Rusted.
Oh, yeah, I meant to talk about Rustycon.
Hmmm. Let's see. Rustycon.
Well, as I mentioned previously, I managed to procrastinate my way out of getting myself a free badge, so instead I got to stand in line for an hour and a half for the privilege of forking over perfectly good money I couldn't really afford for a badge with a misspelled name. Yay. On the plus side, at least I ended up standing in line with someone I knew and wanted to talk to, so I didn't go completely out of my tiny mind. That, and Bobbie Dufault -- who had sent me the e-mail inviting me to the con as a guest, the e-mail I'd blithely ignored while I was working on my book -- wandered by, and I got to reassure her that no, I wasn't pissed at her or anything, I just hadn't answered her mail because I'm a great big flake.
Not too long after I got my badge, I ran into jhitchin, and pulled him aside so I could give back the Doctor Who audiotapes that he had loaned me, oh, four or five years ago. Felt good to finally get around to doing that.
I was primarily there to attend retcon's dance. It could have gone better. Not to fault him -- he did a fine job, as always, but it was really, really poorly attended. I think I saw maybe as many as 20 people on the dance floor at a time, tops. This was partly because there weren't many people at the convention to begin with -- but also because those who were there couldn't find the damn thing. This was the first year Rustycon was in this large, spread-out hotel, and no one really seemed to know where anything was located.
treebyleaf took the initiative early on, and grabbed a pen and paper and wrote up some flyers directing people to the dance. We then headed off to the convention office in search of tape. We told them we wanted to put up some flyers to let people know where the dance was, and asked them what kind of tape was okay to use on the hotel walls.
They looked at us like we were speaking Martian.
It was a perfectly reasonable goddamn question, one I've asked at any number of cons, since hotels are picky about tape on their walls, but the helpful staff in Rusty's office looked like they'd never even considered the bizarre ideas I'd presented to them: Walls? Tape? Flyers? What? Then they argued with us that we didn't need to put up flyers -- the dance had a sign outside it. When I pointed out, not unreasonably I thought, that a sign right outside the dance didn't do much good for people in other parts of the hotel who might be wondering where to look, they suggested that we just move the sign a little further down the hall. I left while I could still manage to be polite, and we decided we'd just go ahead and use the tape we already had, and if the con had a problem with it, well, we'd tried to ask ....
This reflected on a problem I had with the convention as a whole -- poor information design. I first noticed this before I left home on Friday, as I tried to find out simple things from their website -- what time is the dance? What hours is the Dealer's Room open? I couldn't find answers to my questions there or in the program guide or the pocket program. Asking the people at Registration where or when anything was didn't produce any useful results, either. I eventually found the hours for the Dealer's Room in the program guide on Sunday, through the simple means of flipping through every single damn page. Once I found them I confirmed that no, they weren't listed in the table of contents.
I did find in the pocket program that Hospitality was on the "10th floor." I feel I must point out that the 10th floor does, in fact, have more than one room, and would you consider me too demanding if I expressed a certain curiosity about the room number? If so, could someone maybe have put up a sign or two directing members there?
Admittedly, there was a sign right outside Hospitality. When it was open. Maybe they should have moved it a little further down the hall.
Rustycon had, as near as I can tell, a fairly decent convention going on in that hotel this year. Somewhere.
I spent a few hours on Saturday wandering around and looking for retcon, and later found out he wasn't there that day. I left early, still tired from the night before. I talked Riff and treebyleaf into coming back on Sunday, so treebyleaf could get the brightsharp little knife she'd fallen in love with in the Dealer's Room.
While we were there, a dealer offered to sell me all six of Clive Barker's Tortured Souls action figures for just fifty bucks. I really, really want them -- they're beautifully detailed, and I'm such the Barker fanboy -- but I decided I just couldn't afford it. I'm still frustrated at having to pass up a deal like that.
After that, I met David Gerrold, who was behind a dealer's table selling some of his books and scripts. I got to talk to him for a few minutes, and I got to tell him how useful his book about the writing -- and rewriting -- of The Trouble With Tribbles has been to me as a writer. I didn't think I was going to get up the nerve to talk to him at all -- some people get tongue-tied around their favorite actors, but to me, those are just the people who read the lines; I get tongue-tied around those who dream the dreams. He was great to talk to, funny, warm, and personable.
Whatever little frustrations I'd dealt with at the con, that moment made my weekend. Hell, it probably made my whole year.
