Current location:	Tulsa OK
Current mood:	chipper
Current music:	Some background lobby music
Entry tags:	conventions, ribbons

...And Mister H. will demonstrate ten somersets he'll undertake on solid ground...
G. and I had a productive couple of days. We got our hardware talking -- the dev boards and our computers, including his desktop unit. I've had Kinko's print 8 manuals, more than a thousand pages, from PDF files that either came with the dev kits, or we went and downloaded from the net. When the rush is over I'm thinking I'll tell our local reps (Paolo and Darin) about the manuals that they might consider including or at least referencing where to find, and we also have a few choice suggestions about their "Quick Start Guide." If you follow the instructions they give us in strict order, you can rapidly get to a point where you're stuck but good. Our nickname for their Quick Start Guide is the Fast Lane to Hell. That Tuesday I spent meeting with Paolo and Darin was extraordinarily valuable, because of the serious omissions in their Q.S.G. manuals.

But that's behind us. We've got happy working hardware. G. brought his desktop unit over Friday, because it's a more modern machine with a fast parallel port. And my parallel port card arrrived from the home office; I haven't done anything with it, but I might plug it in tonight. Or I may way until I get home and can consult with Paolo when I do!

I'm going to hook up my equipment tonight and play with the serial ports. I've got a specific goal for what I want to understand and accomplish before G. and I meet again tomorrow.

Thursday and Friday we talked a great deal about hardware products and phases. I wrote notes, and I'll be going over them again with G. to work out my report to mgmt.

Since things were going so well, and it didn't look like we'd need to work through the weekend, we had dinner in the steakhouse downstairs in the hotel and made plans to take it up again Monday morning.

At dinner Friday night, we did our best to lower the tone of the establishment. G. was wearing black t-shirt and jeans, I had on one of my new pink and green hawaiian shirts and an ordinary pair of shorts. The maitre d' asked if I was staying at the hotel, and I cheerfully told him yes! and gave him my last name when he asked for it. After he showed us to our table, I explained that what he was really saying was "Are you staying at the hotel, or can I throw you out for not wearing appropriate attire? Oh drat, you're a guest. Okay, you win, you can have a table." The steak was good, G. had an odd salad that was 1/4 steak, 1/4 avocado, 1/4 chopped onion and 1/4 miscellaneous veg. (At least it didn't have pickle slices on it like the salad he had at lunch at Tallly's.)

And we went our separate ways for the weekend. I told him I'd be looking up some of my friends, that there were even some Kansas City people I knew in town. And I changed into long pants and went off to the Radisson to find Conestoga.

Conestoga 10 was a fun convention. They had between 540 and 550 members. I took 800 photos, more or less. Previously, with my Olympus, I would average about 100 photos a day. With the new Canon Powershot S2 IS, I have a shorter cycle time between shots. I'm taking more duplicates -- often I'll take one with flash and one or two with available light, for example. I'm not sure if I'm writing down many more than 100 captions a day now. I might be moving a bit faster, but part of the time is explaining that I'm trying to take pictures of everyone here, and here's a sticker, and here's my business card, and the photos will be up real soon now.

Did I come close to complete coverage? I don't know yet. (I should have counted my stickers and my business cards, that would at least give me an approximate figure.) As a wild guess, I'll go out on a limb and say I think I may have shot half of the attendees.

When I arrived Friday, I ran into Elspeth first, because she was at Registation. I registered, got my badge, and shortly ran into India Boothman and met her two children, followed by the two Yard Dog redheaded authors I knew best: Linda Donahue and Julia Mandala. (You may recall that at ConQuesT I saw them in their Daisy Mae Bubba Bellydancer outfits.) They and two others -- Laura Underwood and Dusty Rainbolt -- had a chapbook out, The Four Redheads of the Apocalypse. I met a lot of people I already knew from ConQuesT, in fact. Very nice, having friendly faces waiting for me at a new convention that I'd never attended before.

Conestoga 1 was in 1997, and that's also the year that two southern sf publishing houses, Meisha Merlin and Yard Dog Press started up. So Conestoga 10 (aka Conestoga 101010) celebrated their combined history.

By the end of the convention, I'd surrendered and purchased their little book, along with International House of Bubbas and Flush Fiction (a collection of works to be read in one sitting, they average about 4 pages each).

The Radisson. Formerly the Sheraton. On 41st St., east of 169. Well, either you care about it and you know where it is, or not. Suffice to say it's not far from my hotel, and it's across the street from the Reasor's supermarket I did some shopping at on previous trips. Most significant feature: free WiFi. In fact, I'm posting this from the Radission Sunday night, because I'm only putting internet access on my expense account when I use it for company purposes, and it's an outrageous $9.95 a day at the E.S. And you can't get around it by going downstairs and tapping into the net in the "business center" room either.

Highlights of the convention... Listening a bit to Don Maitz (AGOH) and David Lee Anderson in casual chat/sketching session, where a number of fans were quietly working on their art while Don related various anecdotes about painting and the occasional legal issue. One interesting item was where a minor was used for a painting for a book cover, with a model release signed by parent; fifteen years later, grown-up woman finds the book painting used on a collectible card, and sics her lawyer on Don. Don has to dig out original model release and pay his lawyer to get hers off of his back.

More later.

And here's ribbon story part 23: Some plain ribbons printed recently, and a few more fancy ribbons that will be ready before laconiv.

• Easy Target
• Gainax Fan
• Solar Spice & Liquors Co. 2006

bovil wanted a bunch of ribbons in time for Baycon; "Easy Target" was one of them. I think they're for people who "don't get the joke."

"Gainax Boy" wanted "Gainax Fan" ribbons to hand out. They were ready in time for FanimeCon, i.e. Baycon weekend, so I brought them to FanimeCon to deliver to him.

"Solar Spice & Liquors Co. 2006" were requested by Karen Anderson. I'm not exactly sure of the purpose here. She paid cash for them, and they arrived immediately before Baycon/Fanime. Too close for me to get them to her before the con unless I hand-carried them to the convention -- but she wasn't attending, so after I got back I dropped them in the mail to her. I think she may have some left from conzilla that she'll bring to L.A.con IV.

All of these were printed using the plain upper/lower case roman letters.


The "I'm just pretending to be underage" ribbon was inspired by people who requested a "Cosplay Jailbait" ribbon. The idea is that you're dressed as a young character; the classic example would be the 20- or 30-something woman dressed as Usagi (Sailor Moon) who is not terribly interested in middle-aged men who find her costume irrestibly exciting.

Granted, having this as a badge ribbon means that the ribbon is still on your badge after you've changed into a different costume. But nothing's perfect...

This ribbon will not be brought to laconiv, so if you're holding your breath for it you'll have to wait a little longer.

Typeface: Clarendon Condensed.


"Karaoke Addict" is another ribbon I've ordered that I'm not bringing to the Worldcon. (There are going to be plenty of unofficial ribbons, including a couple of different filk music-themed ribbons.) This would be a logical ribbon for xkokuux to hand out at animelosangeles, although I don't think we've talked about it yet.

Typeface: Marigold, because that's what I use for Japanese culture-related ribbons.


"Quick! Get me a can of Goth-Away!" can be filed under casual remarks overheard at conzilla, although I understand caprine has voiced this sort of sentiment before that weekend. It was too good not to use as a ribbon. And since Goths generally have depressingly dark clothes, this ribbon will be on a nice white or off-white color to act as an antidote.

Typefaces: Blado and American Text. I use Blado here because it's the italic typeface I like to use on ribbons, not because it's a shmexy title.