amnesiack: (geek pride)
[livejournal.com profile] preciousjade's birthday party was a lot of fun. It's awesome to have awesome friends. I made Seitan & Mushroom Stroganoff (my favorite recipe out of the Vegan Vittles cookbook that Jesse bought at the Warped Tour back in 2003), and it was a big hit. Even the self-described carnivores at the party partook and enjoyed.

I got to hang out with [livejournal.com profile] jaberwockynmt for a few hours on Sunday. We had lunch at the Wayward, and talked for a while before I had to run to pick up the roommates, and he had to run to catch a flight. I don't interact with a lot of the Enforcer crowd outside of the actual PAX environment, but Jarrod's always a great person with whom to hang.

* * *

This Saturday will be the 2nd Annual Seattle Science Fiction Short Film Festival at the Cinerama. I went to this with [livejournal.com profile] covenantscave and [livejournal.com profile] darklingrose last year, and we had a great time. I'm hopeful that it will be just as fun this year.

On the roleplaying front, [livejournal.com profile] yurodivuie leaves us this weekend for a short while, so in place of Exalted, [livejournal.com profile] hansandersen will be running some Dogs in the Vineyard for [livejournal.com profile] lesleymac and me. Yay!

PAX report

Aug. 29th, 2006 03:11 pm
amnesiack: (PAX)
So, I'm back from PAX.

As with every year, the essence of PAX defies description. I spend 5 days working like a dog, only to remember it afterwords as spending 5 days hanging out with some of the coolest people ever. If it weren't for the searing pain that still radiates up from my legs and feet, I might already be in complete denial of how hard the event is to pull off.

My job )

Day 1: Thursday, 8/24 - Preparations Begin )

Day 2: Friday, 8/25 - Awaiting the Hoards )

I had intended to do up the whole con report in one post, but doing this much in between things I need to take care of at work has already taken 6 hours, so I think I'll do another post or two to wrap everything up.
amnesiack: (PAX)
PAX setup last night. Tired and sore already. Four more days to go. Rock 'n' roll, baby.
amnesiack: (PAX)
We had our first setup gathering for PAX last night. The first part was our standard Meet & Greet, wherein we all get reacquainted and go through the Meydenbauer Center to see how things are going to be laid out this year. Then, we stuffed 10,000 attendee bags with various fliers, goodies, and treats donated for the convention. It looks like it's going to be a really great show (again) this year. The big news, though, is with the cancellation of E3 next year, Penny Arcade's phones began to ring off the hook with companies wanting to get in on the PAX action. Unfortunately, we've been booked solid on exhibitor space since February, so all comers, both big and small, were turned away. That'll teach them not to take us seriously. We've already got the Washington State convention center booked for next year, which will more than triple our square footage for the event. I have a feeling we're going to need it.
amnesiack: (PAX)
On Monday, I leave town for my first vacation in almost 20 months. Despite the fact that PAX is awesome, and I always have a blast, I do not define a vacation as "working twice as hard as I do at my regular job around the clock for 96 hours without getting paid"; therefore, PAX05 does not count as a vacation. If you insist on calling it such, then I still haven't had a vacation in a year.

Anyway, for this vacation I will be flying to Athens, Greece. My parents are currently the directors of a satellite campus for American university students to study abroad for a semester in Athens. The hotel that is their campus will be student-free during the month of August, so we are taking advantage of that fact. I haven't seen my parents (or anyone else in my family) since December '04, and my brother and his wife and kids will be visiting during part of my trip as well, meaning that I will get to meet my new niece (who was born a few months ago) for the first time. I will also make every effort to simultaneously see cool things that I didn't get to see when I was in Greece in 2000 and be a total lazy bastard for the entire trip. We'll see how it works out. I'm fairly certain there will be at least occasional internet access while I'm there, so I may or may not post here during my stay, and I'll probably respond to email, albeit perhaps a bit more slowly than usual. I will be arriving back in Seattle on August 19th.

Why only 12 days (including travel time) you may ask? Well, my friends, the reason that my epic Greek vacation lasts only 12 days is because I needed to save enough vacation time for my epic PAX06 adventure! That's right, it's PAX time again! Upon returning from my vacation, I will be at work for only 3 days before I again take on the identity of an Enforcer for the nerd-wrangling, mind-numbing, utterly-awesome spectacle of the Penny Arcade Expo. I hope to see you all there.
amnesiack: (PAX)
The auction dinner went swimmingly last night. We raised over $82,000 (not including the ~$15,000 from people paying to attend). This is a significant step up from last year's $17,000, and it will be a great boon to Child's Play as a whole. The interesting thing is that nearly half that money came from one person: Christian Boggs, Bidder #111, who some may remember as the person who ended up buying the original PAX program cover art for $8,700 to benefit victims of Hurricane Katrina. I came away with nothing this year, despite having significantly more money that I could spend; things just got too pricey. It was a lot of fun being with my PAX-mates, though, and a great event in general. I'm very glad I took the day off to be a part of it from set-up to tear down, despite not getting to sleep until almost 1 am. And, of course, donations are always still welcome:

