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08/25/2004 Entry: "Gencon - Day 1 (late Tuesday - Wednesday, parts unknown)" It's been a blur, but here's where we are so far. Lost. No, wait, that was a few hours ago. But let me back up about a day. My "day" started Tuesday, kind of where I left off my last entry. I got a ride back from Baltimore, and we got lost trying to find the Silver Spring Metro. When we found it, the small "Kiss and Ride" dropoff was pretty hard to navigate in, and I left Christine in a hurry. I got on the Metro, turns out the wrong train, which meant I had to backtrack. I wanted to get to Shady Grove by 7pm, and missed it by about 10 minutes, even thought I left about an hour of "fudge time." It turns out this was no big deal; Allison and Kory were also running late. I got to the house, and Kory said he was actually not as behind as he usually is before a big event like this. I got to meet the other people of MSD, most whom I had met before at FanTek cons, like Heather, for instance. I helped burn some CDs and learned some things like... ... I'm doing panels. I had not prepared to do panels, and as I type this, I am not so sure what panels I am doing, except a vague idea about how to create villains in gaming. I also found out that MSD panels got "highlighted" on the Gencon website, which hit the MSD website with a "slashdot effect." Kory has been too busy to give complete details, so I am sure more will develop. We had the "ritual" things done before we left. Kory got new socks, Scott washed his hair with cat shampoo, and we had steak and eggs as a "last meal." All these mysteries are steeped in old MSD tradition, and became blessed with the "first bloodletting" when I banged my head real hard on the back door of Liz's van... and bled. Only a little. Chris R, Ludachris, and Tubbie took the lead by about 30 minutes. Chris R (Rubenstahl) does a lot of events and panels. Ludachris got his name from "Little Chris" until he went insane. Tubbie got his... oh, I didn't ask. The rest of us started out late, like 12:40am. I rode with Liz and Scott in Liz's white Dodge Caravan. Liz, it turns out, loves folk and Barbershop Quartet, so along with some Muppet CDs she had, we got along very well musically. Scott... is a different beast. He's nice. Just a little course. Heather and Kory were in Kory's station wagon, and Jim and Jason were in Jim's car. We hit Pennsylvania around 2am. Lots of tolls. Was this on the map? I don't remember this on the map... Ohio came next at about 6am, but then we got seriously lost because the "Trip Tik" map system they were using sent us north up towards Cleveland. I swear we stopped about 20 miles short of Lake Erie, where my friend Dan lives. Kory was already a bit upset because we were running behind schedule and we ended up driving 250 miles out of the way before we had to backtrack down southwest across Ohio. Thus, we didn't even hit Indiana until 2pm (EDT.. I am on CDT right now). We got to Indianapolis at around 3:30 EDT, and then we got totally lost in a confusing maze of bad neighborhoods around the river area there. Part of the problem was Mapquest was completely incorrect when it came to things like... oh, extra turns and one-way streets. On top of that, police were everywhere because of some baseball game across the street, and they blocked off a lot of other entrances. We had to go around the city twice to get the right way down a one way street to find an entrance to the hotel (which we had to go in the back way past the restaurant). I was sent ahead to the hotel room while they dumped off the merchandise in the dealer's room. They didn't even get to set up, and we're going to have to do it tomorrow because we got here so late. It turns out the hotel screwed us over by not accepting the credit card that we used to hold the three rooms, and we had to use Liz's to pay for the rooms, which then led to other problems I am not sure I understood. Next, the "High speed Internet access in every room"... is not in ours. In fact, we believe they consider the word "high speed" to mean "a data port in the phone." We couldn't even use AOL to connect, the data line is so bad. So that screwed up a LOT of last-minute stuff we were planning to do, and is why these journal entries are going to be posted after the con. Later I found out the hotel "has wireless" but no one could seem to connect to it, or even detect it. Not even in the lobby, where the wireless modem was. I wish I had thought to bring my spare Cisco 350 card, then use Kismet, but I didn't even consider wireless. That is a mistake I won't make again. We are all so zonked. I got a few hour-long catnaps for the last 48 hours, but it's not enough, even though I tried delta-sleep a few times. I was so tired, I actually fell asleep sitting up in the van, which is a major accomplishment for me, since I can almost never sleep sitting upright. But Kory has to finalize the schedule because he forgot to bring a copy and they changed stuff around anyway. I am not only doing panels, but I get to be Kory's ... "advisor" during a meeting on Sunday between two warring gaming group factions. He wants my "personal opinion," and since I have studied fandom and their politics for years, I should provide some insight. We had a short meeting, ate some dinner, and then went back to the hotel room to crash. Tomorrow is going to be a busy, busy day.