Dragon*Con: Day 2

What a day!

Published on September 3, 2006 By CariElf In Fun destinations

Dragon*Con: Day 2

We got a little more sleep last night, but there was a 10 AM panel that I wanted to attend, so we got up around 8. It was now obvious to us that there was something leaking in our bathroom, so I called the front desk and they sent a maintenance man up. He promised to either fix the toilet or have our stuff transferred to another room, seeing as we were ready to leave for the convention. However, we missed the free breakfast at our hotel and we didn't have time to go up to the guest hospitality suite before my panel. We did, however, have a package of mini-donuts in the room that keep me from keeling over. However, the lack of a good breakfast haunted me all day. We rushed to the Hilton, only to discover that we were in the wrong hotel, and had to rush back to the Marriot Marquis. The elevators and stairways were kind of odd in that hotel, but I wan't too late to the panel, which was about tax credits you can get for making computer games. Most of it went over my head, but I took some notes to pass on to the accountants.

Oh, and on the way to that first panel, I passed Tory from the build team of Mythbusters in the hallway. He was headed for the elevators. I recognized him, but couldn't quite place him at first. Then someone else who was passing said, "Love the show! Great Work!" and I realized who he was. At that point, I had missed my opportunity to do something embarrassing, but it was cool nonetheless. Also, he's very cute!

By the end of the panel I was ravenous, so I bought an overpriced lunch at the little cafe in the hotel. I met up with my sister, and she took me to see a few booths in the dealer's hall that she had seen yesterday. There is just a ton of stuff being sold at Dragon*Con, most of it cool but useless clutter. We'd been seeing people walking around with stuffed dragons on their shoulders, and the booth that was selling them was one of the booths my sister took me to see. The dragons were in the style of Anne McCaffrey's Dragons of Pern, which was one of the reasons they were such a big seller. I'd been wanting a dragon to ride on my shoulder since a similar vendor was at the Michigan Renaissaance Festival more than 10 years ago. Since I'm a sucker for things that I never had but wanted when I was young, I lost the battle to resist buying one. The booth next to it had taken a bunch of stuffed animals and altered them by gluing (or possibly sewing) wings to them, and adding fun fur. There were a couple of kittens with butterfly wings, one a calico and one a ginger colored cat, that hit my "Ohhhhhhhh" button. I promptly bought both of them.

At that point, I was starting to get nervous about being late for my second panel of the weekend, "Art vs. Code". In theory, it shouldn't take that long to get from one hotel to the other, but the sheer number of crowds was making it difficult to move around the hotels. We were passing out of the dealer's hall when I saw a T-shirt that would be perfect for my friend Jeff. I would have bought it then and there, but the dealer told my sister and I that if we bought 3 T-shirts, they wouldn't charge us sales tax. One of my worst character flaws is that I'm indecisive about little things like what to order for dinner or what T-shirt I like best in a sea of T-shirts that are all funny. Knowing this, I put the shirt back. I didn't have time to dither over it; I needed to get back to the Hyatt. My sister, however, stayed behind and shopped for T-shirts (including the one for Jeff).

I reached the entrance of the Hyatt that is closest to the Marriot, only to discover that they weren't letting people up the stairs and in that entrance. I was incensed, and worried about being late, so I tried to pull rank. "I'm a guest speaker. Can't you let me through?" I asked. However, the security guard told me that he had no options, so I would have to go around to the front. The line to get in the side entrance to register was wrapped around the building, but luckily they were still letting people with badges go in from the front entrance. I made it to my panel on time, but I was still vastly irritated. If they're going to give us speakers these special badges with the nice green ribbons, they ought to mean something. It's hard enough to get from one panel to another because they're scheduled back to back and all the panels run over time. I had another peeve yesterday along the same vein but I can't remember what it is at the moment.

"Art vs. Code" went very well. We had a lot of repeat attendees from Paul's other panels, and everyone seemed to enjoy it. I think that even people who weren't artists or coders have enjoyed our panels because it's like a behind the scenes of a movie feature. We've also managed to give out some useful info to people who want to get into the game industry.

Immediately following "Art vs. Code" was a panel on "Breaking into the Game Industry." I booked it over there because I wanted to (a) see if they could use another panelist and (

I wanted to hear what they had to say. I get a lot of people asking me how to get a job in the game industry, and I can tell them how to get a job at Stardock, but I don't have any experience with the larger companies. However, it really proved to be nothing new. It might have been useful to stay and make some contacts, but to my horror, I discovered that I had lost my badge.