Child's Play
amnesiack: (PAX)
I completely forgot to mention our incredible musical performers this year. I had the privilege of helping MC Frontalot set up his merch table on Friday when he arrived, and I got to talk with Yook, Front's back-up rhyme-buster, on several occasions. I hung out with Yook a lot last year, and he is a great guy to kick it with. I missed the musical performance on Friday (The Video Game Pianist, Optimus Rhyme, and The Neskimos) because of the Turbine party, but Saturday night I was front and center security for the stage, so I got a full-on blast of Conney Lin's Final Fantasy piano performance, MC Frontalot, MC Chris, and The Minibosses, all of whom rock my socks clean off. At various times throughout the weekend I got to chat for at least a couple of minutes with all the performers, and they are universally cool people and tremendous performers.
amnesiack: (PAX)
So, PAX was a rousing success for the second year in a row. I survived on three hours of sleep a night and copious amounts of Bawls, Bawls mints, and the occasional cup of coffee. A big part of any Penny Arcade event is always seeing all the cool people you've gotten to know at previous PA events, and this year certainly held that up. There was lots of hanging out with Jacob, Mike F., Robert, Mike O., Richard, Kristen, Bill, and (of course) Mike & Jerry themselves, plus lots of new people, like David and the awesome [livejournal.com profile] jedifreeman, who was nice enough to let me sleep on his floor in Redmond so that I didn't have to try to bus back and forth from Seattle every day.

Thursday I spent most of the morning setting up console space in the freeplay area and the tournament area, much like I did last year. Just so you know, if you ever need tvs unpacked and 3 consoles hooked up to them and secured from theft, I'm your man. There was also some general lugging about of various crates and boxes in the exhibition hall. During the three days of the con itself, I never got above the 2nd floor, as I was constantly working in either the Exhibition hall (Bobby D. at the AA booth, you're awesome!) or as security in the theater. Friday night I was one of four enforcers who worked the Turbine party in a bar at the Doubletree. Turbine is a game company that (from what I hear) used to be a division of Microsoft in some way, but is now its own entity. They're best known for Asheron's Call 1 & 2, but they are also the current developers for two upcoming MMORPGs -- Dungeons & Dragons Online and Lord of the Rings Online. The party was to showcase DDO and included free alcohol for attendees over the age of 21. The Turbine people are really cool, and they all seem to be really in this business for the love of games, which is always gratifying to see in a developer. Plus, I got free t-shirts and dice from them.

I got to see [livejournal.com profile] preciousjade and [livejournal.com profile] grandmoffdavid while I was there. I'm afraid I wasn't too entertaining for them, as they arrived during one my lulls, where I was exhaustedly sitting in a chair guarding two doors from unauthorized entry. I think I may have seen [livejournal.com profile] covenantscave from across the room in the exhibition hall, but at the time I was unable to leave what I was doing, and by the time I got to where I thought I had seen him, he was no longer anywhere to be found.

Strike on Sunday night and Monday, and it was pretty low-key, as everyone was already completely exhausted. Tearing things apart after the con is always a little sad, but it's also a great deal easier than setting them up. You also get to see who the really hardcore people are, who will continue to desert work and push their bodies past the breaking point in order to finish things up. There was a great after-party at Mike F.'s apartment building Monday night, which included beer, pizza, a lot of Mario Kart Double Dash, and general fun and hijinks with a great crew of people.

I will definitely be putting in a 3rd appearance next year if at all possible. Much love to my Dark Lord Felauher, my wingman Richard, PRD, the whole PA Inc. crew, and all the Enforcers who made this such a great event. I'll see you all at Child's Play.
amnesiack: (PAX)
Today is my last day of work for the week. Why? The long and short of it... PAX!. Yes, PAX05 (summarized in this great interview) begins on Friday, which means setup begins at 9am tomorrow morning, and I am the crazy sort who will use up all his remaining vacation time in order to work his butt off for free for four days alongside a cavalcade of smelly gamers. Already, despite more than doubling our work force, echoes from last year's understaffing delima have arisen. I pull shifts from 8am-9:30 pm in the exhibition hall and theater, and I've already been roped into an 11pm-2am shift as security for the Turbine party on Friday night at the Doubletree (where they will apparently be giving out free drinks and demoing D&D Online).

I have new gel insoles for my shoes (a must), my psp fully charged, spending money, cargo pants, and a wreckless disregard for my own health in regards to sleep and caffeine consumption. It's going to be a great week.

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