Hmmm. Let's see. Rustycon.
Well, as I mentioned previously, I managed to procrastinate my way out of getting myself a free badge, so instead I got to stand in line for an hour and a half for the privilege of forking over perfectly good money I couldn't really afford for a badge with a misspelled name. Yay. On the plus side, at least I ended up standing in line with someone I knew and wanted to talk to, so I didn't go completely out of my tiny mind. That, and Bobbie Dufault -- who had sent me the e-mail inviting me to the con as a guest, the e-mail I'd blithely ignored while I was working on my book -- wandered by, and I got to reassure her that no, I wasn't pissed at her or anything, I just hadn't answered her mail because I'm a great big flake.
Not too long after I got my badge, I ran into jhitchin, and pulled him aside so I could give back the Doctor Who audiotapes that he had loaned me, oh, four or five years ago. Felt good to finally get around to doing that.
I was primarily there to attend retcon's dance. It could have gone better. Not to fault him -- he did a fine job, as always, but it was really, really poorly attended. I think I saw maybe as many as 20 people on the dance floor at a time, tops. This was partly because there weren't many people at the convention to begin with -- but also because those who were there couldn't find the damn thing. This was the first year Rustycon was in this large, spread-out hotel, and no one really seemed to know where anything was located.
treebyleaf took the initiative early on, and grabbed a pen and paper and wrote up some flyers directing people to the dance. We then headed off to the convention office in search of tape. We told them we wanted to put up some flyers to let people know where the dance was, and asked them what kind of tape was okay to use on the hotel walls.
They looked at us like we were speaking Martian.
It was a perfectly reasonable goddamn question, one I've asked at any number of cons, since hotels are picky about tape on their walls, but the helpful staff in Rusty's office looked like they'd never even considered the bizarre ideas I'd presented to them: Walls? Tape? Flyers? What? Then they argued with us that we didn't need to put up flyers -- the dance had a sign outside it. When I pointed out, not unreasonably I thought, that a sign right outside the dance didn't do much good for people in other parts of the hotel who might be wondering where to look, they suggested that we just move the sign a little further down the hall. I left while I could still manage to be polite, and we decided we'd just go ahead and use the tape we already had, and if the con had a problem with it, well, we'd tried to ask ....
This reflected on a problem I had with the convention as a whole -- poor information design. I first noticed this before I left home on Friday, as I tried to find out simple things from their website -- what time is the dance? What hours is the Dealer's Room open? I couldn't find answers to my questions there or in the program guide or the pocket program. Asking the people at Registration where or when anything was didn't produce any useful results, either. I eventually found the hours for the Dealer's Room in the program guide on Sunday, through the simple means of flipping through every single damn page. Once I found them I confirmed that no, they weren't listed in the table of contents.
I did find in the pocket program that Hospitality was on the "10th floor." I feel I must point out that the 10th floor does, in fact, have more than one room, and would you consider me too demanding if I expressed a certain curiosity about the room number? If so, could someone maybe have put up a sign or two directing members there?
Admittedly, there was a sign right outside Hospitality. When it was open. Maybe they should have moved it a little further down the hall.
Rustycon had, as near as I can tell, a fairly decent convention going on in that hotel this year. Somewhere.
I spent a few hours on Saturday wandering around and looking for retcon, and later found out he wasn't there that day. I left early, still tired from the night before. I talked Riff and treebyleaf into coming back on Sunday, so treebyleaf could get the brightsharp little knife she'd fallen in love with in the Dealer's Room.
While we were there, a dealer offered to sell me all six of Clive Barker's Tortured Souls action figures for just fifty bucks. I really, really want them -- they're beautifully detailed, and I'm such the Barker fanboy -- but I decided I just couldn't afford it. I'm still frustrated at having to pass up a deal like that.
After that, I met David Gerrold, who was behind a dealer's table selling some of his books and scripts. I got to talk to him for a few minutes, and I got to tell him how useful his book about the writing -- and rewriting -- of The Trouble With Tribbles has been to me as a writer. I didn't think I was going to get up the nerve to talk to him at all -- some people get tongue-tied around their favorite actors, but to me, those are just the people who read the lines; I get tongue-tied around those who dream the dreams. He was great to talk to, funny, warm, and personable.
Whatever little frustrations I'd dealt with at the con, that moment made my weekend. Hell, it probably made my whole year.