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saturday Blargh
First of all, I have a drawing in voting for Threadless. If it gets voted high enough, I get $2500! So, please, don't hesitate to vote.
Come vote!
Ok. a Notacon blag.
So, I of course attended Notacon 6 this year. I attended Notacon 5 and 4 as well, and this year they were implementing changes, the biggest of which was a new venue. basically, the con outgrew the hotel they had been in.
Well, the hotel... I was not fond of. Everything seemed more cramped - We had more rooms, but the rooms were smaller. I found I was standing for the majority of the lectures I went to due to a lack of seating. The staff was friendly, but (for lack of a better term) full of shit.
I had a very tight budget for notacon, and have also never purchased a hotel room so I am unaware of various fees. I asked them "What will the total be?" I was told "$218, there will be additional charges if you damage the room in any way." Ok. Sounds fair.
Well, what they didn't tell me, is that they ASSUME I've damaged the room and send a pending charge of about $140 per night (the room was $90 per night.) This seriously overdraws my account, and I had other charges going through. Pending transactions are taken in to account, and I had other charges in pending. If any of them had gone through I would have been hit with late charges. I was angry. If they had told me this up front, I could have paid in cash. I had cash on me. They didn't, though.
So, I went to the front desk and asked when I saw I was overdrawn - I said "Hey, it looks like I have almost a $300 pending charge - What's the deal?" This is what really pissed me off here.
The woman managing the front desk said "I don't know. We don't do that. Must be your bank's fault."
... Excuse me? Ok. I know it's not my bank. But, I wanted to be able to go back and say that. So I said, in my most annoyed voice, "Where is the nearest Huntington? This is unacceptible, this overdraws my account and basically screws me over." With a straight face, she informed me where the bank was, and I wasted my precious time marching down there. To walk up to the teller and say "My hotel insists you charged me. Which is silly. But I need to not be overdrawn." and she said "Well, no, we definately didn't. But that's ok, I'll get it sorted out."
Uhg.
Anyway.
We went on Friday, arrived at about ten - An hour before opening cerimonies. We had to wait in line for about half an hour, but that wasn't too bad. went up to the hotel, chilled. Honestly, I waited too long to write about it and I don't really remember what happened. Went to a few talks, hung out with people, spent more time in the hotel. We had a huge bathroom in the hotel, it was kind of cool.
here is us in line.
Whose Slide Is It Anyway was hillarious - Rich signed up, and he got to go first. He did really well and got lots of applause. We didn't stay for MemeDump.
Saturday, again, didn't do too much. It was more of a relaxing weekend than an attending-lectures-weekend. Saw a lecture about excelling in the business world which I thought would be pretty cool. It was rather boring, sadly. I found that, while the presenters were all still really cool, there was a lot less subject matter that appealed to me this time. I was happier exploring and just saw a few things. Saw a lecture by Drew Curtis (Fark) about the death of mainstream media - Basically "How the internet destroyed the news." That was really entertaining. DemoParty (Which I had to attend, I had two submissions) was supposed to start at 9:30. They were running late, so Rich bought me a drink and we sat around. And then several other people bought me drinks. Block Party ended up starting two hours late, so by that point I wasn't entirely there. Good times though. Had a lot of fun.
Sunday, woke at about eight and went to vote on the BlockParty submission. Turns out voting was already closed. I thought "Shit. Ah well, I'm sure my five point wouldn't make that much of a difference."
Turns out, in my group of six, nestor was the only one who voted. That means that 25 points went to waste. Would have been enough to give my submission a good jump in the ranks.
Turns out, I was ONE POINT away from first place. If any of us had voted, I would have won.
I learned a lesson. But, it made me happy that even without any of my group voting, I did really well. Definetaly incentive for me to submit again next year.
(for those wondering, I submitted "Philoslothical")
I also learned that martinis are DISGUSTING.
So, Jason's father is out of town and we are dog sitting for him. They have a border collie mix named Logan. He is adorable. I really want a dog, but we don't really have a yard, and jason hates dogs, and we're poor, so I have no aspirations of this happening any time soon. It's nice to pretend for a little bit though :) He'll be leaving on Tuesday. He also has a bladder of steel. He didn't pee once yesterday. A whole lot this morning though.
