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Entry tags:
A: 52!
Q: What is the number of hours our house was without power?
Power went out right before 2 AM Friday morning, and when we got back home at 6:15 PM Sunday after the con, the time on the bedroom clock read 12:19 PM, from which I deduce we got power back about 6 AM Sunday morning. If it had to happen, for us this was the best weekend, as we already had a hotel room booked for Friday and Saturday nights at the con and didn't have to try to find a room with the NBA All-Star Game Weekend festivities happening.
And speaking of which, our hotel was half full of con-goers and half-full of NBA-game-goers. There was also a decidedly large number of extra women in very, very short skirts and very, very high heels hanging around (in this weather!), which prompted![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
oldgreek to explain to a friend, "Let's put it this way: if those women aren't professionals, they're amateurs."
The con went as well as can be considered. One of our guests of honor, Jack McDevitt, wasn't able to attend after Atlanta shut down most flights, but we managed to work out how to amplify the output from a polycom conference phone* so we were able to have the GoH Q&A session as scheduled.**
I spent the con twittering updates and other news on @condfw, and monitoring what other people were saying about the con on Twitter. Rachel Caine, one of our guests, wasn't able to be there for her Saturday morning panel, and spent the time twittering her thoughts on the subject instead as a virtual panelist.
I also found Twitter to be quite useful in monitoring the power outage across the metroplex and seeing what areas had power back - Oncor has a Twitter feed at @oncor, and doing a search for "oncor" revealed lots of people with legitimate complaints and even more people with serious entitlement issues. Oncor is, let's say, not the best or most responsive of companies, but really: when someone twitters "206K people without power and only one Oncor truck on my street? What's up with that, Oncor?" I think we can safely say that he has answered his own question. By Sunday, Oncor was posting passive-aggressive tweets of its own: "Please note that by refusing to allow tree-trimming you are keeping others from having their power restored."
Note that both of those were paraphrased. I didn't bother to double-check the wording.
Sum total of snow damage to the house: part of the patio roof collapsed. The roof is one of those ones made of slanted slats, to allow both the rain and the Texas sun to pour onto your head, thus ensuring that you will not go outside during any season. One section of slats and a support fell off. We'll report that to the management company, and I suspect they'll call the owner who will decline to spend the money to have it fixed, and we will merely say "Fine by us, as long as you saw off the dangling support so it doesn't fall on anyone."
We cranked the heat up (all the way to 70! We are living large!) last night BECAUSE WE COULD.
And one last message about the convention, if you made it this far: next year, 2011, our guests of honor are Brandon Sanderson and Tim Powers. If you like either or both of them, consider showing up! We're small enough that you get great guest access, and the hotel is built to feel like an arcology or residential space station, being in a triangular shape with rooms around the perimeter and walkway-spokes radiating out from the central elevator core (not to mention they're all suites with a kitchenette so you don't have to eat overpriced hotel food if you don't want to).
--
* Mic held by mic stand right above it, amp and speaker directly in *front* of it so as not to have any feedback problem.
** Immodesty compels me to point out that it was my idea to see if we could get him on the phone. :D
Power went out right before 2 AM Friday morning, and when we got back home at 6:15 PM Sunday after the con, the time on the bedroom clock read 12:19 PM, from which I deduce we got power back about 6 AM Sunday morning. If it had to happen, for us this was the best weekend, as we already had a hotel room booked for Friday and Saturday nights at the con and didn't have to try to find a room with the NBA All-Star Game Weekend festivities happening.
And speaking of which, our hotel was half full of con-goers and half-full of NBA-game-goers. There was also a decidedly large number of extra women in very, very short skirts and very, very high heels hanging around (in this weather!), which prompted
oldgreek to explain to a friend, "Let's put it this way: if those women aren't professionals, they're amateurs."The con went as well as can be considered. One of our guests of honor, Jack McDevitt, wasn't able to attend after Atlanta shut down most flights, but we managed to work out how to amplify the output from a polycom conference phone* so we were able to have the GoH Q&A session as scheduled.**
I spent the con twittering updates and other news on @condfw, and monitoring what other people were saying about the con on Twitter. Rachel Caine, one of our guests, wasn't able to be there for her Saturday morning panel, and spent the time twittering her thoughts on the subject instead as a virtual panelist.
I also found Twitter to be quite useful in monitoring the power outage across the metroplex and seeing what areas had power back - Oncor has a Twitter feed at @oncor, and doing a search for "oncor" revealed lots of people with legitimate complaints and even more people with serious entitlement issues. Oncor is, let's say, not the best or most responsive of companies, but really: when someone twitters "206K people without power and only one Oncor truck on my street? What's up with that, Oncor?" I think we can safely say that he has answered his own question. By Sunday, Oncor was posting passive-aggressive tweets of its own: "Please note that by refusing to allow tree-trimming you are keeping others from having their power restored."
Note that both of those were paraphrased. I didn't bother to double-check the wording.
Sum total of snow damage to the house: part of the patio roof collapsed. The roof is one of those ones made of slanted slats, to allow both the rain and the Texas sun to pour onto your head, thus ensuring that you will not go outside during any season. One section of slats and a support fell off. We'll report that to the management company, and I suspect they'll call the owner who will decline to spend the money to have it fixed, and we will merely say "Fine by us, as long as you saw off the dangling support so it doesn't fall on anyone."
We cranked the heat up (all the way to 70! We are living large!) last night BECAUSE WE COULD.
And one last message about the convention, if you made it this far: next year, 2011, our guests of honor are Brandon Sanderson and Tim Powers. If you like either or both of them, consider showing up! We're small enough that you get great guest access, and the hotel is built to feel like an arcology or residential space station, being in a triangular shape with rooms around the perimeter and walkway-spokes radiating out from the central elevator core (not to mention they're all suites with a kitchenette so you don't have to eat overpriced hotel food if you don't want to).
--
* Mic held by mic stand right above it, amp and speaker directly in *front* of it so as not to have any feedback problem.
** Immodesty compels me to point out that it was my idea to see if we could get him on the phone. :D
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My only regret is that the picture was taken with a really crappy phone camera, so you have to squint to read it. :)
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One of my old girl scout compatriots from junior high was at the con, oddly enough, so I followed her reports on Twitter/FB as well.
The YaoiCon icon is hilarious. It sounds like there's some chance I might be at the next one since that may be one of the cons Cosplay in America manages to actually get into. (He's having bad luck with artists' alleys, and man, dealers' tables are expensive--$825 at Otakon, f'rex.) So I might go help him out and, er, translate (he doesn't know anything about the scene, and while it's not my scene--I'm on the Yuricon ML, TYVM--at least I know more about it than he does. haha.)
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