Con report
Now that I've slept, I can actually try a con report.
Thursday:
I was pleasantly surprised when I picked up the rental car because Enterprise's site said "Kia Rio, Nissan Versa, or similar" and I got an '08 Chevy Malibu. I was expecting to get a tiny little thing instead of something decent sized. I'm now spoiled, too. I wish I could give them my Celebrity instead of the Malibu.
Anyway, the trip down went way better than I thought it would. I didn't run into any construction that slowed traffic or anything. I only made one stop, too, and that was because I needed to stretch my legs and pee more than anything. It took all of $30 of gas to get down there, too. The fuel gauge was down between 1/2 and 1/4 tank when I saw a sign that said "Atlanta 40 miles", so I didn't even have to stop for gas. I did get pretty much instantly pissed off once I started having to deal with Georgia drivers. It seemed like most of them were speeding (like 80-90+ in a 70) and would tailgate me instead of going around me. I changed lanes more to get those people off my ass than I did to go around slower traffic.
I arrived at the hotel around 1730 and managed to get past sabotlours without either of us noticing each other. Had to call him and get him to let me in the room. I tagged around with him the rest of the night, mostly. We went up and did the whole registration thing. Right before I was gonna get my badge and all that, the registration server went down. I waited around for it to come back up since I was basically first in line to get processed once it did come back online. It turned out to be a bad NIC after a few reboots managed to not fix it and plugging the ethernet cable into another NIC on the box did. I ran into frocta at registration, but he didn't seem too excited to see me (seemed that way for the whole con, actually).
Friday:
I hit up opening ceremonies and wandered around the dealer's den and artist alley. I did the social thing and just hung out in popular spots. I think Friday was when I first ran into aragornwolf at FWA, but I can't remember. Actually, I don't remember a big portion of Friday for some reason. Must mean I didn't do much of importance. kittybj found me later on in the day and spent what was left of it with me. We mostly did the movie room and just snuggled while watching stuff.
Saturday:
This one I remember better for some reason, even though I probably shouldn't. I watched the fursuit parade. Video of that will be uploaded to YouTube sometime soon. I hung around with averageeveryday and his guy for part of the day and let him use my camera to get pics of his guy's fursuit, so most of my pics are of Yukon. I need to remember to take more pics next time.
That night, I went to 2's Rant and the halioffirpine concert. Both were rather good. 2 seemed a little rushed and a bit too scripted, but I still enjoyed it. The crowd for Hali's concert was disappointing. Way too many people left after seeing 2 instead of hanging around to watch Hali. That did sort of balance out by allowing Hali to have real audience interaction. The setlist seemed to be generated on the fly by both him and the audience. I should've recorded the audio of the show with my camera and posted it on The Trader's Den. I bought a copy of both of the albums he was selling at FWA after the concert, too.
After the shows, I wandered on up to the party in blaireau_bougon's room and chilled for a bit and then headed back down into the main conspace. I just sort of wandered around, hung out with random furs, hung off at least frocta, and said hi to unclekage (got a picture of that, too).
Sunday:
This was the worst day of the con, in my opinion. It was all grey outside and stuff that morning, which didn't help the mood. All the partying the night before seemed to have taken a toll on the con. It was also just depressing that the con would be over by the end of the day. I stopped by 2's table in the dealer's den, shook hands with him, and chatted a tiny bit. I did a short run for gas, picked up some minutes for my phone (used way more than I thought I would during the con), and lunch. I ended up missing the variety show and the presenting furry fandom to the public panel as a result. I would've had to miss one of them, anyway, because they were unfortunately scheduled at the same time.
That evening, I hit up closing ceremonies. Total attendance was 1046 with 165 (I think) fursuiters. I think that's about 300 more furs than last year, which I don't think they were totally prepared for. After closing ceremonies, sabotlours, blaireau_bougon, and I went out for food, which ended up being Indian. It was pretty good. I'll probably be seeking out Indian food again. After that, I just kinda wandered around trying to squeeze as much con out of what was left as I could. I finally gave into temptation and wandered around the hotel with a Dr. Pepper t-shirt, Dr. Pepper sleep pants, and a bottle of Dr. Pepper. After an hour or so of that, I felt too trashy and changed back into something more presentable. I ended up walking all the way to the 12th floor in search of something to do. There was a stop on 7 to see what was going on at blaireau_bougon's deaddog party. Nobody seemed to like my suggestion of doing something to Sabot while he was asleep, though. Bah. Surprisingly, I found a room party up on the 12th floor. I didn't go in, though. I kept waiting for security to ask me to leave the 11th/12th floor, too, as those were the club level rooms and it was 0130.
Monday:
Didn't want to leave. Had a small issue with paying to get out of the front lot. I made it home fine. I took a small detour in Knoxville to see if I could get to the West Hills Mall there, but I couldn't find it, so I just headed on instead of looking more and getting lost. I made my only stop for the trip back just before getting onto I81. Once I hit Johnson City, I declared myself home and had dinner from Pal's in the mall.
I ended up having an LJ backlog of something like 400 posts to get through, and that was after I dropped customers_suck from my friends list. One or two artists had art floods while I was away, too, so I had nearly 700 submissions and 200-something journals to get through on FA. I crashed pretty much right after that, woke up hours later, and went to work on this thing.
