Other than one skip year in the middle of all those surgeries, I've been to Origins every year since 2004. In the early days, it was often my socialization con, where I would chat and meet up with all the people who I couldn't spend time with at Gencon. There were few signature events that I felt I had to attend and I spent a lot of the time just ( Read more... )

I've never been a lucky person. At least, I've never had any impression that luck favors me more than most and there's a fair amount of evidence to the contrary. The best example of this is probably in true dungeon where the law of large numbers prances and cavorts. To this day, I have ( Read more... )

*sigh ( Read more... )

Today was housing registration for Gencon. In years past I would have been in front of the computer with multiple windows open and, in the past few years, with friends on speakerphone all ready to rush the website at the stroke of noon (or whenever). The carnage, the devastation, the repeated white screens telling you the site wouldn't load along ( Read more... )

I was chatting with someone recently on facebook, thanking them for all the hard work they go through at gencon to put on an event I really enjoy. The workload involved must truly be staggering and while for most attendees, gencon is 4 or 5 days of frenzied activity and sleepless nights, for some event runners it's far more. Even if we just count ( Read more... )

I'm sorry to say that the second season of Dexter was a real disappointment. The only reason I'm feeling that way is that the first season was so wonderfully scripted and compact that by comparison the followup seemed rambling and unfocused. While you had the Ice Truck Killer theme tying Season 1 into a pretty bow, the second season just seemed to ( Read more... )

It's been a weird couple of weeks for me. I've had some real problems sleeping lately. Part of it is that I want to be up at the 3am hour to cash in on some swagbuck opportunities that are only available at that time. It's referred to in the lingo as 'Midnight Bucks', and it used to be 1am EST because the servers were located in CST. Around a month ( Read more... )

I'm not sure exactly what got me started, but last night I began digging through my collection of photos and videos through the years. Ah, actually, now that i think of it, I know exactly what got me started. Someone PM'ed me on facebook and wanted to know if he could join my group in our perennial Killer Breakfast schtick at Gencon this year. We ( Read more... )

It's been ages since I've posted anything here and there are no excuses. Well, actually, there are plenty of excuses. I could probably rattle off a half dozen in quick order but the core of the matter is that 1) no one would care and 2) it's all sophistry anyway. I always seem to go through stretches where it's harder to get around to updating and ( Read more... )

I became aware of the awful realization that it's only 2 weeks before I leave for Chicago and then for gencon. This has me in a panic because of the ridiculous number of things left undone. For one thing, I've yet to actually book my flight from Chicago to Indianapolis nor my hotel for my post-gencon stay. I'm not sure if I mentioned it before but ( Read more... )