yduras

The Good
---------------

• All the gamers -- being surrounded by my people. Meeting the folks I know from online or never manage to see in person. Meeting the same folks from convention to convention. I love you guys!
   
• The nice folks at the Westin Starbucks, who laughed with us despite all the extra overtime we made them work
   
• Running all of my games at capacity (with a little help from generics)
   
• Getting to play with some old favorites from past cons, and some new games I don't get to play at home.
   
• Being able to make it to the 25th Anniversary Champions celebration (even if I had to miss the Sunday night HERO meetup).
   
• The dealers room. I was finally able to pick up the raised-pip 6-siders I've been looking for (Our gaming group has a blind player. Fortunately, we're HERO gamers, so d6's are all we need.) I couldn't spend much time in there due to a bad reaction to crowding, but what I saw was fantastic!
   

The Bad
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• Once again not being able to get a badge reading "Game Master" despite running 16 hours of events. What's an Independent GM got to do to get a little recognition?
   
• Losing three players (out of seven) halfway through a game due to a personal emergency.
   
• The NOISE level in the rpg rooms. Oh my Deity, the noise!!!! It's really hard to do roleplaying-heavy module when nobody at the table can hear each other at anything less than a yell, and sometimes not even then! Not to mention the headache induced by the volume level. After running my second module I was working so hard on a migraine I was afraid I was going be sick. It's been bad for a while, but it was even worse this year than previously.
   

The Miscellany
---------------

• I hope the cubible wall idea works out, although honestly, just giving each table as much space as the "game room of the future" had would have helped. I can't quite work out how they're going to fit as many game tables in with the greater per-table space requirement, especially with the impending construction, but I have to applaud any chance at improvement.
   
• Net access at the Westin. It was nice to have free wireless in the lobby, although free wireless in the ROOM (or wireless in the rooms at all) would have been nicer. The business center, which had been free last year, now charges an arm and a leg, $1.99/minute to use the printer! $0.69/minute to use one of the PCs! It wound up costing me $4 just to print out my boarding pass. I hope they have the convention center business center up by next year -- even a convention center rate can't be that insultingly high.
   
• Flight rest ructions. As it happens, the worry far outstripped the actual problems. By Sunday, electronics were allowed on the plane, and it was only liquids/gels forbidden. As I was checking a bag anyway, and pack my toiletries in my checked bag anyway, I wasn't really affected.
   
• I know I'm getting old; I wasn't carded ONCE all week!

( Opium )

( Jupiter )

Anything else you kids wanted to know?

Tomorrow it is off to Gencon. I will be flying - whee! I have all the handouts ready - just need to print them out. I will have the laptop with me and some net access, so I might post some while I am there.

I'm not 100% sold on the color and text effects on this icon, but it's a pretty good start. I don't actually caption icons all that often, but this phrase just kind of leaped out at me when I saw the image.

So I've driven my brand new car to work every morning this week. I clearly need to get those clear plastic mats for the driver and passenger seat floors. The carpeting's a bit pale. I am sure in a year I won't care, but for now...

Gencon is next week. In order to not work on my character sheets earlier this week, I created this nifty Convention Listing at upcoming.org. Really, check it out -- my OCD is mighty when I am avoiding other work!

The display via google calendars does not 100% work, as events with times on them (as opposed to all-day events) show only on their first day instead of across all days of the event (they still show on the agenda view properly for some reason). It seems to pick up new events, but even when I went back and corrected events to be all-day multi-day they stay displayed wrong. It's still pretty cool, though.

Be amazed at my amazing sorting and categorizing skills! Plus, it's something other people could add their events to, if they wanted...

First, Happy Birthday bethynyc.

This weekend, some people of my acquaintance will be camping. Some others will be attending Anime Next. I might hit the con one day or I might not.

Also, this weekend I will be turning a year older. I was thinking of heading into Manhattan to see a friend. Anyone interested in say, a late lunch on Saturday?

So, B, aiskon, dragontologist and I made it back from KatsuCon. We left Washington DC 11ish, dropped B in Deleware at 1:30ish, dropped dragontologist at his place around 4ish and made it home a little after 4:30. I know it's possible to make better time than that but the detour added time, and I skipped some potential shortcuts on the grounds that I did not want to be trusting my fatigued self to sport crucial half-remembered landmarks without a conscious navigator. (Gratifyingly, aiskon actually trusts my driving enough to sleep while I drive.) Plus, of course, I drive more slowly/conservatively (a) at night, (b) when I am tired, (c) when driving a large vehicle, and (d) when I have passengers. At least we had clear, dry roads.

Of course, as my car had spent the weekend at aiskon's office, I had to go in with her this morning (we sure weren't going to make the detour at 4:30am!), so I'm walking around on a hair over two hours sleep.

Amusingly enough, one of the articles I printed out for lunchtime reading was Sleepless in Standford about the perils of sleep deprivation. Apparently I am a danger to myself and others right now...

Tonights game is canceled in favor of impending unconsciousess.

So, I took a half day on Thurdsay, so I won't find out how the trouble account worked out until Monday. I picked up Passenger A, arrived late to join with aiskon, which was ok as her boss kept her late.

The drive down to Washington went rather smoothly with two exceptions. First was that Passenger B was not at the agreed-upon meeting point when we stopped for him and we had to wait for him and second was that we got a little turned around when we hit Silver Springs / Washington city limits. (We got off at 30 as per Yahoo, should have waited for 33 as per the hotel directions page.) Lacking a proper map, our Navigator became anxious. Having been driving since 2pm, I was somewhat short of patience. Fortunately, I was able to clamp down on my impending explosion, purchased a map from the first service station I saw (a mission that not co-indicentally removing me from my passengers for a time), and we recovered.

That night when I went to get my badge, I found out they had spelled my name wrong. Then they took a picture of me. It was horrrible. If I wanted to be immortalized in film, I'd dress up like an anime character.

Otherwise things are going without too many hitches, although I'm rather short on sleep.

So, here I am at Katsucon, using aiskon's computer and the room wireless.

So far, so good.