Photos and scans of conbadges will come in another post.
Thursday:
I was pleasantly surprised when I picked up the rental car because Enterprise's site said "Kia Rio, Nissan Versa, or similar" and I got an '08 Chevy Malibu. I was expecting to get a tiny little thing instead of something decent sized. I'm now spoiled, too. I wish I could give them my Celebrity instead of the Malibu.
Anyway, the trip down went way better than I thought it would. I didn't run into any construction that slowed traffic or anything. I only made one stop, too, and that was because I needed to stretch my legs and pee more than anything. It took all of $30 of gas to get down there, too. The fuel gauge was down between 1/2 and 1/4 tank when I saw a sign that said "Atlanta 40 miles", so I didn't even have to stop for gas. I did get pretty much instantly pissed off once I started having to deal with Georgia drivers. It seemed like most of them were speeding (like 80-90+ in a 70) and would tailgate me instead of going around me. I changed lanes more to get those people off my ass than I did to go around slower traffic.
I arrived at the hotel around 1730 and managed to get past sabotlours without either of us noticing each other. Had to call him and get him to let me in the room. I tagged around with him the rest of the night, mostly. We went up and did the whole registration thing. Right before I was gonna get my badge and all that, the registration server went down. I waited around for it to come back up since I was basically first in line to get processed once it did come back online. It turned out to be a bad NIC after a few reboots managed to not fix it and plugging the ethernet cable into another NIC on the box did. I ran into frocta at registration, but he didn't seem too excited to see me (seemed that way for the whole con, actually).
Friday:
I hit up opening ceremonies and wandered around the dealer's den and artist alley. I did the social thing and just hung out in popular spots. I think Friday was when I first ran into aragornwolf at FWA, but I can't remember. Actually, I don't remember a big portion of Friday for some reason. Must mean I didn't do much of importance. kittybj found me later on in the day and spent what was left of it with me. We mostly did the movie room and just snuggled while watching stuff.
Saturday:
This one I remember better for some reason, even though I probably shouldn't. I watched the fursuit parade. Video of that will be uploaded to YouTube sometime soon. I hung around with averageeveryday and his guy for part of the day and let him use my camera to get pics of his guy's fursuit, so most of my pics are of Yukon. I need to remember to take more pics next time.
That night, I went to 2's Rant and the halioffirpine concert. Both were rather good. 2 seemed a little rushed and a bit too scripted, but I still enjoyed it. The crowd for Hali's concert was disappointing. Way too many people left after seeing 2 instead of hanging around to watch Hali. That did sort of balance out by allowing Hali to have real audience interaction. The setlist seemed to be generated on the fly by both him and the audience. I should've recorded the audio of the show with my camera and posted it on The Trader's Den. I bought a copy of both of the albums he was selling at FWA after the concert, too.
After the shows, I wandered on up to the party in blaireau_bougon's room and chilled for a bit and then headed back down into the main conspace. I just sort of wandered around, hung out with random furs, hung off at least frocta, and said hi to unclekage (got a picture of that, too).
Sunday:
This was the worst day of the con, in my opinion. It was all grey outside and stuff that morning, which didn't help the mood. All the partying the night before seemed to have taken a toll on the con. It was also just depressing that the con would be over by the end of the day. I stopped by 2's table in the dealer's den, shook hands with him, and chatted a tiny bit. I did a short run for gas, picked up some minutes for my phone (used way more than I thought I would during the con), and lunch. I ended up missing the variety show and the presenting furry fandom to the public panel as a result. I would've had to miss one of them, anyway, because they were unfortunately scheduled at the same time.
That evening, I hit up closing ceremonies. Total attendance was 1046 with 165 (I think) fursuiters. I think that's about 300 more furs than last year, which I don't think they were totally prepared for. After closing ceremonies, sabotlours, blaireau_bougon, and I went out for food, which ended up being Indian. It was pretty good. I'll probably be seeking out Indian food again. After that, I just kinda wandered around trying to squeeze as much con out of what was left as I could. I finally gave into temptation and wandered around the hotel with a Dr. Pepper t-shirt, Dr. Pepper sleep pants, and a bottle of Dr. Pepper. After an hour or so of that, I felt too trashy and changed back into something more presentable. I ended up walking all the way to the 12th floor in search of something to do. There was a stop on 7 to see what was going on at blaireau_bougon's deaddog party. Nobody seemed to like my suggestion of doing something to Sabot while he was asleep, though. Bah. Surprisingly, I found a room party up on the 12th floor. I didn't go in, though. I kept waiting for security to ask me to leave the 11th/12th floor, too, as those were the club level rooms and it was 0130.
Monday:
Didn't want to leave. Had a small issue with paying to get out of the front lot. I made it home fine. I took a small detour in Knoxville to see if I could get to the West Hills Mall there, but I couldn't find it, so I just headed on instead of looking more and getting lost. I made my only stop for the trip back just before getting onto I81. Once I hit Johnson City, I declared myself home and had dinner from Pal's in the mall.
I ended up having an LJ backlog of something like 400 posts to get through, and that was after I dropped customers_suck from my friends list. One or two artists had art floods while I was away, too, so I had nearly 700 submissions and 200-something journals to get through on FA. I crashed pretty much right after that, woke up hours later, and went to work on this thing.
Photos and scans of conbadges will come in another post.