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WindyCon report - Saturday
16 November 2009 10:10 pmSaturday is, of course, the big day of any convention and I got an early start of it because, unusually for me, I had a full slate of programming I wanted to attend. Even though I didn't get to bed until after 1:30 in the morning, I was awake by 7:00, made an ultimately futile attempt at getting back to sleep, and finally got up and going. I got a quick shower even though I had showered before going to bed because the hotel pillows really messed up my hair. (And that takes quite a bit for my hair.)
I walked next door to the Target and bought a quart of chocolate milk for breakfast and spent some time in the lobby with my laptop checking my email, webcomics and blog feeds. The Westin wanted $10 a day to use the wireless connection in the rooms but, at least, had free wireless in the lobby. I've been to hotels that cost half as much that have free wi-fi. I'm sure the more upscale hotels charge for it because they know that the business travellers will pay for it as a matter of course and just pass the cost onto their corporate expense account or write it off as a business expense. It's even easier money than the mini-fridge bar. Let the lower classes sit in the lobby for their Internet connection.
I went back upstairs and got dressed in my Explorer uniform. Being dressed in a British colonial uniform, I thought it would also be appropriate to walk around with the foam cricket bat I got from Specter Studios.
"It's for zombies."
I lost a button. Well, it was not lost but merely detached because I did the sewing on the buttons. I didn't make much of an effort to seek out a sewing kit to replace it because it being missing was (for the most part) hidden behind the shoulder strap of my Sam Browne belt. I'll have to fix that for next time.
I neglected to get a decently posed picture of myself in this particular piece of work. I should have just gotten one of the people taking pictures of me to do so with my own camera as well. I'm sure, though, the pictures will eventually show themselves on flickr.
I was very impressed by the abilities of a number of the attendees to not only stay in character, but also to produce a good accent while doing it. I'll mention specifically Kapitan R. O. von Grelle and Graf Georg von Ziger as having particularly interesting characters and accents to go with them. In their "Types and Tropes" panel, they talked about building characters that are described completely by the costume, manner and, at most, a sentence or two.
"Zebulon Vitruvius Pike. Gentleman adventurer!"
And while that seems to do a reasonable job of describing myself, I realize that I have almost nothing behind it. My Deadlands character is more fully fleshed out but that character is not "me", especially at a convention. Aside from being something of a heroic adventurer, I have developed no real background for Pike. No history. No quirks. No mannerisms. No accent. I admire those people who can put on Prussian or British accents when the best I can do is "Appalachian Redneck" which is an accident of having been born and raised in Southwestern Pennsylvania. While I perform the accent convincingly, I would never incorporate such a thing into my background.
It is something I will have to work on.
I made several runs through the dealer's room, as is my habit. The first is to simply walk through and look at the wares, considering what I might buy. Then, I come back later to actually lay down the money, collect everything up in a bag and then take it back to the room so that I am not carrying a bag around with me for the rest of the convention. I purchased several books from Larry Smith. "The Affinity Bridge", "Boneshaker" and "Leviathan". All three were on my Amazon wish list and I was planning on waiting for them to come out in paperback or perhaps having them given to my as gifts (that's what wish lists are for) but Larry Smith comes to Confluence from Columbus every year and I think it's good to support independent booksellers so I loaded up the bag and flashed my debit card.
I bought some goggle lenses from Morlock Enterprises. Red and blue to make conventions seem like they are occurring in three dimensions!
I stopped by the Blonde Swan booth to show off what I had done with the pith helmet I had bought from them at Marcon. I noticed that they were just trying their hand a flight caps and I realized that I was about to do it again. I purchased a pith helmet and then spend months building a costume around it. When I got home, I was going to purchase a Weta raygun and I would need to build a costume around that. I have a leather jacking in the closet at home. With the ray gun and jacket I would next need a WWII-style flight cap and goggles. The military shirt and tie, a few accessories and a holster for the ray gun would complete the Sky Captain/Ignition City concept.
That's the relatively easy one. I've also been thinking of something more Flash Gordon.
When I took my haul up to my room, I found my door open. We had left a tag on the door saying that we didn't want service to clean the room and they stuck it back under the door with a coupon suggesting that they appreciated the sentiment and were comping us $5 for saving the environment. When we left on the morning we didn't put the "do not disturb" tag back out and the cleaning staff came and made the bed, changed the towels and emptied the trash anyway, leaving the door open when they were done. A quick search of the room determined that no one had taken advantage of their oversight.
