Jan 27: Sunday at FC (part one) - before the show
My apologies for the lateness of this entry. I know at least one of you has been waiting for it.
Sun 27 Jan
Four hours after I went to bed, I woke around 7-ish to Exile17's "wake up!" text message and could not get back to sleep. Finally around 9:30 I gave up, showered, and slogged out to the lobby. Near the elevators, I ran into JohnnyBlanco. He said I looked exhausted and asked how I was doing. I could've angsted about being cheated out of sleep and turned it into a big pity party, but I was determined not to let my excuses kill my day. This was a very important day.
"I'm doing pretty well, we've got a big show tonight. Hope you'll be there!" and I wished him well. It set the tone for the afternoon.
I parked myself next to the coffee kiosk and watched the busy Sunday morning crowd scurry past. I nursed a large coffee, chatted up a number of friends who stopped by including perro and his posse (he took the photo at right), while I tried to extract the Last Emperor theme from my iPod for the show tonight, so I wouldn't have to drive home to get the CD. I thought perhaps I would have to find someone with a PC and iTunes in order to navigate the iPod's drive structure manually, as my iBook wouldn't let me. Finally I realized, hey, I ripped that album on THIS computer, and sure enough, there was the track, all along in iTunes. I converted it to MP3 format and shoved it on my iPod Nano (in file sharing format) for later burning to CD. Just wish I'd known super-jayhawk was scrambling to find Kung Fu Fighting - I have two versions.
I saw Sabotlours and Carol-kitty, heading out for a family obligation. The FNL staff brunch I'd intended for 11am didn't happen until later: Super Jayhawk was shagged out from hosting a party the night before. TonyRingtail was never told, and was getting back from Denny's. I sat at a coffee garden table with Trendane and SK-1; Tony Ringtail joined us. DustyKat, Super Jayhawk and UltraGor also joined us as we went over things we needed to get lined up. We considered how we were going to gather the ballots, and I had a great idea. I called SilverLinz to see if they still had the boxes from their video. The end of the show also presented us with a bunch of dead ninjas on the stage, and the obvious solution came to us. We'd have Farraptor's FarWolf as Dr. Reanimator bring them back to life.
Critterlympics VII was cancelled due to rain. Although the weather was starting to clear up that morning, the ground was still way too wet. By game time the rain had started up again.
After we finished brunch, I picked up the Events room key (123) from Genevive, ran to main stage to pick up Scruff E's audio that was left behind Saturday, and found an updated copy of the audio for You Are A Pirate!. I dropped these and my iPod nano with USB connector by Super Jayhawk's room where Dusty, Minnieme4rl and company rehearsed the Snow White skit for the first time. I was dripping with sweat from running around like a headless fursuiter by the time I made it back to the Events room that TJ Coyote was holding watch for me. I tried to calm myself, talking a bit with TJ while watching the rain come down. I set up my little portable speakers and iPod to play the Hero soundtrack. This was very relaxing, as I tried to reassure myself that I did not need to be anywhere for this brief time period. My calm before the storm.
Some time around 4pm, we managed to land several magical back hotel corridor passes (aka the "Timewarp") to facilitate load-in of FNL show stuff. I headed to main stage to meet Carol and Sabot there, and to help unload FNL stuff that Super Jayhawk, Hugg E. Bear, UltraGor and company brought in from SJH's room.
We suited up the ninjas, wrote out the lineup, and started planning the final rehearsal. I proposed using the masquerade's flow (enter stage on the far side), but apparently acts had already rehearsed with reverse direction so we just stuck with entering on the near side. I laid down a stripe of blue tape leaving about 3-4 feet of walkway in front of the monitor where Loranskunky (stage manager) stood. He ended up being the only one on headset link between Carol, Sabot and I backstage and Tony Ringtail and Super Jayhawk with justincheetah at the AV boards, and his headset was on a wire so it became essential he stay put. The headsets that were supposed to be provided, weren't, but we made do with what we had.
As 5pm, Full Rehearsal rolled around, but the big opening Asian Zodiac act was missing people, including Diadexxus herself. We were to run through the entire show in order, but 3 of her dozen people were missing. Chairo had con business but returned shortly. Diadexxus and BeetleCat showed up closer to 5:30pm and our rehearsal was under way. Crisis averted. Carol could start breathing again.
I'm not sure exactly when we started worrying about when San Jose Taiko would be arriving, but they arrived and started setting up. Doors were opened about 7:10pm, ballots and pencils and ear protection were distributed.
At some point our video cut completely. I don't know the full story, nor how crazed things might have been with A/V, but I took a deep breath and had faith that A/V was working on it and me stressing about it would not help them fix it faster. smashwolf was scrambling along the ground working on things.
Main Stage A/V is a tricky beast, and let me see if I can explain this. Every bit of power for all the AV equipment, lights, sound, wired cameras, microphones and monitors has to come from a single isolated power source. So when they say they don't have enough power for the TV monitor, they can't go plugging it in somewhere else, since it'd be on a different power supply, and thus have a different Ground differential, and likely zap things and let the magic blue smoke escape. Forgive me, I took EEL3211 Basic Electrical Energy in college 19 years ago and scraped up a C+.
When the drummers finished, we were to show two videos made specifically for the show, but the A/V issues postponed their debut for a few minutes. Trendane and SK-1 introduced themselves and stalled. We got video back, leaving the backstage monitor as the last part to fix. It wasn't essential for the show to go on. The feed to the monitor finally came back, albeit kind of washed out on the underpowered monitor.
