Oh, and I went to Penguicon, too.

[vakkotaur]

Friday started out slow for me as I didn't go to Geeks with Guns, but slept in some after a hotel restaurant breakfast that didn't impress me much. After a nap I started wandering the halls in an attempt to get familiar with the layout. This attempt was almost successful. There were some people around, but it felt oddly slow to me. I guess I was comparing it to MFF and RCFM where even if nothing is on the schedule, it seems like something is going on. mainly I remember landley looking for a Sharpie and some duct tape.

Sometime, I think after registration opened, I was asked to help with some stuff. "I'll hold your arm" she said. I've heard of being strong-armed, is this being fem-armed? I started to help unload a truck of stage equipment, but there were enough people doing that that I wound up mostly just holding a door open for everyone else. When the truck was unloaded, it was time to move a bunch of stuff from just inside the doors to the Birch room. I was only almost familiar with the layout and followed someone else who also only almost familiar with things and we put it all in the wrong room. This wasn't a big deal, just a minor annoyance if anything.

[ADDENDUM: At one point Howard Tayler had to step away from his table for a couple minutes and asked me to look after things. I did so, and swiped wendyzski's "Not Rilla" bit that she once used. As Wendy was not Rilla, I was "Not Howard." This provided some amusement.]

I think I made it to a panel or two on Friday, and even stayed around for most of one of them. I really don't recall too much of Friday as myself. On the way back from Geeks with Guns, Jay had an item or two to pick up and also picked up a can of carrot juice as I had suggested the idea of carrot flavored ice cream and the Penguicon folks would be making liquid nitrogen all weekend with various flavorings.

There was yearbook picture thing set up, and I don't know how it turned out. I might have been the first person photographed for this Friday evening. The photographer seemed rather bored with how slow it was. I brought Orvan out for him, as, well, why not? Especially as it was slow.

Saturday I made it to a Frank Hayes performance. When he introduced the S-100 Bus tune, he brought out the little bus Orvan had delivered. He also nibbled on the packing material again. "It's edible." *pause* *picks it out* "Well, that one wasn't."

I kept missing the liquid nitrogen ice cream bits, and so made a point of being in the right place at the scheduled time Saturday afternoon. And this is where my one complaint surfaces. There were too many simultaneously scheduled food things going on which resulted in a big crowd in the con suite and delay after delay. The ice cream didn't happen. The beef was good (don't tell Orvan). The chupaquesos were good. The sushi was good. But all at once was too much and the ice cream gave. By the time any ice cream did happen again, it was already decided that it'd be tea, and I left in disgust. Mind, I'm sure the tea ice cream was good, but it had been a few hours that I'd been waiting and had I known it wasn't going to happen I could have spent my time elsewhere. Maybe next year I'll get to try it - and hopefully not miss panels all afternoon or evening while waiting for a non-event. The can of carrot juice is in the fridge, unopened. At least some of that time was spent listening to mzmadmike so it wasn't a complete loss.

I did attend at least part of one panel. One with four web cartoonists or web artists or whatever on "How to offend the audience" where they talked about how they'd bring up various topics and it was okkay... until some reader found they'd gone after his pet item or such. It was actually pretty amusing and somewhat informative.

Sometime Saturday evening I was going back to the room, perhaps to bring Orvan out, and I'd been avoiding drinking too much (the beer and ale was good, however) when I had an encounter. Two lovely young women, dressed in clothes that would have been bathing suits had there been any less material, were walking down the hall, carrying plates of chocolates. They asked if I'd like one, quickly explaining what they were loaded with. Also they explained that the chocolates were delicate and apt to break, "So we'll have to feed it to you." I settled on a chocolate loaded with 151... it was quite good, and while I hadn't planned on having any more alcohol just then, I certainly did not regret it.

As Orvan had been invited to Sarah Shefferly's literary salon, I checked that out and avoided the offered alcohol for the moment. The sparkling pomegranate juice was quite good. After Orvan had been there, and a couple other room parties, I went back and partook of stronger drink. I called it a night around 1 AM or so. I went to be early compared to many.

Sunday I managed to get another Frank Hayes performance, (note: motion sensing lights aren't good for a performer who doesn't move much) with the 'annotated' S-100 tune. I also made it to a panel where Eric Raymond and Rob landley talked about the transition to 64 bit computing and what it means for Linux and open source - and what needs to be. Short version: Make the stuff work as people expect, and don't worry about doing things the FSF Way.

There was a bit of winding down in the con suite after closing ceremonies. Eventually I gave up and took a nap, or tried to, before jmaynard and I went out for supper. He had a middle eastern place recommended to him, but either it's new or it wasn't remembered quite right and the navigation system didn't know about it. We wound up going to La Shish again, which is not at all a bad thing.