My mom sent me a text message yesterday. It was of a car. A severely damaged car with a large chunk of it missing on the front right. Looks like it might be totalled.
My dad bought a brand new car about a month ago.
Turns out, a Semi ran over them while making a tight turn.
It's ok, they get to stay in Iowa a bit longer and stay in a casino-boat-hotel or something like that.
ok. i left this open for a few hours in case i remembered anything cool. i haven't. it's nice out and life is good.
this is my car. except i'm not driving it. i lent it to nestor and he passed us while we were driving. also, he uses the breaks too much.
from left to right: jason, nestor, rich, freeman, and matt. well. that's their heads left to right. matt's body is more left than freeman's, i guess. matt has a hat and is scrawny.
the view from the balcony of out hotel.
we all went to a really nummy chinese restraunt. left to right: jason, nestor, matt, freeman, and rich.
matt is a ladies' man.
matt is also a mans' man.
d'awwww.
nestor likes to steal matt's hat as a past-time. matt attempts defense.
having failed, matt retrieves his hat from the garbage.
words are very unnecessary.
this guy kept taking pictures of me (he was the, like, official photographer or something.)
matt is a ninja.
chaos ensues while nestor stands unknowing talking to his mother about mortgages.
we went to a cemetary in the city.
these photos are NOT taken by me. they are from the Notacon flickr group.
this is Int 80 of Dual Core. he bought me a drink.
this is me. i have no clue who this man is, but he is attempting to rub his nipples against that mannicans nipples. i was amused. i was probably drunk.
this is me looking like some sort of terrified skeleton i guess. that is rich. his fly is slightly unzipped.
the short one is al potter. he took pictures of me too but they haven't been posted, which is odd. i got to watch him hit on nestor. i don't know what the tall one's name is, but he said he was jealous of my beautiful hair.
these are not notacon pictures. there are nature pictures.
First of all, I have a drawing in voting for Threadless. If it gets voted high enough, I get $2500! So, please, don't hesitate to vote.
Come vote!
Ok. a Notacon blag.
So, I of course attended Notacon 6 this year. I attended Notacon 5 and 4 as well, and this year they were implementing changes, the biggest of which was a new venue. basically, the con outgrew the hotel they had been in.
Well, the hotel... I was not fond of. Everything seemed more cramped - We had more rooms, but the rooms were smaller. I found I was standing for the majority of the lectures I went to due to a lack of seating. The staff was friendly, but (for lack of a better term) full of shit.
I had a very tight budget for notacon, and have also never purchased a hotel room so I am unaware of various fees. I asked them "What will the total be?" I was told "$218, there will be additional charges if you damage the room in any way." Ok. Sounds fair.
Well, what they didn't tell me, is that they ASSUME I've damaged the room and send a pending charge of about $140 per night (the room was $90 per night.) This seriously overdraws my account, and I had other charges going through. Pending transactions are taken in to account, and I had other charges in pending. If any of them had gone through I would have been hit with late charges. I was angry. If they had told me this up front, I could have paid in cash. I had cash on me. They didn't, though.
So, I went to the front desk and asked when I saw I was overdrawn - I said "Hey, it looks like I have almost a $300 pending charge - What's the deal?" This is what really pissed me off here.
The woman managing the front desk said "I don't know. We don't do that. Must be your bank's fault."
... Excuse me? Ok. I know it's not my bank. But, I wanted to be able to go back and say that. So I said, in my most annoyed voice, "Where is the nearest Huntington? This is unacceptible, this overdraws my account and basically screws me over." With a straight face, she informed me where the bank was, and I wasted my precious time marching down there. To walk up to the teller and say "My hotel insists you charged me. Which is silly. But I need to not be overdrawn." and she said "Well, no, we definately didn't. But that's ok, I'll get it sorted out."
Uhg.
Anyway.
