gene what's your storage situation look like? I know Chuk is resistant to storage at our house, but I could make room if I set puzzle dino on fire at SoEl this year

I was planning on storing the shit I bought because I want to use it several times a year 

<@UHFP8UVT2> what are you planning to cover with your N1t3LITR team? Paths? Common spaces? Stage?

paths in the camping area, especially near potties and showers. not stage. I think I’ll buy 60X solar lights (10X <https://smile.amazon.com/Outdoor-SMY-Changing-Waterproof-Landscape/dp/B07G76THML|packs>) for $360 total.

IMG_20210823_214916.jpg

IMG_20210823_214902.jpg

IMG_20210823_215126.jpg

Built one of these to put at edge of a stage area. Planning to do one more. It holds your drink and you can put your bag here and it's visible and you can see your friends face or the things in your bag. Could be better but not bad

<@UHFP8UVT2> did you buy these lights? we should do this soon so they get here in time

Image from iOS.MOV

Image from iOS.jpg

*Truck*
1. Budget wants us to get the truck in Oakland. I’ll try to work this out by phone today (they think it’s nbd)
2. I can add insurance when I pick up the truck. <@UHJDNGSBF> can you come with me to grab the truck Wednesday about noon and we talk insurance then? I can cover costs on personal card (whole rental is on my card actually)
3. then we load carberry &amp; cloudcastle till 5pm then 30W. We should make a post on main channel asking if anyone wants to help! a few extra hands are great for this stuff and make it much more fun.
4. sound gear waits until thursday so that means we make another load stop at carberry &amp;&amp; cloud castle! cloud castle is hard to access before 11am due to meat warehouse next door.

yes, i’m coming with you since i need to drive the truck and they need my DL

I would love to be on the road by noon on Thursday. So that means the audio shit should go in my back yard

and we should load it first thing thursday morning

moving it to your yard will suck. the subs are massive. like 3' on each side maybe bigger. maybe we can load it at cloud castle first, then drive with it to your house, unload it, load in other things at your house, then 30W, then park the truck?

what’s the problem with the meat house and your house? we can just park the truck in front of your house, right?

i’m fine loading whereever, i just dont want to wait til 11 to start

we’ll have a lot to do on thursday at MM, and arriving at 3-4pm is fine, but arriving at 7pm isn’t.

so i’m gonna be a bit of a bitch about getting on the road at noon on thursday

the meat warehouse has a bunch of trucks here from 6am to 11am. generally you won’t be able to park in front of my house on a weekday during these hours. It slows down by 1030am. Just a fact. Semis and box trucks and cars and really it’s a clusterfuck everyday.
As I said before, like the “fox, sheep, and head of lettuce with one canoe” problem — let’s bring the sound gear to your house on wed to make thurs load all at carberry!

can you block off the place in front of your house with your car so i can replace it with the truck

I can ask the meat men about it but I don’t think you get how much they are going to say No. they are a dock to dock warehouse operation.
We just transpo the sound to your house wed and there’s no need to fuck with them.

the passage to my back yard is like 30" wide, so you’re right that it’s not ideal to haul shit back there. i can maybe make room in my garage, but that’s extra work

let me think about this some more. maybe i can figure out a way to disable the truck so we can load it and not worry about it being stolen too much

i’m more worried about the whole truck being stolen than it being broken into

ok also we can do the pickup at cloud at 11am and i think we’ll be fine.

<@UHFP8UVT2> what are your thoughts on trying to park the truck in front of our house thursday AM? Am I right about the meat men or misunderestimatin?

where does the truck spend wednesday night? I think you’re misunderestimatin’.

does this mean Gene wants to be the truck driver? I was imagining that I would be the truck driver, so lmk if I need to change the plans in my head

wed night it parks at Carberry bc it’s safer street.

I propose we share truck driving work and have 1 truck and 1 support car! 2 ppl in truck and 1 support car kinda follows it!
Did this for Burning Man and it was fun. Support car gets to take extra breaks bc it’s much faster than the truck, but may also have to U turn to help out sometimes.

I’m driving truck. Some relief would be nice, but I would strongly prefer to be the driver for around-town maneuvers and through the twisty mountainous bits of 101 on the way up.