I checked with the info booth, but no one had turned in a badge at the Hilton. They sent me to the Hyatt, and I had to talk Security into letting me back into the hotel with the security center, but no one had turned in my badge there either. They sent me back down to guest registration, where I had to explain everything to them. Once they understood that I was, in fact, a guest, and that I already had registered once, they tried to find me in the computer by they couldn't. I pulled out my ID, a buisness card, and opened my program to my name in the guest list. They re-registrered me. They did have some trouble with the computer, but they finally managed to print out a new badge.

I had wanted to attend the panel at 4 pm about Web Services for Online Games, but I was already late and I was tired and afraid of losing my badge again, so I found a quiet place to recharge, the hallway outside the room where Paul and I had given our panel. I rather wanted to check to see if my first badge was still in there, but there was another panel in there. My sister happened to be attending the panel, and there was a convenient water cooler, so I decided to park myself there for awhile.
My sister found me there talking with some of the people who had attended my and Paul's panels, and demanded that we go to dinner right now, so we went back to the Mexican restaurant from last night. I had been planning on asking Kristin and Paul, but Paul had another panel to do.

After dinner, we headed back to the hotel to change into our 'magic dresses' that we bought yesterday, to wear them to the Firefly/Serenity party that would start at 10. We found that we had been transferred to one of the business suites, a much bigger and nice room. Sweet, indeed. We changed into our dresses and hurried back to the Hyatt so that my sister could get to her Anime drawing class. I headed to Hacking 101. The people running the panel from the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) claimed that the term hacker is incorrectly used to describe computer criminals. They support some good causes, ones that seek to prevent infringement on privacy, but I was unconvinced that people who try to find security holes in networks without being contracted to do it are not doing anything wrong.

I hadn't figured out what I wanted to do after that and my sister's anime drawing class was 3 hours long, so I managed to find an empty spot on a bench and checked my schedule. One of my criteria was that it had to be in the same building, as I didn't want to be rushing around the hotels anymore today and I wanted to be nearby for the Firefly party. I ended up at a Buffy panel discussing vengeance as a theme in Buffy and Angel. It was mildly interesting, but I was a bit offput by the guy dressed up as a Spanish senorita for the Buffy prom. The best part was the woman who had a puppet of Angel, like the episode where Angel gets turned into a muppet.

When that panel was over, I decided to head over to the room where the Firefly party was being held. As it turns out, there was a line, so it was a good thing that I was there. They were only letting a certain number of people into the room due to fire code regulations. Even so, the room was pretty full and there weren't enough chairs. They had a costume contest, which I had a semi-decent view of by peering over people's shoulders, and a cash bar. It was fairly lively, and I had found some interesting people to chat with while we were watching the contest.

One of the problems with the convention is that the sheer number of people (40,000+) means that the crowded areas are going to be very warm. At the Firefly party last night, I was perspiring so much that I had a glow of sweat on my skin. I think that I've sweated more inside the convention hotels than walking outside of them! Anyway, my sister and I stayed at the Firefly party until after the band got started up. They were pretty good, but my sister wanted to go back to our hotel because she was tired. I didn't particulary care if I stayed or went, so I didn't insist that we stay.

We got back to the hotel, only to discover that the keys to our hotel room had fallen out of my camera case and we had to get a new one. I was mortified. I hardly ever lose things, and here I had lost my badge and my hotel keys in the same day. The desk clerk was very nice about it and gave us a new one, which I promptly handed over to my sister.

My mom had called our cell phones while my sister and I were both still in panels, so I called her back once we got into the hotel room. By the time that I hung up, I was getting to be too tired to do much more than write sort of an outline of this account, which is why I'm posting it today.

Comments

Cordelia

on Sep 03, 2006

Busy times! Don't forget to drink plenty of water!

Larry Kuperman

on Sep 03, 2006

No pictures yet , Cari?

Hope you have a time!

CariElf

on Sep 03, 2006

Don't forget to drink plenty of water!

Yep, I've been better about it today.

No pictures yet

I've only taken a few, actually. It's rather overwhelming, and people move past so quickly. If I had a camcorder, I'd just walk around filming all day and then cut snapshots from that.

momijiki

on Sep 04, 2006

someone once told me that at things like dragoncon you still qualify as human if you can manage to do two of the following things in one day:

sleep
take a shower
eat

Let me know how you do!

by the way, I am very jealous. Is it in Atlanta?

Island Dog

on Sep 04, 2006

Enjoy your trip.

CariElf

on Sep 06, 2006

someone once told me that at things like dragoncon you still qualify as human if you can manage to do two of the following things in one day:sleeptake a showereat

Yeah, I showered and ate every day, and I did sleep, although I didn't get as much rest as I could have used.

Still, that's what Mt. Dew is for.

momijiki

on Sep 06, 2006

Actually, sounds like you're pretty organized. How did your presentation go?

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