We went on Friday, arrived at about ten - An hour before opening cerimonies. We had to wait in line for about half an hour, but that wasn't too bad. went up to the hotel, chilled. Honestly, I waited too long to write about it and I don't really remember what happened. Went to a few talks, hung out with people, spent more time in the hotel. We had a huge bathroom in the hotel, it was kind of cool.
here is us in line.
Whose Slide Is It Anyway was hillarious - Rich signed up, and he got to go first. He did really well and got lots of applause. We didn't stay for MemeDump.
Saturday, again, didn't do too much. It was more of a relaxing weekend than an attending-lectures-weekend. Saw a lecture about excelling in the business world which I thought would be pretty cool. It was rather boring, sadly. I found that, while the presenters were all still really cool, there was a lot less subject matter that appealed to me this time. I was happier exploring and just saw a few things. Saw a lecture by Drew Curtis (Fark) about the death of mainstream media - Basically "How the internet destroyed the news." That was really entertaining. DemoParty (Which I had to attend, I had two submissions) was supposed to start at 9:30. They were running late, so Rich bought me a drink and we sat around. And then several other people bought me drinks. Block Party ended up starting two hours late, so by that point I wasn't entirely there. Good times though. Had a lot of fun.
Sunday, woke at about eight and went to vote on the BlockParty submission. Turns out voting was already closed. I thought "Shit. Ah well, I'm sure my five point wouldn't make that much of a difference."
Turns out, in my group of six, nestor was the only one who voted. That means that 25 points went to waste. Would have been enough to give my submission a good jump in the ranks.
Turns out, I was ONE POINT away from first place. If any of us had voted, I would have won.
I learned a lesson. But, it made me happy that even without any of my group voting, I did really well. Definetaly incentive for me to submit again next year.
(for those wondering, I submitted "Philoslothical")
I also learned that martinis are DISGUSTING.
So, Jason's father is out of town and we are dog sitting for him. They have a border collie mix named Logan. He is adorable. I really want a dog, but we don't really have a yard, and jason hates dogs, and we're poor, so I have no aspirations of this happening any time soon. It's nice to pretend for a little bit though :) He'll be leaving on Tuesday. He also has a bladder of steel. He didn't pee once yesterday. A whole lot this morning though.
My mom sent me a text message yesterday. It was of a car. A severely damaged car with a large chunk of it missing on the front right. Looks like it might be totalled.
My dad bought a brand new car about a month ago.
Turns out, a Semi ran over them while making a tight turn.
It's ok, they get to stay in Iowa a bit longer and stay in a casino-boat-hotel or something like that.
ok. i left this open for a few hours in case i remembered anything cool. i haven't. it's nice out and life is good.
this is my car. except i'm not driving it. i lent it to nestor and he passed us while we were driving. also, he uses the breaks too much.
from left to right: jason, nestor, rich, freeman, and matt. well. that's their heads left to right. matt's body is more left than freeman's, i guess. matt has a hat and is scrawny.
the view from the balcony of out hotel.
we all went to a really nummy chinese restraunt. left to right: jason, nestor, matt, freeman, and rich.
matt is a ladies' man.
matt is also a mans' man.
d'awwww.
nestor likes to steal matt's hat as a past-time. matt attempts defense.
having failed, matt retrieves his hat from the garbage.
words are very unnecessary.
this guy kept taking pictures of me (he was the, like, official photographer or something.)
matt is a ninja.
chaos ensues while nestor stands unknowing talking to his mother about mortgages.
we went to a cemetary in the city.
these photos are NOT taken by me. they are from the Notacon flickr group.
this is Int 80 of Dual Core. he bought me a drink.
this is me. i have no clue who this man is, but he is attempting to rub his nipples against that mannicans nipples. i was amused. i was probably drunk.
this is me looking like some sort of terrified skeleton i guess. that is rich. his fly is slightly unzipped.
the short one is al potter. he took pictures of me too but they haven't been posted, which is odd. i got to watch him hit on nestor. i don't know what the tall one's name is, but he said he was jealous of my beautiful hair.
these are not notacon pictures. there are nature pictures.