Parking overnight at my house. I don’t see how the meatmen affect Cloud loading, as long as you block off the space directly in front of your house and maybe in front of your neighbs’ house with your cars the day before

ok we can try but i don’t think they will agree (this directly impacts their business for no benefit) or the individual meat delivery men will respect the cones even if we get the boss to agree. Maybe you are better at getting ppl to agree to such things? I can’t see why they’d do this for us

I don’t see how the meatmen are involved. This is in front of your house, not in front of their business

they do their business in front of our house. they literally park us in every monrning and have semis in front of our house, forklifts, multiple box trucks. it’s a one way street so they block it up substantially and new deliveries line up in front of our house and the neighbors 2 or 3 houses up the road

they are very clear “this is a business” and really do not give a fuck about our idea of a party

We don’t need their coned-off parking area (which btw they don’t have any right to do, since it’s a public street and if they want to have that be a signed loading zone, they can pay the city to designate it as such. Putting your own cones on the street doesn’t mean shit. But yes, good neighbs and all.)

i’m telling you they always take the parking in front of our house if we aren’t using it and block us in if we are parked there. every day.

fwiw I think Chuk is overly concerned about this. The real concern here is that street cleaning is 12:30-3:30 Thursday morning, so we can’t actually put anything out on the street very easily. The person who typically blocks the spot in front of our house is an older man who is there all the time, and if we just check in with David first thing in the morning to say we have a truck coming that we will need to load and can he ask his people to move by 10am, we can cone it off then and be ok

Renee I think you missed that the plan is to park at Carberry. Gene wants to then drive over to our house thurs morning and park in front of our house and do this before 11am

My proposed solution is simply to truck all the things from our house to gene’s house on wed. Thus no need for a thurs visit

thx for chiming in renee - i think this is much more in your wheelhouse both professional and privately than mine!

I didn’t miss anything. We cannot “block off the spaces” with our cars or with cones until 3:30am Thursday, but after that we can. And David has been pretty cool about getting his people to move out of our way and I’m happy to ask him.

If you want to do the work of carting huge subs that fit in none of our cars over to Carberry, go for it, but I am offering to do the work of talking to David :woman-shrugging:

yeah i’m very happy to put subs in the huge truck that is coming to our house on wed. then unloading them at genes wed and then loading them again thurs

this means we don’t have to stop at cloud castle thurs at all see

I think we can leave the subs in the truck overnight. I’m more concerned about the smaller, higher $/lb stuff like mixers and shit

okay, fine. let’s load up all your cloud shit on wednesday. I’ll figure out how to make the truck secure. Like parking it in my driveway and blocking it in with my car

ok Dave says it’s a lot of stuff that’s expensive and we should load it all thurs AM. So I think we should plan to coordinate with meat men

great. remember that we’re running a business too #LLC

David chased a rat into the freeway to keep his business open. He’s removed all signs after his locks were glued shut by vegans from berkeley. He eats at the restaurants he sells to and has contacts all across the state working in meat. I doubt he’d be impressed with our LLC. Again, maybe you are better at making this kind of case persuasive? I think a friendly ask from Renee is our best bet.

I’m just saying from the perspective of “don’t take shit about his talk about ‘running a business’”

and yes, renee’s sugar is better than me calling the cops on him for blocking the road

Truck will be at 121 98th Av Budget Rentacar location. not in berkeley. by airport. Terms still the same. 26' truck. Diesel it says? Great.

that’s fine. Wanna pick me up at home at noon?

When should be motorboating booth be at Cloud Castle for loading?

she hasn’t responded to my comms. i thought you were in touch?

tonight would be ideal. tmrw night ok. gene has been saying EOD wed

I am in touch, that’s why I’m asking you

<@UHKBU2AQ7> let’s push that back to 1pm pls 

I've got some ren Faire art pieces to load into the truck, I can get them to Oakland by 6 or 7. Where should I drop them off?
Some items are large, but none are heavy or bulky. I can give more details if needed.

yeah i think same as last year is good for now. Theoretically we might want to bring more stuff total, bc bigger party. But we had a pretty nice margin with that truck last year and it's easier for now than 2 trucks

Getting some quotes. 26'. Tue Aug 30 noon-Tue Sep 6 noon, 400 miles. No insurance included (prob another $500)

Enterprise: “Call (510)-632-5888” :neutral_face:

image.png

Ryder: doesn’t seem to have any 26' in the bay area, but they do have this in SF. Two of these would be cheaper than any of the above and total up to a little more cargo space (960 cu ft x2 vs 1600 cu ft). Plus they’re a ton easier to drive.

Cute! 2 trucks is a bit more overhead but could be better! Let's ask priceless after their event. Yash would be good to ask

I think we should book this asap. really, we should have booked this in january. burning man is back on and all the trucks are getting booked

<@UHKBU2AQ7> would you mind calling Enterprise tomorrow to get a quote and Ryder to see if we can reserve 2 of those 16’ or maybe a 26’ if they can get one? My phone calls are $$ from here 

I'll call now. Our todo list says we should do this and insurance by July 1, so we're right on time per plan

• Enterprise 26' "$1900"
    ◦ says they have no 26' trucks available bc all are on "long term" rentals (6months or longer!). However, the quote _would be_ 220/day 35c / mile (I did the math above)
    ◦ "business use" needs insurance, either ours or buy theirs
• Enterprise Concord $1k per smol truck
    ◦ 600 wkly + insurance and stuff = 1044.41 for a 16' box truck with lift gate
• Ryder website is offering me a 16' truck for $1230 with insurance
    ◦ I called and they want to setup an account before they will offer a quote. I bailed on this process bc they want to get a bunch of specifics about our DOT number and registration with amazon
• It appears that Budget's cost structure makes a short truck about as expensive as a long one, so no "2 smaller trucks" solution there

Looks like we pick "one truck or two" and then go Penske if one truck and Enterprise if 2?