After I took another quick shower and changed into my more traditional look, I went down and let the management know. Nothing more came of it but I would at least hope that a flag went into my account and my complaint went further than just the atendant at the front desk.
I went to the group photo shoot and got more pictures.
I drifted through the dealer's room again, this time picking up the last copy of Martian Fluxx the one dealer had.
I completely missed seeing "Monsters vs. Aliens" in the film room. I would have liked to see that again but, having dropped in when "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea" was showing, I thought the room was too big for the projector and the screen was a bit dim.
Instead of going to the masquerade I watched "Steamboy."
I will say that the TeslaCon room party was interesting and more unique that the typical darkened room with loud music and alcohol. I am a bit biased in that I am a Nicola Tesla fanboy and not just because we share a birthday, so put Tesla's name on it and you've got my attention. It was neat having a free photo shoot and it was a clever way to get a lot of email addresses for their mailing list. But the host really sold it. He was another one of those people that was able to effect an accent and performance that you couldn't help but pay attention to.
It would be about a 10 hour drive for me to get to Madison for that con and, while it sounds like it might be a lot of fun, I'll probably pass. Sure, I spent 14 hours driving to Chicago but 6 hours of that was because of my forgetting my clothes and having to go back to Pittsburgh. Under normal circumstances, 8 hours is getting to my driving limit.
Good luck to them, though. I am sorry my previous commitments prevented me from accepting their invitation to high tea.
I'm planning on going to the Steampunk Worlds Fair in New Jersey in May. I was going to go to Marcon two weeks later over Memorial Day weekend because I know people there and Euphorbia would typically be interested in going as well but it turns out that she is thinking of going to a camping event that would be going on that weekend in New York. That would leave me to perhaps drive the additional 2 hours to Dearborn and the World Steam Expo. Maybe. I'll have to work it out with her and look at my finances.
One thing that would help my finances is sharing a room. I generally don't like to do that because, invariably, someone in the group snores and I'm a light enough sleeper that I get no sleep under those conditions. Since I am also typically the designated driver, sleep deprivation, a long convention weekend and miles of open highway are a bad combination I would rather avoid.
Saturday was another night that rolled past midnight.
I walked next door to the Target and bought a quart of chocolate milk for breakfast and spent some time in the lobby with my laptop checking my email, webcomics and blog feeds. The Westin wanted $10 a day to use the wireless connection in the rooms but, at least, had free wireless in the lobby. I've been to hotels that cost half as much that have free wi-fi. I'm sure the more upscale hotels charge for it because they know that the business travellers will pay for it as a matter of course and just pass the cost onto their corporate expense account or write it off as a business expense. It's even easier money than the mini-fridge bar. Let the lower classes sit in the lobby for their Internet connection.
I went back upstairs and got dressed in my Explorer uniform. Being dressed in a British colonial uniform, I thought it would also be appropriate to walk around with the foam cricket bat I got from Specter Studios.
"It's for zombies."
I lost a button. Well, it was not lost but merely detached because I did the sewing on the buttons. I didn't make much of an effort to seek out a sewing kit to replace it because it being missing was (for the most part) hidden behind the shoulder strap of my Sam Browne belt. I'll have to fix that for next time.
I neglected to get a decently posed picture of myself in this particular piece of work. I should have just gotten one of the people taking pictures of me to do so with my own camera as well. I'm sure, though, the pictures will eventually show themselves on flickr.
I was very impressed by the abilities of a number of the attendees to not only stay in character, but also to produce a good accent while doing it. I'll mention specifically Kapitan R. O. von Grelle and Graf Georg von Ziger as having particularly interesting characters and accents to go with them. In their "Types and Tropes" panel, they talked about building characters that are described completely by the costume, manner and, at most, a sentence or two.
"Zebulon Vitruvius Pike. Gentleman adventurer!"
