Going south, mostly voluntarily
I'm going to San Diego, the end of this month, to attend a conference for my Dungeon Mastering job. I hope it's better than the last one I attended, back in, uhm, lemme think. A while ago. The last one was in DisneyWorld in Florida, in that huge hotel at which I marveled, as a child, every time the monorail went through it on the title sequence for Wonderful World of Disney, every Sunday night on CBC. I hear there are secret cities where researchers build secret weapons and stuff, like on that show Eureka. DisneyWorld is like that, only it's for people who want to spend money. I was welcomed, even though it was other people's money I was spending. I recall one fellow saying, "Yeah, everything starts with a line and ends with a cash register."
San Diego is probably more to my taste, at least as I read the wikipedia article. But I still hate travel, I hate being away from home, I hate crossing the border. I can't act natural at Customs and Immigration, because (presumably) it's too obvious that I'm trying to act natural.
So what makes a conference like this a good conference? Hard to say. It'd be great if I went there and heard about something hadn't read about already. It'd be great to hear someone make their wild hand-waving claims including the words "We actually did this and that actually happened," rather than, "We're doing this, and that should happen, and it should have this other effect." I need something to bring back to the people who sign the cheques; they're getting tired of all the "should" that piles up everywhere.
Not that I really care. If something's really working for those heroic Dungeon Masters out there, making players into better fighter, thieves, clerics and magic-users, I can read about it when they publish: the second-best thing about being a Grad Student in this day and age is online library access.
I remember microfiche, just like I remember when the scariest STD was herpes.
San Diego is probably more to my taste, at least as I read the wikipedia article. But I still hate travel, I hate being away from home, I hate crossing the border. I can't act natural at Customs and Immigration, because (presumably) it's too obvious that I'm trying to act natural.
So what makes a conference like this a good conference? Hard to say. It'd be great if I went there and heard about something hadn't read about already. It'd be great to hear someone make their wild hand-waving claims including the words "We actually did this and that actually happened," rather than, "We're doing this, and that should happen, and it should have this other effect." I need something to bring back to the people who sign the cheques; they're getting tired of all the "should" that piles up everywhere.
Not that I really care. If something's really working for those heroic Dungeon Masters out there, making players into better fighter, thieves, clerics and magic-users, I can read about it when they publish: the second-best thing about being a Grad Student in this day and age is online library access.
I remember microfiche, just like I remember when the scariest STD was herpes.