Maybe I'm wrong about 2 16' trucks &gt; a 26' truck tho

According to the cubic footage specs, 2x16 is a little bigger than 1x26

Can we book 2 16s from enterprise concord and then bail on one if we decide we don’t need it?

Sure, though I would expect we'd want more capacity than last year if anything

<https://drive.google.com/file/d/1iEBv0P_9LpVr-Rdk6ywhruTERp9a9_PG/view?usp=sharing|Budget last year was $1700 total>

I think we actually paid a ton more cause insurance?

<https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/15K-0hIO6v7mYy2EgPIc3xzVma5QAfkH2YCyLYZOP12U/edit#gid=390868393|I'm not seeing that>

K I believe you. Might be getting confused with nocturne trucking 

I think we should just get the 2x Enterprise Concord ones. Confirm, but pretty sure they’d let us cancel one

Would you mind completing the transaction?

Closes at 5pm. I'll put on my todo list for tomorrow.
• Noon pickup and return?
• "Business" not personal?
    ◦ Take their insurance for this?

Yes and yes. Personal insurance doesn’t cover anything over 10 kilopounds. These are 14,500

Rent tue return tue? Or extra day at the end for less stress?

Yeah rent tue return wed. Unless <@UKPQW7H5X> thinks there’s some need to pick up speakers with them earlier 

Called and it rang forever. Tried again, same result

ok booked it. for some reason it's a bit more than quoted last week, but whatever.

Truck Reservation complete (new thread bc this is canonical, not speculative)
• Enterprise Concord, <tel:9252953000|(925) 295-3000>, 2550 Monument Blvd, Concord, CA 94520
• 2 16' box trucks Aug 30 to Sep 7
• Must pay with Something Else card
• Buying their insurance, which includes $1500 deductible, damage waiver, and "the liability" (liability insurance?)
• total cost for each truck is $1494.64 + $300 deposit
• Reservation code: 6XQ73G
    ◦ Chuck Moran, <tel:4088061524|408 806 1524>

Hey DPW - how many volunteers you need this year?

Last year we had 8 setup and 6 strike 4 shuttle. Want more?

I think it could go either way, but Sound Team is a fun group to hang out with and fairies would feel more included if they had a crew to kick it with. As a DPW job, you're kinda on your own which is harder for volunteers to get into.

I mean, would you rather work with Dave and Chuck Jones and Abe and whoever, or try to get Gene's attention so he can tell you how to try to be responsible for heavy machinery on your own?

sorry if that was too prickly -

you have a lot of things to do. Dave mostly runs with his pack. It's an easier place for a volunteer to get rolling

what are the DPW setup and strike volunteers doing then?

setup and strike volunteers just have to show up during those times and do stuff that seems reasonable at the time. Usually other bosses (eg you, me, dave, etc) come up with good tasks for them like "unpack those boxes" or "setup the ez up over there"

I try to roll around and make sure people have things to do that are going well.

Setup/strike volunteers also roving to help artists set up shit

this year we should have 2 ppl for Signs Team

Gene, have you talked with Dylan Modell (sp?) about lighting? I wonder how to make this a productive relationship. Maybe <@UHFP8UVT2> your lamplighter project could have a tie in with Dylan's expertise? Or maybe Dylan should work on stage building? We never had anyone sign up for "owning a stage" in the past, but it's a nice idea.
Our superdinos have been really critical in the past, so I want to get them in a good position to get shit done :chrome-rex:

Lamplighter project is probably not needed?

if Slack stops storing old messages for us, would we want to start saving docs like this to a drive folder?

yes, although this is &lt;90 days so we’re fine for now

I’m going to investigate Discord and maybe some other alternatives. ’cause 90 days doesn’t work for us I think, and we can’t pay Slack a couple grand a year

Just ordered 20 more of the same shitty radios. $229.31. Different brand name, same radio, $40 cheaper than baofengs. <https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00GNUDUB2/>.  Combined with ~20 working ones we have, should be 40 radios now. More, or sufficient?

idk really. i thought we had enough last year?

we had 35 last year and some of them broke and there were times where no radios were available.  people also lost a bunch and were shitty about returning them to their chargers

I’m going to reinforce the new ones and the survivors to fix the most common way they got broken — the antenna broke off. I’m gonna put hot glue in the connector to fix that