My notes ran out at this point. To be continued...
Posted 10 Apr 08
Sun 27 Jan
Four hours after I went to bed, I woke around 7-ish to Exile17's "wake up!" text message and could not get back to sleep. Finally around 9:30 I gave up, showered, and slogged out to the lobby. Near the elevators, I ran into JohnnyBlanco. He said I looked exhausted and asked how I was doing. I could've angsted about being cheated out of sleep and turned it into a big pity party, but I was determined not to let my excuses kill my day. This was a very important day.
"I'm doing pretty well, we've got a big show tonight. Hope you'll be there!" and I wished him well. It set the tone for the afternoon.
I parked myself next to the coffee kiosk and watched the busy Sunday morning crowd scurry past. I nursed a large coffee, chatted up a number of friends who stopped by including perro and his posse (he took the photo at right), while I tried to extract the Last Emperor theme from my iPod for the show tonight, so I wouldn't have to drive home to get the CD. I thought perhaps I would have to find someone with a PC and iTunes in order to navigate the iPod's drive structure manually, as my iBook wouldn't let me. Finally I realized, hey, I ripped that album on THIS computer, and sure enough, there was the track, all along in iTunes. I converted it to MP3 format and shoved it on my iPod Nano (in file sharing format) for later burning to CD. Just wish I'd known super-jayhawk was scrambling to find Kung Fu Fighting - I have two versions.
I saw Sabotlours and Carol-kitty, heading out for a family obligation. The FNL staff brunch I'd intended for 11am didn't happen until later: Super Jayhawk was shagged out from hosting a party the night before. TonyRingtail was never told, and was getting back from Denny's. I sat at a coffee garden table with Trendane and SK-1; Tony Ringtail joined us. DustyKat, Super Jayhawk and UltraGor also joined us as we went over things we needed to get lined up. We considered how we were going to gather the ballots, and I had a great idea. I called SilverLinz to see if they still had the boxes from their video. The end of the show also presented us with a bunch of dead ninjas on the stage, and the obvious solution came to us. We'd have Farraptor's FarWolf as Dr. Reanimator bring them back to life.
Critterlympics VII was cancelled due to rain. Although the weather was starting to clear up that morning, the ground was still way too wet. By game time the rain had started up again.
After we finished brunch, I picked up the Events room key (123) from Genevive, ran to main stage to pick up Scruff E's audio that was left behind Saturday, and found an updated copy of the audio for You Are A Pirate!. I dropped these and my iPod nano with USB connector by Super Jayhawk's room where Dusty, Minnieme4rl and company rehearsed the Snow White skit for the first time. I was dripping with sweat from running around like a headless fursuiter by the time I made it back to the Events room that TJ Coyote was holding watch for me. I tried to calm myself, talking a bit with TJ while watching the rain come down. I set up my little portable speakers and iPod to play the Hero soundtrack. This was very relaxing, as I tried to reassure myself that I did not need to be anywhere for this brief time period. My calm before the storm.
Some time around 4pm, we managed to land several magical back hotel corridor passes (aka the "Timewarp") to facilitate load-in of FNL show stuff. I headed to main stage to meet Carol and Sabot there, and to help unload FNL stuff that Super Jayhawk, Hugg E. Bear, UltraGor and company brought in from SJH's room.
We suited up the ninjas, wrote out the lineup, and started planning the final rehearsal. I proposed using the masquerade's flow (enter stage on the far side), but apparently acts had already rehearsed with reverse direction so we just stuck with entering on the near side. I laid down a stripe of blue tape leaving about 3-4 feet of walkway in front of the monitor where Loranskunky (stage manager) stood. He ended up being the only one on headset link between Carol, Sabot and I backstage and Tony Ringtail and Super Jayhawk with justincheetah at the AV boards, and his headset was on a wire so it became essential he stay put. The headsets that were supposed to be provided, weren't, but we made do with what we had.
As 5pm, Full Rehearsal rolled around, but the big opening Asian Zodiac act was missing people, including Diadexxus herself. We were to run through the entire show in order, but 3 of her dozen people were missing. Chairo had con business but returned shortly. Diadexxus and BeetleCat showed up closer to 5:30pm and our rehearsal was under way. Crisis averted. Carol could start breathing again.
I'm not sure exactly when we started worrying about when San Jose Taiko would be arriving, but they arrived and started setting up. Doors were opened about 7:10pm, ballots and pencils and ear protection were distributed.
At some point our video cut completely. I don't know the full story, nor how crazed things might have been with A/V, but I took a deep breath and had faith that A/V was working on it and me stressing about it would not help them fix it faster. smashwolf was scrambling along the ground working on things.
Main Stage A/V is a tricky beast, and let me see if I can explain this. Every bit of power for all the AV equipment, lights, sound, wired cameras, microphones and monitors has to come from a single isolated power source. So when they say they don't have enough power for the TV monitor, they can't go plugging it in somewhere else, since it'd be on a different power supply, and thus have a different Ground differential, and likely zap things and let the magic blue smoke escape. Forgive me, I took EEL3211 Basic Electrical Energy in college 19 years ago and scraped up a C+.
When the drummers finished, we were to show two videos made specifically for the show, but the A/V issues postponed their debut for a few minutes. Trendane and SK-1 introduced themselves and stalled. We got video back, leaving the backstage monitor as the last part to fix. It wasn't essential for the show to go on. The feed to the monitor finally came back, albeit kind of washed out on the underpowered monitor.
My notes ran out at this point. To be continued...
Posted 10 Apr 08