RCFM 2006: Friday

[vakkotaur]

Friday things actually started and I'll probably have to see kinkyturtle's cartoon diary of the day to be reminded of a fair amount of it. I had breakfast at the hotel restaurant and it wasn't bad. Though it was a bit different from previous years as the restaurant was set up in the lounge area (with the smoking thankfully moved elsewhere) as the normal restaurant space was being used by the convention. This was something the folks at hotel had suggested last year.

My registration did not go perfectly smoothly. I saw alexanderkatz just before trying to take care of things and he told me, "If you have any trouble tell them to call Alex." I had trouble. I wasn't in the system, it seems. While I had a receipt (still in my luggage, but I could have gone and got it) somehow the information had never been entered into the database. I said, "Call Alex." and was asked if I really wanted to do. I explained that it was Alex who said to say "Call Alex".. and then followed a sequence of events of trying to find a working radio or getting the right cell number. But eventually Alex did show up and took care of it with, "No matter what the system says, he's registered as a booster." I had to enter some information into the system like a walk-in but that was the end of it. Or almost was. Through the weekend there was the matter of tracking down folks and making sure they got all the goodies that were part of the level they'd registered at. Unlike last year, as far as I know, everything did get to me so I won't be waiting several months for something.

One change this year was that most folks on security had red shirts. Someone suggested that as a gag last year, evidently, and RCFM ran with it. Popular culture implications aside, it does seem more sensible than the black labcoats that had been in use - and still were in a few cases.

This year I finally did something I should have done before and had meant to but somehow kept forgetting. I had a list of books I already had, so I could check what was available against that. I now have an almost complete set of the Kevin and Kell books. I'd have the complete set except one book wasn't available. I'll be looking for that at MFF and likely working on getting books of Bill Holbrook's other strips.

The dealer's area, like last year, had a central register set up to make sure sales taxes were taken care of. This works out for the dealers as they don't each need to deal with state and local taxes, the convention handles it. This year the ability to handle credit cards was also added and I suspect helped the dealers considerably. On the downside, there was as far as I could tell one and only register so it a bottleneck as well as a potential single point of failure. There were times when more than a single register, even if all were in the dealer's area, would have been good. That I had to take a form from the Artist's Alley to the Dealer's Den to take care of something wasn't bad. There the hassle was that the number in the database and the number given to the artist to use were not the sample number. The other problem is that while the Artist's Alley is open 'round the clock, the dealer's area (and therefore the register) is not. I don't how off-hours purchases were supposed to be handled, but if it had been worked out, it wasn't clear and I got the impression that the folks in the Artist's Alley didn't know either.

As I was a panelist this year, with a whole one panel, I got a little slip of paper when I registered/checked-in which had the times of opening and closing ceremonies and my panel. Evidently I was expected to be at all three, though I'm not sure what the purpose of my being at opening ceremonies was other than to help fill the room. Opening ceremonies seem to be rather like mission statements: (almost?) everybody has them, but they don't seem to actually do very much. I left wondering why I had been there. And if I do end up at opening ceremonies again, I think I'll bring an umbrella or something. Jim Groat's watery annointments were somewhat amusing two years ago and then mainly due to the cracking of the light bulb. Now, for me at least, it's gotten to feel rather like Gallagher's Sledge-o-matic bit: it's there due to inertia, not humor.

I know I've forgotten a few things. I think I spent too long somewhere or was detained and missed the Meet the Guests of Honor session. I wanted to see that so I'd know who was who, though at least I knew who KT was. It would have been nice to hear what KT had to say, even if I likely have already heard it.

Somehow Friday got very late for me. I think it became Saturday before I realized it. But it was a good day overall.

Comments

[kinkyturtle.livejournal.com]

You had to enter your info into the walk-in terminals? So did I! And I was a Guest of Honor!

[vakkotaur.livejournal.com]

Yow. I can understand how my situation happened. I paid my fee at the RCFM room party at MFF and Alexander Katz took my money and gave me the receipt and then likely got busy with things or such and the information was never entered into the database. Okkay, fine, I didn't register in a more common manner and things happen. But a Guest of Honor? They should have collected the needed information last year and entered that first thing - or second thing, right after staff or such.

However, I do expect that this sort of thing will get fixed and fortunately it's a fairly minor thing. It's certainly better than my MFF experience of last year.

[kinkyturtle.livejournal.com]

There was something like, my info was in the database, but it somehow hadn't gotten entered into the system they were using. They had a record of my registration, it just didn't come up on the computer, and they had me enter it on the terminals to save time.