And while that seems to do a reasonable job of describing myself, I realize that I have almost nothing behind it. My Deadlands character is more fully fleshed out but that character is not "me", especially at a convention. Aside from being something of a heroic adventurer, I have developed no real background for Pike. No history. No quirks. No mannerisms. No accent. I admire those people who can put on Prussian or British accents when the best I can do is "Appalachian Redneck" which is an accident of having been born and raised in Southwestern Pennsylvania. While I perform the accent convincingly, I would never incorporate such a thing into my background.
It is something I will have to work on.
I made several runs through the dealer's room, as is my habit. The first is to simply walk through and look at the wares, considering what I might buy. Then, I come back later to actually lay down the money, collect everything up in a bag and then take it back to the room so that I am not carrying a bag around with me for the rest of the convention. I purchased several books from Larry Smith. "The Affinity Bridge", "Boneshaker" and "Leviathan". All three were on my Amazon wish list and I was planning on waiting for them to come out in paperback or perhaps having them given to my as gifts (that's what wish lists are for) but Larry Smith comes to Confluence from Columbus every year and I think it's good to support independent booksellers so I loaded up the bag and flashed my debit card.
I bought some goggle lenses from Morlock Enterprises. Red and blue to make conventions seem like they are occurring in three dimensions!
I stopped by the Blonde Swan booth to show off what I had done with the pith helmet I had bought from them at Marcon. I noticed that they were just trying their hand a flight caps and I realized that I was about to do it again. I purchased a pith helmet and then spend months building a costume around it. When I got home, I was going to purchase a Weta raygun and I would need to build a costume around that. I have a leather jacking in the closet at home. With the ray gun and jacket I would next need a WWII-style flight cap and goggles. The military shirt and tie, a few accessories and a holster for the ray gun would complete the Sky Captain/Ignition City concept.
That's the relatively easy one. I've also been thinking of something more Flash Gordon.
When I took my haul up to my room, I found my door open. We had left a tag on the door saying that we didn't want service to clean the room and they stuck it back under the door with a coupon suggesting that they appreciated the sentiment and were comping us $5 for saving the environment. When we left on the morning we didn't put the "do not disturb" tag back out and the cleaning staff came and made the bed, changed the towels and emptied the trash anyway, leaving the door open when they were done. A quick search of the room determined that no one had taken advantage of their oversight.
After I took another quick shower and changed into my more traditional look, I went down and let the management know. Nothing more came of it but I would at least hope that a flag went into my account and my complaint went further than just the atendant at the front desk.
I went to the group photo shoot and got more pictures.
I drifted through the dealer's room again, this time picking up the last copy of Martian Fluxx the one dealer had.
I completely missed seeing "Monsters vs. Aliens" in the film room. I would have liked to see that again but, having dropped in when "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea" was showing, I thought the room was too big for the projector and the screen was a bit dim.
Instead of going to the masquerade I watched "Steamboy."
I will say that the TeslaCon room party was interesting and more unique that the typical darkened room with loud music and alcohol. I am a bit biased in that I am a Nicola Tesla fanboy and not just because we share a birthday, so put Tesla's name on it and you've got my attention. It was neat having a free photo shoot and it was a clever way to get a lot of email addresses for their mailing list. But the host really sold it. He was another one of those people that was able to effect an accent and performance that you couldn't help but pay attention to.
It would be about a 10 hour drive for me to get to Madison for that con and, while it sounds like it might be a lot of fun, I'll probably pass. Sure, I spent 14 hours driving to Chicago but 6 hours of that was because of my forgetting my clothes and having to go back to Pittsburgh. Under normal circumstances, 8 hours is getting to my driving limit.
Good luck to them, though. I am sorry my previous commitments prevented me from accepting their invitation to high tea.
I'm planning on going to the Steampunk Worlds Fair in New Jersey in May. I was going to go to Marcon two weeks later over Memorial Day weekend because I know people there and Euphorbia would typically be interested in going as well but it turns out that she is thinking of going to a camping event that would be going on that weekend in New York. That would leave me to perhaps drive the additional 2 hours to Dearborn and the World Steam Expo. Maybe. I'll have to work it out with her and look at my finances.
One thing that would help my finances is sharing a room. I generally don't like to do that because, invariably, someone in the group snores and I'm a light enough sleeper that I get no sleep under those conditions. Since I am also typically the designated driver, sleep deprivation, a long convention weekend and miles of open highway are a bad combination I would rather avoid.
Saturday was another night that rolled past midnight.
