Dept. of Redundancy Dept.

Kiss Me, I'm Fannish

Quickie SiliCon report, pix sometime soon, possibly in your lifetime.

Arrived at SiliCon just in time for the opening of registration at 6:10. Did not receive my badge till about 6:30, sepite being only about 5th in line and having pre-registered. They did not have a designated pre-reg line, which sucked, but as usual the folks behind the desk were very nice once you got there.

Saw lots of folks, took a quick walk through the half-empty dealer's room, then back to the foyer in front of the registration desk for the Meet the Guests. This may be the worst venue for such an event ever, but the folks in charge did well, considering it was apparent nobody had thought to actually round up the guests and get them there.

Had dinner in the garden cafe, pretty decent teriyaki salmon and thank you than you for not including broccoli or it's Evil white Cousin cauliflower among the steamed veggies.

Then it was party time. I started off with deliveries to the SFSF party and Pancho's Crosstime Cantina, and did the rounds taking a few snapshots here and there. Went to the BASFA party,   Hogwarts, Green Forest (or something like that) but skipped the Klingon one because I'm not fond of darkness as a party lighting scheme. Back at the Cantina, I bought some tokens (toy soldiers!) and cashed them in on some absinthe. I'd never had it before and was curious. For those of us who don't like licorice, this is very vile stuff, but it packs a huge kick. An ounce of absinthe felt like a triple shot of 100-proof bourbon, even though I sipped it over the course of 20 minutes.

Saw lots and lots of LJ folks, including bovil britgeekgrrl didjiman gil_liant iamradar johnnyeponymous johno karisu_sama kennita   kproche lady_leandra lisa_marli melchar yourbob and baronlaw and lots of BASFAns too whose LJs I don't know.

Time to get dressed and back to the con.

DVD Success

After the con, I took out the laptop and the instructions and the replacement DVD drive and made the swap in 10 minutes. Had to trim the bezel so the drive door would close, but other than that it was an easy repair. The system recognized the new hardware, and unlike the piece-o-crap drive which came with the Gateway, this time it assigned a DMA channel and played commercial DVDs without skipping.