vakkotaur

There was a filk panel on ~~Saturday~~ Friday and jmaynard was in his Tron outfit. These combined such that Tom Smith made up a rough Tron Guy filk on the spot when we joined the audience. It was very rough, but still fairly impressive for being made up on the fly.

Jay spotted someone with a Compaq Armada 7800, the same model laptop as I use, who was using it wireless. I asked about the distribution, and he was using Slackware, so I asked about wireless and was told he used ndiswrapper. That's fine, but not helpful, alas. I don't use ndiswrapper, which is a gimmick to allow using Windows drivers, as I can use native drivers. My problem with wireless is not the driver, but rc.wireless.conf settings and iwconfig seemingly not really config-ing. I ought to post a separate entry about that.

There was a(n Open)BSD panel which was pretty good. They showed a working system, wiped it, and showed how to install OpenBSD. The install itself went pretty fast, but one guy interrupted with questions so often that it seemed like a 15 or 20 minute thing became an hour and I left for another panel when the install had just finished. The guy with the questions had several good ones, but at times he seemed to just not understand things that had just been explained. I figured that would have been me, but I managed to follow along pretty well. I'd liked to have seen more, but there wasn't time for me to. the panel itself went on longer, so that had there not been a competing panel I would have seen more.

Eric Raymond and howardtayler had a panel on hot peppers and spices that was interesting. There was emphasis on flavor rather than just heat, but also that there could be flavor with (or through the) heat. After that, things moved to the con suite for a tasting. I sampled a few pepper spices and then it just got crowded. The spices were good, but I'd had enough and wasn't able to really judge them well after sampling a few, so I didn't add to the crowd.

Frank Hayes had a good performance, though his voice was not doing very well. He had a written list of his songs he could recall and asked for people to choose by number, without having seen the list. All we knew was that the range was 1 to 44. I called out "13!" loud and first or nearly so and he went with it... and it happened to be his most (in)famous tune Never Set The Cat On Fire. The only bad thing was that Jay didn't get to the performance until a couple tunes in and so didn't experience that one. He did get to hear the very annotated (but not the extensive early history of microprocessors) version of S-100 Bus. After the performance, Frank sold and signed CDs. I now have a signed CD.

Out in the hallway there was a table set up for fliers for other conventions, but that wasn't all. A local (used) bookstore put out some old science fiction magazines and books free for the taking, along with some advertising. I picked up a few magazines that looked to have interesting short stories. These were mostly from the 80s and 90s, but one had a very different style and it was from June 1959. I also picked up A Canticle For Liebowitz which I'd only encountered as a radio production sometime in the 1980s.

In the dealer's room I bought a couple buttons and a few shirts. The shirt that I got the most comments about wasn't any of those I bought at the con. Nor was it the Tron Guy Fan Club shirt which I wore part of Friday and it did get a few comments. The one that got the comments was the LART shirt, in the style of an O'Reilly book.

After the Real Stories From The ER panel it was mentioned that there would also be When To Avoid An ER Bill. I attended that, or most of it, and most of it was common sense (if you're sore, and you helped someone move the day before, it's not an emergency) though there were a couple things I was not aware of. A lot of it was "Take ibuprofen, drink water." with a decided emphasis that on the water.

Jay and Howard Tayler had their chupaqueso demonstration and feed, which was well attended and evidently universally enjoyed. Cheese filled cheese, with additional seasonings, is a crowd pleaser though there are two intial reactions to the idea. One is "Cool! Cheese with cheese in it!" and other is "You're kidding, right?"

Jay went to play some game (Munchkin?) and I wandered a bit and eventually happened across a game of "Are You A Werewolf?" which went fast and was nicely simple. I decided I'd sit in on a game or two. Alas, my timing was lousy as the moderator decided the early game was "too bloodthirsty" and wanted more argument and such - which is reasonable in reality but makes for a tedious, drawn out game. The group got bigger and it was decided to move the game to a large empty room. This worked, but threatened to be even longer and more tedious. I did get a "I am not a werewolf" ribbon out of it, so I had two ribbons on my badge. I was not collecting them like some were. I accused one person of trying to make a Tom Baker style scarf of ribbons. The length of ribbons was almost as tall as she was - and she was not cheating with wide spacing, either. And for the record, I really was not a werewolf at any of the times I played. I wonder if anyone made "I am a werewolf" ribbons.

After that I found a drum jam and some dancing going on, which added to the odd renfaire aspect of things. This was joined by a saxophone and eventually a fellow who looked the part playing dual recorders. I met, or at least saw, him in the hallway earlier and he was quite good.

Eventually I tried to get some sleep. The downside of the Holidome arrangement is that stuff keeps going on. That I had several caffeinated mints through the day didn't help either. They're good, but I didn't really need the stimulant, at least not in the quantity I wound up taking.